When I dropped my son off at preschool this morning, it was 29 degrees outside.  Not a warm morning to say the least, but at least it wasn’t raining, and I was off to help a group of volunteers build a playground at West Fenwick Park in Kent.

What I found when I arrived was about 30 volunteers from United Way, The Seattle Seahawks, GMC and a playground building company Sitelines, all digging in the frozen earth and laughing.

The build was part of…

Everyone at United Way is deeply saddened by the sudden death this weekend of state senator Scott White. Scott was not only a committed public servant, but someone who was smart, funny and kind. He served on United Way’s public policy advisory group, and we will miss his wise counsel. Our hearts go out to his children and to his wife, Alison Carl White, a member of the United Way board. Go here for details of a memorial fund.

One of my favorite things about working here at United Way of King County is hearing the stories from people that are out there doing good work.  11,000 volunteers worked at projects for United Way of King County’s Day of Caring on September 16, and I’ve had the pleasure of hearing about a number of their experiences.  I thought I’d share some of them with you from volunteers who have blogged about their day of volunteering  Here are some of the ones that I’ve found so far.  If you’ve got…

When United Way of King County board member and CEO of the new tech company Pirq asked Bill Gates how cash strapped startups could create a culture of giving back to the community, Gates told him to build a way to give back into the actual business model of the company.   That’s exactly what Sun did with the ‘Deals for Meals’ program.

Pirq is a new smartphone app that  connects users to great deals at restaurants and cafe’s in real time, where…

KPLU 88.5′s reporter Charla Bear did a great piece today on 14 year old Sanigiah Ysa, a volunteer for our Free Tax Prep program. Read or listen to the story here.

Thank you to Sanigiah and to all of our Free Tax Preparation Volunteers who have worked so hard making sure people are getting the returns they have earned.

Growing up, I think Meals on Wheels was the first non-profit I had ever heard of. I was certainly the most memorable for me, and I can’t recall why. Perhaps it they had commercials on Saturday mornings as I watched cartoons at my grandparents house in Spokane WA, or perhaps it was just the catchy name. (I liked, and still do pretty much anything that has wheels.)

Then and now, Meals on Wheels just makes sense to me. Here in King County, they use…

Every year on Capitol Hill, more than 1,400 volunteers give their time to make hot meals for people who are homeless. The program, called Community Lunch served more than 30,000 meals last year.

A “Why the Fork” grant from United Way of King County will allow Community Lunch to hire a volunteer manager to recruit and organize the volunteers, install a new commercial refrigerator, and begin serving dinner three nights per week. Over the course of a year, this will mean 10,000 more meals…

As a 10 year employee of United Way of King County, I’ve been lucky to visit many of the agencies that do incredible work in our community. I’ve had the chance to meet and visit with the people who work very hard every day to help as many people as they can. When I think about the food banks I’ve visited, I recall lines of grateful people, thoughtful volunteers bustling about and stacks and stacks of food.

It takes a lot of work to run…

One of my favorite aspects of Hunger Action Week is learning about some of the incredible people and projects in our community. A great example of this is the Clean Greens Farm and Market. KOMO’s Conor Christofferson filed an excellent report on the agency and the people that make it possible here. Thanks Conor and thank you KOMO for sharing these great stories!

Day three of Hunger Action week, and KOMO News has posted their third profile of a Hunger Action Week grantee project. Today, KOMO’s Rose Egge reports on the Issaquah Meals Program.   I think its fair to say that while all of us at United Way were very excited to have KOMO help us spread the word about Hunger Action Week, their outstanding coverage has been more than we could have hoped for.  Read todays story, about the  tiny kitchen run completely by volunteers serves over 10,000 meals per year to the people…