About 25 employees at Seattle Bank's lower Queen Anne branch at 190 Queen Anne Ave. N., are volunteering to paint rooms, prepare lunches and offer budgeting and savings classes for residents of the Sacred Heart Shelter just a few blocks away.
The bank's work marks one of a number of volunteering efforts taking place that day, part of the statewide United Way Day of Caring. The shelter, at 232 Warren Ave N., provides temporary housing for homeless families and single women as well as services to enable residents to achieve secure housing. The bank will volunteer from 9-2:30 p.m., Sept. 11. The day is coincidentally the National Day of Service and Remembrance.
"Every year the bank participates in the Day of Caring," said Sean Simmons, a Seattle Bank employee who is organizing the event. "It's a fun way to get employees out of the office for the day and do some good in the community; with the shelter being three blocks away from the branch we thought it would be good this year to support an organization that's in our backyard."
Throughout the year Seattle Bank provides volunteer opportunities to its 150 employees. The branch has participated in the Day of Caring since 1991, but was usually paired with nonprofits associated with Parks and Recreation or the King County Boys and Girls Club, said Mary Grace Roske, director of marketing and community relations. "But this year, when we started planning for it, I thought it made more sense for us to focus on an organization in our neighborhood."
Sacred Heart also sees the event as a window to forging a deeper relationship between the two organizations.
"It's beneficial because we've participated in the Day of Caring in the past, but this will be one of the first times we'll have a neighborhood organization doing it," said Danielle Green, resource volunteer coordinator at Sacred Heart. "Having this event will help people know about the shelter, bring more exposure and we're hoping that people who come to the event will want to volunteer more."
Simmons also sees the event as a chance to extend its roots further than just the one Day of Caring.
"It could be a number of things, as simple as a volunteer or two every month," Simmons said. "It could be being their bank of choice when they want to learn some financial literacy and then it could be on a level of funding."
"There's a myriad of volunteer activities we could do. At this point it would be very wide open because we really haven't been involved with them in the past," he added.
Following the events at Sacred Heart, Seattle Bank volunteers can join other Day of Caring volunteers for The Day of Caring after party from 3-6 p.m., in the West Club Room at Qwest Field. Last year, more than 8,000 volunteers from more than 100 companies participated in the United Way event.
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