Today is the day for GiveBIG, the annual online fundraiser for Seattle-area nonprofits. The GiveBIG website explains:
Each donation up to $5,000 per donor, per organization, made to the 1,600 nonprofit organizations profiled on The Seattle Foundation's website between midnight and midnight Pacific Time on Tuesday, May 6, 2014, will receive a prorated portion of The Seattle Foundation's matching funds, or "stretch pool." The amount of the "stretch" depends on how much is raised in total donations on GiveBIG day. As long as you have access to the web and a credit card, you can participate!
- Coprid/Shutterstock
GILLIAN ANDERSON
Pasado's Safe Haven provides refuge and rehabilitation for abused and neglected animals.
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest allows access to low-cost reproductive health care for women and teens.
The Pollinator Pathway helps our friends the bees, especially in this urban environment, by constructing a line of pollinator-friendly gardens.
Pat Graney Company does great work with incarcerated women through dance and creativity.
BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
YouthCare: providing everything from socks, counseling, emergency shelter, housing, and education to Seattle's homeless youth
DESC: helping Seattle's most vulnerable, chronically homeless men and women who are living with mental illness, addictive disorders, and physical disabilities by providing temporary shelter along with assistance with permanent housing
Northwest Harvest: feeding the hungry people in Washington state
Green Plate Special: helping low-income, ethnically diverse Seattle middle-school students learn to grow and cook (and eat!) healthy food
PAUL CONSTANT
The good folks at Books to Prisoners could always use your support.
Copper Canyon Press is arguably the best poetry publisher in the US.
If you want to help get books into the hands of kids, you should support First Book.
Hugo House is a great resource for Seattle's literary community.
The Washington Talking Book & Braille Library is a tremendous resource.
JEN GRAVES
Plenty are worthy, and I’d highlight many of the same orgs as my fellow writers, but I’m going to avoid repeats. So…
Arts Corps: Because grade-school art education in this city is pathetic, even more so if you don’t live among the wealthy, and Arts Corps is the largest force around working against that reality.
Country Doctor: Because nobody is turned away because they can’t afford it. Nobody.
FEEST: Because artists are bringing kids who need free lunches together to cook after school.
HistoryLink: Because this is where the Northwest past lives now. It’s its own entire library.
Jubilee Women’s Center: Because women who need a safe place find a great one here.
Path With Art: Because adults dealing with homelessness, addiction, and trauma need to make art, too.
Seattle Central Community College: Because the state’s turning it into a charity case, and meanwhile it’s the only radical element left in public academia around here.
Seattle Young People’s Project: Because youth are great at organizing themselves to end racism, sexism, homophobia, and general bullshit in their schools and broader environment.
Social Justice Fund Northwest: Because they give money to every good social justice org in the city.
Town Hall: Because they’re doing cool new things with local artists in residence, in addition to bringing smart people and programs to the city constantly.
Youth in Focus: Because this is where kids on the edge may find their only empowerment, through photography.
DANIELLE HENDERSON
Big Brothers Big Sisters: Both the Puget Sound one and Southwest Washington. I volunteered for this organization for years, and the work they do to inspire confidence and make kids feel less alone in the world is remarkable.
Reel Grrls: Reel Grrls helps girls break into a field where they are criminally underutilized by helping them develop editing and film-making skills. Everything they do is awesome.
Teen Tix: One way to get kids into art is to make it affordable, and at $5 a ticket members get to see a ton of art. When you support Teen Tix you’re giving kids a chance to develop their art and community building muscles at the same time.
The Bailey-Boushay House: People living with HIV/AIDS still need your help and support. The Bailey-Boushay House is an invaluable service for some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and the work they do is so stellar it often goes unnoticed, but they still need your help.
ANSEL HERZ
Social Justice Fund Northwest: Fantastic group that supports tiny grassroots activist organizations around the Northwest together represent social movements - which are the only things that create in radical, lasting social change. Former mayor Mike McGinn just joined the board.
Seattle Young People's Project
Refugee Women's Alliance
InvestigateWest: InvestigateWest does one thing and one thing really well: local investigative journalism in the public interest, with an emphasis on the environment. No clickbait, no celebrity news, no bullshit. Just things we really need to know that we otherwise wouldn't. Support it.
Got Green
BRENDAN KILEY
Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, because they’re working hard for women in prison, sending high-quality professors in to teach classes, and have recently negotiated with education institutions to get those classes accredited, so when the prisoners are released, they’re already on a trajectory to further education. But more than that, FEPPS gives them a place to explore ideas and relationships beyond the daily, survivalist grind of prison life. And that’s important for them, their families, and the rest of us.
On the Boards, because they’re consistently fucking great and have been cracking open this city’s notion of what performance can and should be for many, many years. They’ve improved the quality of conversation in this city.
TeenTix, because they’ve successfully struggled to make themselves the crucial, youth-driven conduit connecting the newest generation of art-watchers with the established generation of art-makers, which invigorates and broadens the bandwidth of both sides of that equation.
YouthCare and Teen Feed, because they take care of young people who are right on the precipice and living in situations that will probably shape the rest of their lives and the lives of everyone they’ll come into contact with for decades to come.
ANNA MINARD
Three organizations doing powerful work around domestic violence, both serving survivors and working on prevention:
New Beginnings
Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Domestic Abuse Women’s Network
Southeast Seattle organizers Got Green, who work at the intersection of environmentalism and race and social justice.
Seattle JazzED, which brings music education from some of Seattle’s greats to kids who might not otherwise be able to access it.
The Tenants Union of Washington State, which has helped out me and practically everyone I know during shitty housing/landlord situations.
DAVID SCHMADER
Bailey Boushay, which provides housing and hospice care for people with HIV/AIDS; Sound Mental Health, which aims to serve the hardest-to-serve mentally ill clients; New Beginnings, offering comprehensive help for survivors of domestic violence;
Childhaven, a sanctuary for babies, toddlers, and young kids threated by abuse and neglect;
Northwest Harvest, which keeps food banks filled across the Puget Sound area; and
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, because they do brave and important work in the face of never-ending slander. Beyond that are all the artsy groups I know and love, like On the Boards, SIFF, Tasveer, TeenTix, the Vera Project, Northwest Film Forum, and and and...
DAVE SEGAL
Hollow Earth Radio
Earshot Jazz Society
Seattle Rock Orchestra
KBCS
