Housing Solutions For Hope 2020 Update

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Update 5.1.20. Due to Covid-19, we will be rescheduling or delaying our events for 2020 including the golf tournament and auction. You can still help families in need at Seattle Children’s, by donating online today. Be safe and Healthy.

Welcome to 2020 – This is going to be a very exciting year for the Housing Solutions for Hope Guild! 2019 was an incredible year for our guild – with your support we raised over $186,000 in donations and pledges. Together we have directly prevented many patient families at Seattle Children’s from becoming homeless and have helped families return from homelessness.

In January, our executive team held our annual kick-off and planning event. We agreed on moving forward in 2020 with two significant fund raising events. Our executive team is focused on ensuring sustainable growth of our guild in the coming year. We are working on improvements to our key processes, adding new roles and better defining responsibilities of the guild leaders and volunteers.

Just one year ago, the vision for the guild started to materialize. A small group of family and friends came together with a common purpose in mind – to someday ensure that every patient family at Seattle Children’s has a safe, clean and stable home while caring for their critically ill child. We believe that whole family healing and improved patient outcomes are necessary beyond the four walls of the hospital. Together, we will achieve the mission of Seattle Children’s to provide hope, care and cures to help every child live the healthiest and most fulfilling life possible – having a home is essential to fulfilling that mission.

We started the guild in January 2019, from a place of discovery and innovation as best stated by Seattle Children’s executive director, Aileen Kelly who said, “In the spirit of See what’s Possible and Create It, and through Innovation and Collaboration, I’d love to figure out how we can do this!”

Through your individual dedication and hard work and the amazing support of many Seattle Children’s executives and my colleagues, I am proud to say that the Housing Solutions for Hope Guild is the first of its kind. We are dedicated to building housing solutions and have already directly helped many families avoid being homeless by paying their rent for up to three months. On average it only takes about $3,500 to help create a financial bridge for families to stay in their home. With the money raised in 2019, we can directly impact the lives of over 50 families, preventing them from becoming homeless!

So what inspires our name – Housing Solutions for Hope (HS4H) ?
The guild founders were drawn to the message of providing “hope” for families in need. A child may be the one who is sick but the whole family needs healing as they struggle to provide care and maintain their home – a home can provide the hope and healing for all. Having the word “solutions” in our name was intentional and very important. Solutions allow us to provide flexibility to meet the needs of families as we develop future housing and lodging solutions ranging from paying rent, sending a family home for a visit or even building a multi-family home just as examples.

Coming together as a team to create this remarkable Guild that we call “Housing Solutions for Hope” has been an awesome journey. I am extremely grateful as the Guild President to have the opportunity to lead the development of our guild and can’t thank you each enough for your passion, ideas, encouragement and support.

2019 in Review – How we started raising money?
Our launch event was a social media campaign. February 2019 was an amazing month, with our Share the Love campaign which created broad initial awareness and raised over $12,000 along with gaining 19 guild members – needless to say we have achieved much in a very short time to arrive at this place.

I’m so proud of our work together and know that this in only the beginning!

Expanding our reach!
I’m excited to let you know that HS4H has also shared our story with a group of Eastern Washington guilds benefitting Seattle Children’s – I’m pleased to have had two opportunities to present the Housing Solutions for Hope story last March 2019. There are seven guilds in Eastern Washington that I and Lauri met with – they were all very excited about our guild’s mission and interested in exploring opportunities for how we can come together to help patient families from becoming homeless.

Appreciation.
We held our Thank you event in May 2019 to promote additional interest in learning more about Housing Solutions for Hope and to express our sincere gratitude for members and donors. It has been quite a rapid journey in a short time since our launch in January 2019 and we wanted to celebrate with everyone who had helped, encouraged and supported the guild.
By the end of May, with your support and participation, together we built this fabulous guild from the ground up in just a few months. To date, we have raised more the $24,000 to help patient families stay in their homes.

Bringing it all together.
Our first annual dinner and live auction was Saturday, November 9th – we are very excited by the overwhelming support for our cause. Our event with 200 seats was sold out 30 days in advance and we have had remarkable support from donors and volunteers who have provided both financial and in-kind donations not to mention hundreds of hours volunteering. The event “Home for Healing” proved that our community support will launch us towards helping many more families have a home.

Planning and next steps.
As we have concluded our first year together as a guild, it was important to me to give you all a summary of our progress and say how much I appreciate you and your efforts helping us launch the Housing Solutions for Hope Guild. As a leadership team we are prepared for continued rapid and sustainable growth. We will need to continue organizing ourselves with even more specific roles and responsibilities defined and filled by our members. With your participation and passion we will achieve our long term goals.

Coming soon – there’s more!
In February 2020, we are launching our 2nd annual social media campaign – Share the Love Again. We will be reaching out to professional colleagues, friends and families to ensure that our mission and vision to support patient families in greatest need at Seattle Children’s is shared broadly across our community. We intend to continue to grow our fundraising and in 2020 have set an audacious goal of raising $500,000 for Seattle Children’s.

Lastly, here’s a sneak peek at our next event, the Housing Solutions for Hope Guild first annual charity golf tournament is scheduled at the Sand Point Country Club. This will be an exciting fundraiser with many new corporate and event sponsors present.

Sincerely,
Scott Bingham – President and Founder of Housing Solutions for Hope