At the Spirit of Caring Celebration on March 8, United Way of King County recognized Weyerhaeuser’s Making WAVES program as the 2011 Outstanding Employee Volunteer Program.

The award recognizes Weyerhaeuser’s strong commitment to volunteerism, and its effort so encourage and reward their employees for making a difference through volunteering.

Weyerhaeuser’s special volunteer program, Making WAVES, supports the charitable work of employees. To participate, employees identify a need in their community and work with a nonprofit or school to develop a project. Weyerhaeuser…

At the Spirit of Caring Celebration on March 8, we honored Dr. Sandra Madrid as Ambassador of the Year for her exceptional dedication as an advocate for United Way of King County.

For the last 15 years Sandra has demonstrated her commitment to United Way’s mission. She has done everything from chairing United Way’s board to leading the Volunteerism Task Force.

She can best be described as “positive energy.”

This past fall, Sandra played a major role in a fundraising event…

We were proud to honor Evelyn Lemoine as our 2011 Volunteer of the Year at our Spirit of Caring Celebration on March 8.

Evelyn has been a dedicated United Way volunteer, donor and advocate for many years.

In 2004 Evelyn stepped up to serve as one of United Way’s inaugural impact council chairs. She led the Children Youth & Families Impact Council and then the Early Learning Impact Council for four years and she remains an active member to this day.…

United Way of King County awarded AT&T the Spirit of Puget Sound Award—our top honor for corporate philanthropy—at the Spirit of Caring Celebration on March 8.

The Spirit of Puget Sound Award honors outstanding community involvement, sustained campaign excellence, and the promotion of volunteerism.

Here are just a few reasons why we presented AT&T with this prestigious honor:

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Help us connect more people to the great volunteer opportunities in the community!

Every day, the United Way website has hundreds of ways to get involved, including:

reading to refugee kids in daycare

stocking up a neighborhood foodbank with local produce

helping an arts group make smarter use of Facebook

cooking the evening meal at women’s homeless shelter

restoring bird habitat along the Duwamish River

There’s a powerful way you can help us spread the word:

Put our Volunteer Search Widget…

These governance and volunteer management trainings are open to all nonprofit organizations and volunteers.
For cost and descriptions of each of our workshops, click on each link below.
Please bookmark our training calendar as we will add future trainings.

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United Way of King County business and community leaders are heading to Olympia today, February 10 to advocate for preservation of funding for critical education, health and human services. View our state legislative priorities. You can help us lobby virtually for United Way priorities by calling or emailing your representatives on Thursday. For info on how to contact your legistlator and a sample message to use, check out this post from yesterday.

You can also register and

I spent Friday at the Tech for Good Leadership Summit presented by the Microsoft Community Affairs team and NPower Seattle. Any kind of conference can be hit-or-miss in terms of value, but I’m happy to say that I walked away with lots of good knowledge that I will actually be able to use.

Here are some of my favorite things from the day:

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While most people are aware that MLK Day is a Federal holiday in the U.S. and have enjoyed a day off from school or work, what many don’t realize is that in 1994 Congress designated the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday as a national day of service. Each January, people across the country “make it a day on, not a day off” by participating in service activities in their communities. Last year in Philadelphia, more than 70,000 volunteers served on…

It’s that time. . . time to start making promises to better ourselves in the coming year. We set lofty goals like “I’m going to get up and go jogging everyday at 5 am, rain or shine” (unlikely) or “I am going to quit consuming all of the things that are potentially harmful to my health” (what is left to eat?). Alas, only about 46% of resolutions make it past the 6 month mark. When resolutions don’t pan out, we feel like…