Summer 2019
Cheers to 30 Years!

Join us on Friday, October 4th at MOHAI for our 10th Annual Beer & Wine Tasting! Bid on unique auction items, enjoy delicious food offerings, and taste wine and beer from local breweries and wineries, all while supporting our vision of safe homes and communities for everyone! Click the link below to be added to our event mailing list.

Donor & Volunteer Appreciation 2019
Join us at Elsom Cellars for a night of donor and volunteer appreciation on Wednesday, July 24th from 4:30-7:30pm! We want to thank the backbone of our organization - the dedicated volunteers and the generous donors that help us transform the lives of low-income neighbors by supporting RTS and improving the safety and health of their homes and revitalizing our communities. 

Join us for our next Open Volunteer Day!
Don't miss your chance to join us on our next Open Volunteer Day project! Spend your Saturday helping a neighbor in need and help us complete some health and safety focused home repairs. The project will be taking place some time in August - more details to come! Email Program Manager, Scott Sharba with any questions. See you there!
Letter from the Executive Director
Hello [Re]Builders,

This issue of our newsletter is chalk full of updates and announcements, including new pilot programs , special program events , and upcoming celebrations – truly something for everyone! It is that time of year again, however, when we say goodbye to our AmeriCorps Members before welcoming a new term at the end of August. So I want to take a moment and focus on recognizing and thanking our incredible AmeriCorps Program Coordinator this year, Kelly Choi, and amazing, first-ever Outreach Coordinator, Doreen Thode.

If you had a chance to work with either of these wonderful members of our team over the last year, you will know exactly why we will miss them so much. After having already served for a year with the nonprofit City Year, Kelly came to us with a background in education and youth development that allowed her to practice the type of support skills that quickly earned her the trust of every homeowner she worked with. Her empathy and advocacy on behalf of our neighbors exemplify the culture we have built at Rebuilding Together. In addition to her regular responsibilities of coordinating and organizing projects, Kelly’s personal interest in data science and analysis led her to take a large role in managing the migration of our program data to a Salesforce platform that we built and use for free with the help of volunteers, as well as to continue to develop the platform by building out a volunteer management portion and incorporating some of our assessment tools into the platform. Her work helped us get selected for an impact measurement study funded by our National office and has allowed us to pursue more robust grant-writing as part of our fundraising strategy. Kelly will be continuing some computer programming classes as she looks for entry positions to the field of data science.

Doreen had no less a remarkable term of service. Moving from Connecticut and her work in early childhood education, Doreen quickly adjusted to her new home and new role leading our outreach efforts. Connecting with neighbors in need has become harder in recent years as low-income homeowners are displaced in our region, but Doreen tackled the challenges with professionalism and poise. Doreen started the year being thrown right into the middle of a unique project with the biomedical company UCB, whose project with us last fall incorporated planning an outreach event to educate people about osteoporosis and its risk factors as well as working with a neighborhood group on some community garden space. Doreen pulled these parts of the project off with great results, all while organizing an Outreach Committee and making the rounds to dozens of outreach fairs and events. When National Rebuilding Month rolled around, Doreen shifted gears to support our project groups, a role she was already comfortable with, having helped organize and continue our bi-monthly open volunteer projects. Doreen is looking at a variety of opportunities, including some HR positions that could combine some of the interests and skills she’s developed in serving with us this year.

On behalf of our board and staff, as well as all of you who worked with Doreen and Kelly, I want to wish them the very best in their next adventures! One thing you can count on, is that they’ll be back involved as volunteers and supporters. In fact, with their last day last Friday, they were already back at it the next morning, volunteering on our project with Perkins Coie . If you would like to keep in touch with either of them, or pass on any message, we would be happy to connect you.

Like so many of you, they set an example of service and commitment that has left us humbled and grateful. And though we lament their departure, the tradition of selfless service they carried on is one we are excited to see our new members pick up. We look forward to sharing about our new members in the September issue of our newsletter.

Until then, and in the meantime, we hope to see many of you at our Donor and Volunteer Appreciation event later this month!

Wishing you a restful summer and productive second half of the year,

Best,
Caleb
17 Homes, 650 Volunteers,
1 Successful #RebuildingMonth!
On Saturday, April 27th, Rebuilding Together Seattle celebrated the end of an incredibly successful National Rebuilding Month. Nearly 650 volunteers worked to transform the homes and lives of 16 seniors, families, veterans, and persons with disabilities from Everett to Renton; ramps and handrails were built, old allergen-trapping carpet was removed and new flooring installed, bathroom and kitchen were made functional, drafty and unlockable doors and windows were replaced, heat was restored, fire hazards were caught, interiors and yards were cleared, whole homes were painted, and so much more!
This year, we decided to kick things up a notch by joining the National Rebuilding Month movement, shining light on the need for safe, healthy, and affordable housing in our community and mobilizing volunteers to make it a reality for all of our neighbors.

Rebuilding Together Seattle is grateful for the support of the 16 sponsors and the countless businesses and individuals who helped make our first ever National Rebuilding Month possible!
Thank you to our #RebuildingMonth sponsors!
10th Annual Beer & Wine Tasting to Kick-Off 30 Years!
Save the date for our 10 th Annual Beer & Wine Tasting, taking place Friday, October 4 th at the beautiful Museum of History and Industry. But while familiar favorites like the venue and auctioneer Ian Lindsay are back, this year will be a special milestone as we kick-off our 30 th Anniversary year!   

With support from the Junior League of Seattle, the Seattle Chapter of Christmas in April – now Rebuilding Together Seattle – was incorporated back in 1989, though it wasn’t until April of 1990 that we held our first Spring Rebuilding Day event. In recognition of our founding and start to our programs occurring in separate years, this year’s Beer & Wine Tasting will kick-off our 30 th Anniversary year celebrations that will take place throughout 2020!

We hope you can join us for this special event. Whether you are new to RTS or have been with us for most of the past 30 years, we want all of you to turn out in show of your support – let’s fill out the place with a crowd of over 300 for our 30 th ! We’ll have some special features to share coming up soon, and keep on the lookout for our throwback pricing on early bird tickets. 

Besides attending, you can support in a number of ways. Sponsors help us offset the cost of the event and leverage donations for the huge amount of program and operational support we raise at the event. We will have room for some new sponsorship tiers this year, so contact Caleb Marshall at cmarshall@rtseattle.org if your company is interested in learning more. Likewise, if you would be willing to help organize a table or half table for the event, please contact Hannah Colston at hcolston@rtseattle.org . And if you know past supporters and volunteers who have been out of touch for some time, please invite them or send us their contact information. 
Last, we are always looking for new and unique auction items to add to the event. If you have ideas or leads, please contact Hannah . Or, consider joining our planning committee to help put together the other fun elements of this milestone celebration of our organization and supporters like you. We’ll see you in October!
RTS Launches Fall Prevention Pilot Program with
Seattle Fire Department
Many of you know about our now 5-year running partnership with the King County Emergency Medical Services’ One-Step Ahead Fall Prevention program, installing grab bars for homeowners at high-risk of falls.  At our Breakfast this year, we awarded volunteer installer Mike Rodgers with our Neighbor-to-Neighbor [Re]Builder award for his incredible work since 2015 completing 235 of the 432 projects (54%!) we’ve done in partnership with the County. The program has seen tremendous success, with 98% of people receiving the grab bars reporting 6 months after the installation that they had not fallen since.

Well, thanks to the success of the program, and the advocacy of Alan Abe, Program Manager with King County EMS, we’re proud to announce that the Northwest Regional Trauma Care Council recently awarded RTS grant funding to replicate and launch a fall prevention pilot in Seattle (Seattle is currently not covered in the One-Step Ahead program, due to separate levy funding for the City and County). The pilot program will be conducted in partnership with the Seattle Fire Department, but fall under our Safe at Home program branding.

We are excited to build this relationship with SFD, who is in the process now of training their medics and firefighters to consider fall prevention and other potential home modification needs when responding to 911 calls. We hope that referrals from SFD will both lead to a reduction in 911 calls from households that frequently rely on emergency services, as well as, of course, improve health outcomes, particularly focusing on older adults.
As part of the pilot, RTS staff and AmeriCorps Members will be trained in conducting fall risk evaluations, which will include both environmental and physical/behavioral assessments in order to offer comprehensive recommendations and additional referral services to homeowners. The grant will also cover grab bar installations for qualified households, and we anticipate turning a portion of the referrals into larger repair projects, as we do now with our County referrals. We expect to reach 30-35 additional households this year through the pilot.

We want to again thank Alan Abe for his leadership in making this pilot possible. Alan recently retired after 23 years in his County role, running everything from fall prevention, to CPR training, and car seat safety. He will be sorely missed, but his amazing team, including long-time supporter and member of our Assumption Parish contingent, Jean Corr, will continue our partnership with the County. And Alan himself has agreed to volunteer with us in retirement. His first project will be getting our pilot program with SFD underway!

Announcing our
Building a Healthy Neighborhood
 Fall Program Event
We are excited to announce that Rebuilding Together’s national program event, Building a Healthy Neighborhood is coming to Seattle this fall! The event models one of our new strategies in concentrating resources in specific neighborhoods for magnified impact and community-level benefit by working on multiple homes at once and joining in on other community-oriented projects that can improve the health and safety of neighborhoods. 
RTS was selected by our National office to be this year’s affiliate partner in putting on Building a Healthy Neighborhood . As part of the collaboration, local and National partners, headlined by Lowe’s, will be making an investment of more than $100,000 and working on at least 5 homes and a community space as part of the event, which will take place (at least on) Thursday and Friday, October 24 th and 25 th . 

RTS anticipates selecting the Central District as our area of focus for the projects, with a special interest in preserving African American homeownership and supporting small women and minority-owned businesses. African American homeownership in Seattle fell from 40% to 20% from 2000 to 2013 and is now below 20% citywide. In the Central area, African American homeownership rates are well below 10%, as property taxes have risen by more than 56% since 2013, forcing many low-income homeowners to leave their neighborhoods. While we can’t reverse the displacement that has already occurred, there are still long-time residents who we can help make it easier for them to stay in the community they know and love.

As we put together the event, RTS would like to invite companies, groups, or potential project managers interested in participating in or supporting the event to learn more by contacting Caleb Marshall at cmarshall@rtseattl.org or calling our office at 206-682-1231. Stay tuned as we feature our homeowners and community projects in upcoming newsletters leading up to Building a Healthy Neighborhood !

Reflecting On A Year (or 2) of Service
by Kelly Choi & Doreen Thode