$70,000 more to help families in crisis – thank you Paul G. Allen Family Foundation!

This Puyallup Herald article features Helping Hand House and our partnership with the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Enjoy! (or read it here)

Puyallup-area homeless advocates get $70,000

Paul Allen Foundation grant should help about 125 families this year
Neil Pierson/of The Herald
Published: February 3rd, 2010 06:00 AM

A four-month-long waiting game concluded happily for Puyallup’s Helping Hand House on Jan. 26 when it received a $70,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Helping Hand House, which has been assisting homeless families throughout East Pierce County for the past 25 years, was one of 66 non-profit groups in the Pacific Northwest to receive an Allen Foundation grant. The foundation, started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister, Jo Lynn Allen, is donating $4.6 million this year, much of it to groups that assist low-income individuals and families.

Helping Hand House Executive Director Nola Renz said last week that the grant should help about 125 area families during the next year.
“The money will be used in our homeless prevention programs to assist more families who are at risk of eviction or utility shut off,” Renz said.

Receiving a grant from the Allen Foundation is a tough task, Renz explained, because only certain organizations are invited to apply. Helping Hand House applied for its grant last fall after meeting and talking with foundation officials.

Philanthropic efforts have been a part of the Allen Foundation’s mission for 20 years, said Bill Vesneski, the group’s evaluation, planning and research director. Helping Hand House stood out as a worthwhile cause because it’s widely known for excellent service, he said.

“They’ve had a very strong commitment as to measuring and monitoring their impact,” Vesneski said.

The money is especially welcome to Helping Hand House at a time when rising unemployment rates are putting more families at risk of living on the streets. The non-profit agency, which has helped more than 4,600 families in Puyallup, Sumner, South Hill and surrounding areas in the past 25 years, isn’t coming close to meeting demands. Two months ago, the group told Puyallup City Council members it had turned away more than 1,600 families during a six-month span of 2009.

“It has been an enormous challenge to continue to serve more families,” Renz said. “There’s limited resources so we’re always turning families away. That’s the discouraging part.”

The Allen Foundation focuses on a number of opportunities in its gifts, including community arts and music programs, youth education classes and job skill development courses.

The foundation has shifted its priorities to focus on victims of the national recession, Visneski said, and more groups like Helping Hand House are on the slate for grants in 2011.

“The goal is to kind of get the money into emergency relief, to get the money where it’s needed,” Visneski said. “We wanted to make sure we were doing work in Pierce County.”

Helping Hand House prides itself on being a lasting solution to homelessness because families who seek transitional housing opportunities learn to be financially sound and gain employment skills. The organization estimated at least three of four families that complete a transitional housing program don’t become homeless again.

“The exciting thing is that when families leave us they have a permanent solution,” Renz said. “They go into a situation where they have a home and a living-wage job.”