Campaign coordinators are the lifeblood of United Way of King County’s fundraising efforts. They often coordinate workplace giving campaigns on top of their regular jobs. At this year’s Spirit of Caring Celebration, we saluted three of our top coordinators.

Ben Farrow

From the get-go, Ben Farrow ensured that Puget Sound Energy was well-positioned for a successful campaign season. He secured top-level management support and developed a keenly strategic campaign plan. At this year’s campaign kickoff, he and the team organized two lunch-hour volunteer activities to engage…

Every year at our Spirit of Caring Celebration, United Way of King County recognizes an Outstanding Employee Volunteer Program at a local company. For 2009-2010, that company is Deloitte.

Volunteering is an integral component of Deloitte’s corporate culture. The company has a deep commitment to skills-based volunteering, pro bono services, capacity-building philanthropy, nonprofit board service and thought leadership.

Deloitte’s employee volunteer program is at the heart of its community involvement initiative. It includes a cutting-edge, $50 million pro bono program, board service, a year-round volunteer project…

At the 2010 Spirit of Caring Celebration, we honored Microsoft with the Innovative Fundraising Award for breaking new ground and exploring creative ways to motivate employees to give to its workplace giving campaign.

The Microsoft Auction Tool
Microsoft IT built an online auction tool to help raise funds for United Way among employees. Over time, the capabilities of the tool have increased dramatically, in part because the tool has migrated to Windows Azure, the company’s new cloud services platform. Using Azure has enabled dramatic enhancements of…

We recently honored the best in giving and volunteering with our annual Spirit of Caring Awards. Sandy Gregory, Lucy Pruzan and Elaine Sells all were award winners, and we are proud to tell you more about them!

Elaine Sells: Volunteer of the Year

When it comes to stepping up and giving back to the community, Elaine Sells leads the way. Elaine has volunteered with United Way of King County’s Impact Council since 2004. She’s been instrumental in helping guide the direction of our work to end homelessness…

United Way of King County awarded the prestigious Spirit of Caring Awards on March 3 in front of a crowded ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. Honorees included individuals and corporations who represented the best in giving and volunteering.

Costco Wholesale received the Spirit of Puget Sound Award, recognized as King County’s highest achievement in corporate philanthropy. The award honors outstanding community involvement, sustained campaign excellence, and the promotion of volunteerism.

For the 2009-2010 campaign season, the…

United Way of King County’s Spirit of Caring Celebration is a special evening dedicated to recognizing and thanking the extraordinary people in our community who are stepping up, standing out and giving back—including you!

Please join us March 3 at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue for drinks, hors d’oeuvres and raucous rounds of applause for the winners of the Spirit of Caring Awards, United Way’s highest form of community recognition.

Notable nominees:

United Way of King County’s free Lunch & Learn series connects you with experts on the issues you care about most. Bring your lunch and join us for these fun and engaging one-hour information sessions on a variety of topics.

All sessions will be held at United Way of King County’s downtown Seattle building located at 720 Second Avenue between Cherry and Columbia Streets. Click here for a location map.

The New Solutions Council met last month and had a very informative and interactive meeting.  Our council volunteers led portions of the meeting and had great ideas about how we can move forward and ways to measure that we as a group are achieving our goals and how we can best convene groups to discuss various topics out in the community!  We are about to start the process of checking in with some of our small grants funded projects to see how their programs are…

As I’ve previously mentioned, United Way of King County cares a lot about hunger in our community. We regularly fund over a dozen food banks in our area. And as a response to the economic recession, we have give nearly $3 million to 40+ different food programs in the last year.

One of the programs we funded was featured on the KOMO clip above: The Delridge Healthy Corner Store Initiative. This program tackles the problem of food deserts — areas where cheap, nutritious food is not…

One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is this one:

“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

In honor of Dr. King, United Way of King County is hosting a Tweetup to volunteer at Food Lifeline in Shoreline on Monday, January 18 from 1:00 p.m. – 4:00…