Home Alive, a 16-year-old Seattle nonprofit that teaches self-defense workshops, never spent its $90,000 annual budget on extravagances. Notes taped up around the Capitol Hill office warn people that running both the toaster and microwave simultaneously will blow a fuse. Same goes for the space heater. And an old futon couch in one corner has burst, spilling its stuffing.
But in spite of its frugality, Home Alive is at its breaking point. The group is $25,000 in debt, its director announced in the first week of February. So self-defense classes will cease, and employees, some whom havenât been paid in months, will lock the office doors at the end of the month.
âI knew we were a scrappy organization, and I embraced it,â says Cait Alexander, 28, who started as Home Aliveâs interim program director in early January. âBut I was not prepared for the severe financial crises that we were in.
âThere was no planned income, and I knew I wouldnât get paid for the foreseeable future,â Alexander says. So the board of directors, along with staff and instructors, decided to stop operation, at least temporarily. The board will remain intact to try to find a way to resume classes.
Where did things go wrong?
Home Aliveâs ledgers were in shambles, Alexander discovered when she drilled into the organizationâs finances. The group had simply paid bills and accepted money as it came, she says, without accounting whether the expenses balanced with incomeâwhich is no way to keep an organization solvent. She doesnât have access to past financial records to determine if income has dropped or expenses have increased over the years. But the problems have been ongoing; six years ago, Home Alive laid off its entire staff.
Home Alive formed in 1993 as a punk collective after Mia Zapata, lead singer of the Gits, was raped and murderedâin what appeared to be random attackâwhile walking through Capitol Hill on a summer night. Jesus Mezquia, convicted of the crime and sentenced to 37 years in prison, wasnât apprehended for another decade.
âWe were trying to find ways to feel safe. We wanted our friends to be getting home alive,â says Cristien Storm, one of the founders of the group. âNo one was teaching self-defense, so we started our own organization.â
Historically, Seattleâs music community provided much of Home Aliveâs funding. The officeâs walls are papered with posters from past benefit concerts. âIncome like that should be icing on the cake, but instead itâs been the cake for so long,â says Alexander, who adds that the benefit shows started to wane a few years ago. âFor people committed to throwing [benefits] these days, Home Alive may not be on their short list.â Moreover, the withering economy drags on all nonprofitsâ fundraising.
In addition to fundraisers, Home Aliveâs income came from 1,100 people who paid for self-defense and antiviolence workshops last year.
The remainder of the organizationâs income comes from online donations and sales of benefit CDs.
The group pays the salaries of two staffers, office utilities, and $1,500 a month in rent for the officeâbut in the last year, the rent was repeatedly past due and paychecks were often late.
âI knew I wasnât getting my paycheck, but I didnât realize [the group] was $25,000â in debt, says Addie Candib, a Home Alive instructor.
Board member Brett Houghton, who has only been on the board for about a year, says restructuring the organization was the only way to proceed. The board couldnât justify continuing classes if it required them to chronically pay staff and instructors late. Alexander speculates that the group needs $50,000 to resume classes. However, she says, âif someone just handed me $50,000 and said, âPay off your debt and we need you to continue on,â we would still need to stop scheduling new classes and think about restructuring so we donât end up having this conversation again in the future.â
On February 8, about 50 people, mostly womenâincluding retired board members, former staff, and concerned members of the publicâmet in the Home Alive office to discuss the organizationâs future. Suggestions ranged from dissolving the nonprofit completely to operating as a subsidiary of another nonprofit. Three small donation cans were passed around the room. Cash contributions totaled $233.74ânot nearly enough to guarantee the organization will be able to resume its work soon.
âI donât think the need has changed,â says cofounder Storm. She cites the continued demand for self-defense workshops in the wake of recent hate crimes on Capitol Hill and the murder of Shannon Harps on New Yearâs Eve 2007.
However, a sentiment exists among some antiviolence organizations that self-defense classes arenât necessarily the ideal method to reduce violence. âLetâs not focus on what the victim can do; letâs focus on ending the violence and having the perpetrator be more accountable,â says Lee Drechsel, executive director of the Domestic Abuse Womenâs Network in south King County. She notes, however, that âthereâs a need for lots of different kinds of organizations.â
While the groupâs leadership decides how to proceed, Alexander is planning a garage sale in late February. âMost of what you see here is going to be for sale,â she says, sweeping her arm across the office like an episode of The Price Is Right. Even the toaster? âSomeone already said they wanted the toaster.â