It takes a Village (i.e. lots of committed and engaged volunteers)…to create community change.  Ever wonder what it takes to engage volunteers?  Seattle Works knows that effective volunteer engagement doesn’t happen without great Volunteer Managers and Leaders.  So they have teamed up with Washington State’s Association of Volunteer Centers to help support VAN (Volunteer Administrator’s Network) – a professional association that provides support, resources, training and mentoring opportunities for Volunteer Managers and Leaders.  That support for VAN comes in the form of an AmeriCorps VISTA…

It’s week four of the 60-day legislative session in the Washington statehouse, which means policy crunch time in Olympia.

Lawmakers are facing deadlines this week to move bills out of policy committees and onto fiscal committees. February 16 is the last day to consider bills in their house of origin before they are sent to the opposite house for review.

Here is a brief summary of some of the bills that United Way of King County supports:

Summary: Creates a public account…

Ballots for the February 9th special election began arriving in our mailboxes last week.  Don’t let the thin-ness of your voter pamphlet fool you…this is a very important election for Seattle!  Just a reminder, we are 100% mail-in, so get your ballots filled out and returned by the 9th!

For more info, call 206-296-VOTE, or visit King County Elections.

“The perennial question in any democracy is always, how is the public interest informed and influenced by the most vulnerable in our society?“–from Democracy Matters by Dr. Cornel West

I chose this title, and that quote, because so many things recently have struck me as relevantly irrelevant.  Go ahead and blame Bush for the war.  Blame Obama for the economy.  Look for the fattest paycheck you can find.  Just go home tonight, and sit around (and fail to see past) your dining room table.  Forget how lucky or blessed…

Get your taxes done for FREE!!

Starting on January 12th, 2010, United Way of King County will operate 17 free tax preparation sites throughout King County.  Tax assistance will be provided by over 550 volunteers who are trained and certified by the IRS.

Who is eligible for this service?

What services are available at tax sites?

The New Solutions Council has been busy look at our measurement tools for both ourselves and the projects that we fund. We are hard at work looking into how we have funded projects in the past and are looking at ways to help assist many agencies in better working together to collaborate on projects for similar goals in the community! Stay tuned for more details about our work!

We are very busy with our Youth and Older Adults funding process! We received a large amount of applications and look forward to reviewing the information about the great work that our local agencies provide to the members of our community. Our focus through the remainder of January will be on this project and look forward to moving our work forward in many other ways aside from our investments in the coming months!

If you’ve been following the twists and turns of the health care debate over the past year, you likely know that the Senate narrowly passed its version of health care reform on Dec 24. Now, the House and Senate must reconcile two considerably different bills. Rather than go through the formal process of a joint conference committee to iron out the differences,  negotiators are expected to rewrite the Senate  legislation, send it to the House for a vote, and then give the Senate final approval. The…

“My initial fears were unfounded.”

I don’t know about everyone else, but I was in desperate need of hearing something good at this point in the holiday season.  I found it in this article.  Take a moment to tell someone near you that you’re glad they’re around.  Don’t get sloppy about it, now.   But just try to remember:  if nothing we do really matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.

On Monday, the Strengthening Our Community Council had a very informative meeting.  In preparation for our upcoming application review and allocation process, we learned about two key subject areas under our council’s umbrella Youth Development and Older Adults.  These are the only two subject areas that we will have Outcomes open for non-profit agencies to apply for funds under in January 2010.  We had two wonderful panels (one for each subject matter) made up of persons who are leaders in these fields in the King County…