GiveBig2020

1 R Special Advertising Section | SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 2020 3 The value of nonprofit services Emily Hie, 28, is a teacher at a Title I school in a rural community about 25 miles from Bellingham,Whatcom County. The commu- nity is a low-income area designated as a food desert. The classroom gives Hie a unique vantage to witness the vast impact nonprofits make on her students, connecting themwith basic resources they need such as food and housing. “Brains are absolutely not set up to learn and retain information without having those basic needs met, and the impact of meeting those needs is palpa- ble in the classroom,” she said. Asked howmany nonprofits make a difference in her community, she said she stopped counting at 20. “It’s astounding to think about the value of the nonprofit services that people in my county benefit from on a daily basis,” she said.“I couldn’t even begin to estimate the actual dollar amount that is invested into my community by these organizations.” Common Threads, the Bellingham Opportunity Council, United Way, Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association, Allied Arts and Wildbird Charity are just a few of the nonprofits Hie named that make a dif- ference in the lives of her students and the community. “What I love about Whatcom County is that it has always felt to me like a community that is dynamic, connected and engaged,” she says. “There is always an initiative or event that people are showing up for to help fundraise, or in some other way invest in, the people who live here, and the work done by our local nonprofits definitely propels that energy.” Nearing a tipping point Kathleen Cromp has a unique perspec- tive on the intersection of nonprofits and her community. Cromp, 67, is the integration manager at the Opportunity Center at North Seattle College, which she called a “one-stop center” that deliv- ers an array of services on the campus. As integration manager, she sees her role as an“orchestra conductor”who manages collaboration among the various agencies. She uses specialized organizational skills she honed in a career that has taken her from clinical nursing to roles in group health systems and as executive director of theWallingford Commu- nity Senior Center before she reached North Seattle College. In a given year, Cromp said, 28,000 unique individual lives receive some sort of services at the Opportunity Center. The issues addressed range from hunger and homelessness to domestic violence. While Cromp knows that correlation does not equal causality, she finds it difficult not to notice the common thread of mental illness among much of the marginalized popula- tion, which is why terms such as “childhood trauma” and“de-escalation” are everyday vocabulary in the Opportunity Center work- place. Today, Cromp said she sees the community on the verge of a tipping point, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s an interesting moment in time for the nonprofit sector. Until COVID-19, we were in a relatively good economy, and demand for services has been way down,” she said. Since the coronavirus crisis has sent unem- ployment climbing into the double digits in the United States, she’s bracing for “the fallout” — a dramatic surge in the need for help. “We often think of nonprofits as serving just the people on the margins, but look how many people two-and-a-half months ago were sitting pretty, and howmuch things have fallen apart since then,” she said. ‘Jump in and serve’ Andy Cheung embodies the maxim“think globally, act locally.” He is a 45-year-old senior software engineer at Microsoft in Redmond, managing a team that designs software to automate resource management in data centers around the world. In 2015, he got involved in a five-month consulting project aimed at helping nonprofits to make better IT decisions. He was matched with the nonprofit Washington Poison Center (WAPC). “It turned out to be a great match for me and my project partner asWAPC was trying to scale up their call center so that they could handle increas- ing call volume, but they needed help to understand how they could improve their IT infrastructure and processes to support the growth,” he said. After the consult- ing project, he joined the program again and began mentoring other participants. “The mentor role broadened my under- standing of the IT challenges nonprofits were experiencing, especially the smaller ones with only a handful of staff,”Cheung said. Today, he spends much of his free time serv- ing theWAPC, and he serves on the center’s board. He’s also about to get married in June. In 2018, the poison center handled over 113,000 calls from households, hospitals and health care professionals. More than 66% of household callers would have rushed to the ER or called 911 if they hadn’t received help from a certified specialist in poison information stationed in the call center 24/7. Last year’s measles outbreak brought a record number of calls to the center. Cheung said his work with the poison center has given him a new understanding and appreciation for volunteers in all walks of life. “Jump in and serve the cause that resonates with you. There is almost always a nonprofit out there that needs your skills,” he said. “However small the help you think you can offer, the benefits received by the nonprofits will usually be a lot bigger than you anticipate. “You never know where your involvement leads you to.” Unique perspectives on the intersection of nonprofits and the communities they serve Meet Emily Hie, Kathleen Cromp and Andy Cheung — three differ- ent people from different backgrounds, with different lives, different journeys, all cut from different cloths. They’ve never met each other, but they have much in common: They all have unique perspectives and vantage points from which to witness the difference nonprof- its make in their community, and they all know the satisfaction and broadened understanding that comes from volunteer work. Emily Hie Andy Cheung • • As COVID-19 dem- onstrates, none of us know when we or our children could be dramati- cally impacted by health problems. Families who are caring for adults or children with disabilities rely on pro- grams like Easterseals to help them assess therapies and find caregivers, and to better understand their loved ones’ condition and potential. Organizations like Open Doors for Multi- cultural Families demon- strate the need for “cultural brokering” in order for services to be culturally and linguistically accessible. • • Youth-serving organiza- tions are helping families navigate daily struggles as schools and in-person services are closed. As The vignettes you will find here and on pages 18–20 of the Giving Guide provide a look into the many ways that nonprofits benefit our communities, espe- cially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The examples used here are organizations that are represented on the GiveBIG Advisory Council or are GiveBIG partners. See GiveBIG , page G18 A young person at Open Doors for Multicultural Families’ Inclusion Celebra- tion has a design painted on her arm by a volunteer.