Philanos proudly announces 11 of our affiliates were granted $1K to further their DEI practices.  

Philanthropy Together made 25 grants of $1,000 each to organizations that had participated in PhT’s six-month Racial Equity Community of Practice.  Grants were made to attendees who had developed ideas about programming that would further their group’s DEI journey. The Philanos affiliates that were awarded are:

Explore Philanos DEI resources here!

Spoiler Alert: It was extraordinary, just like all of their programming to date.

Having been one of the original Co-Design team members whose mission was to  bring some infrastructure and support to the entire collective giving sector will, I believe, be one of the crowning achievements of my life.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others, the five of us on that team took a leap of faith in the movement and each other: Felicia Harman of Amplifier, Hali Lee, founder of the Asian Women’s Giving Circle, Sara Lomelin of The Latino Community Foundation, Marsha Morgan, chair of the Community Investment Network, and myself.  We practiced radical transparency and decided early on that we wouldn’t be defined by “turf.”  Many philanthropic women sit at multiple tables. We aren’t in competition; we are in community.

Now called Philanthropy Together, the initiative that we designed with input from more than 100 funders, leaders and members across the movement (men and women), launched on April 1, 2020.  I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that it felt like terrible timing in that moment, and we were all concerned about 18 months of work going up in the flames of a global pandemic. 

We needn’t have worried.  The ED we hired, Sara Lomelin, (yes, an original member of the Co-Design team) and our amazing consultant, Isis Krause, who was Sara’s first hire, have the knowledge and the passion to push through many obstacles. They are also unhampered by an imposing structure, a large board and the expectations of hundreds of funders.  They hit the ground at a gallop and haven’t let up. 

Their first two webinars, attended by hundreds, were all about the Black Lives Matter moment and philanthropy’s response. They featured Executive Directors of frontline organizations, answered crucial questions, and offered important “tips and tricks”. Two personal takeaways:

Following two outstanding webinars, Philanthropy Together found enough interest in these topics to host a six-month long Racial Equity Community of Practice, which was attended by dozens of staff, leaders and members of collective giving groups across the sector, including Susan Benford, Sandy Cook and myself and dozens of leaders of Philanos affiliates.  Marsha Morgan (who many of you will remember from her intro of Ijeoma Oluo at PowerUP!2020) and I recorded sessions for this Community of Practice (COP) and other organizations. A couple of takeaways:

As the final act of the Racial Equity COP, Philanthropy Together announced that they had $25K available to grant to organizations whose leaders had been part of the cohort, and who had ideas about programming that would further their DEI journey.  It was incredibly fulfilling to have 11 of our Philanos affiliates win these $1K awards. Details:

I look forward to hearing stories about the impact of these small but meaningful grants. I also encourage all of you to add Philanthropy Together to your bookmarks, check out their programming and the resources available on their website—you’ll recognize some of Philanos’ best content being promoted to a wider audience. 

And if any of you have questions, suggestions, ideas, you all know how to reach me, pliang@philanos.org

Sharing this exceptional post with valuable resources:

Facing the Challenge of Racial Inequity or Avoiding It,  Jim Taylor, BoardSource blog, October 30, 2020

The Women's Giving Circle of Howard County, Maryland is proud to continue our support for Black Philanthropy Month (BPM) which is observed every August. The primary aims of BPM are informing, involving, inspiring and investing in Black philanthropic leadership to strengthen African-American and African-descent giving in all its forms, for the benefit of our planet, our communities, our organizations and our lives.

"We are excited to continue our support of National Black Philanthropy Month" said Hina Naseem and Judy Smith, co-Chairs of WGC's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. "Informing, involving, inspiring and investing in Black philanthropic leadership are among the goals of this annual celebration and we are committed to advancing this important work in philanthropy, both in our community and across the country."

 Read the full post here!

Shared post from July 9, 2020 
https://www.givingprojectvt.org/new-blog

I had a wonderful, appropriately socially distant, afternoon with the visionary founders of The Giving Project, Leslie Halperin and Laura Latka in mid-June. As a part-time Vermonter myself, I was very excited to hear about their achievement in standing up 10 new Giving Circles around the state during the COVID quarantine, and hoping that the next cohort, which they expect to start in the Fall, will include one in Windham County, because I would absolutely join.

By way of introduction, I am a member and past President of Women’s Giving Alliance in Jacksonville, FL which is where my husband and I spend most of our time. WGA was founded by 5 influential local women in 2001, and it’s 450 members generally grant about $500K per year to organizations that serve women and girls in our five-county region. I am also the Chair of Philanos, a national network of over 70 women’s giving circles, and women’s funds and foundations that practice collective giving, and which have 15,000+ individual members. These groups annually invest over $15Million in their communities.  The network provides individual mentoring for the leaders of these groups, monthly webinars and other tools, and hosts a very popular biennial conference, where the sense of common purpose and Sisterhood is very powerful.

Leslie and Laura asked me to write a guest blog, and I thought what I could offer to those of you who are just starting a Giving Circle or are considering being a part of the next wave are some ideas of things you might want to consider before you make your first round of grants—though Brava to the group in Brattleboro that has already moved funds to local Nonprofits! So, in no particular order: 

1. What Matters Most?  
   Hali Lee, who founded both the Asian Women’s Giving Circle in NYC and the Donors of Color network likes to say that because she isn’t religious, her giving circle is where she goes to talk about values.  Some very well-established groups with hundreds of members are going to be having interesting and perhaps uncomfortable conversations around their shared values in the next few months. You have the opportunity to put what you believe and value right up front, and we are all living in an environment when this has become an expectation. Ideally, this would be the result of a a conversation among the founder(s) and several other committed founding members.

2. What Needs are the Greatest?
   Lots of collective giving groups have done “disaster philanthropy” with some or all of their funds, others have stuck to their grant cycles as laid out before COVID. To be clear, there’s no wrong answer here. There are countless frontline organizations battling both the virus and institutional racism that need immediate funding.  But as Joanne Cohen, of the Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, which hosts WGA, has said, recovering from this set of crises will require that folks invest in the entire non-profit sector; we will need not only disaster relief, but investments in social services, educational institutions and the arts to fully restore our society.

3. How do we respond to #BlackLivesMatter?
   In a state that was, as of 2019 94% Caucasian, it might be difficult to imagine about how to diversify your Giving Circle; but there are other ways to think about this. I listened to a webinar this week where Marcus Littles of Frontline Solutions acknowledged this problem, and basically said, your circle members are who they are, but there are other ways to help: Consider who you hire to advise you, (and please, if you look to NPO CEOs of color to advise you, compensate them), who you order food and other products from for your circle or your events. You can support black business owners, locally and nationally. 
   You can also learn more about anti-racist philanthropy. Reading and resource lists abound on this subject. Feel free to use the Philanos Building Anti-Racist Organizations page. There is also a national organization that that began working to support giving circles and giving circle networks on April 1, 2020, funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation called Philanthropy Together.  They have produced two excellent webinars on the topic already, which you can watch here

4. What stories will you tell about your Circle?  
   Lots of GC leaders like to talk about the “Four Ts: Time, Talent, Treasure and Testimony” as the most significant, and equal, assets they bring to the work. I was fortunate to be in Seattle a few months ago and was invited to the founding meeting of a group called Impact 100 Seattle.  Laura Midgley, a Philanos Board Member, friend, and member of Washington Women’s Foundation in Seattle came along with me, to a wine and cheese reception in a locally owned shop a couple of miles north of what was recently #CHAZ.  She told the founders, women in their 30s, to take lots of photos, and “remember this night, because in 10, 15 years, you’re going to be telling the story of the night you launched.”  The founders were pretty wide-eyed at this.  It was great advice when we could meet in person, but if your launch is going to be virtual, you can also make it memorable.  I have been on Zoom calls with musicians, poets, all kinds of “ice-breakers” and celebrity guests.  Invite your mayor or the wife of one of your (sadly all male) Congressional delegation.
   There will also be non-grantmaking effects of your work, especially as you grow, and you should keep track of those stories as well. How many local Non-profit women are part of your Circles? What non-monetary assistance did you provide to a grantee: volunteers, board members, advice, connection to other resources? Which of your members changed her path to work with Nonprofits? Who founded an organization to fill a gap in services you learned about? These kinds of stories abound within Philanos and the other Giving Circle Networks, and they lend a great deal of credence to the work. 

5. Consider Funding Democracy?
   Philanos held a conference in Seattle in late February, 2020 which was called PowerUP! The Spark that Ignites Change and was DEI-focused. The final plenary speaker, Pia Enfante of the Whitman Institute said something that I will admit has haunted me, especially in light of the rolling state of crisis in which we find ourselves. Her advice: “consider funding Democracy, and if your members think it’s too political, ask them if they want to breathe air and live in a democracy?” Even if you can’t get your nascent group to think about aligning around values in politics, there are non-partisan groups in every State working to register people to vote and turning out the vote that you could support.  

I’m envious that you are all at the beginning of what I am certain will be an incredibly satisfying journey in collective giving, and excited to know that in a few years, probably sooner than you think, Vermont will have a statewide network of smart, connected women who care about their communities and are working to be the change they seek to make in them.  You’ll meet lovely humans, make lifelong friends and learn a lot about your local NPO ecosystem. There will likely be wine involved. This is not a moment, it’s a movement.  Welcome.

-Paula Liang
Chair, Philanos
pliang@philanos.org

Hi - here's an overview of 10 Ways the Women's Giving Circle of Howard County, Maryland is utilizing our strengths to respond to COVID-19

https://www.womensgivingcircle.org/blog/ten-ways-the-womens-giving-circle-of-howard-county-is-utilizing-our-strengths-to-respond-to-covid-19

November 2019
For Immediate Release
Paula Liang, Board Chair, pliang@philanos.org

THE CATALIST NETWORK JOINS WITH THE WING
TO PROMOTE COLLECTIVE GIVING AND GIVING TUESDAY

Catalist, the largest network of women’s collective giving organizations, is joining with local organizations to promote collective giving initiatives across the country in support of Giving Tuesday.  Hosted by The Wing, events will be held at their urban locations on Monday, December 2, or Tuesday, December 3, 2019. 

A complete list of locations, dates and participants is here.    

Catalist has led the content development for the events and will provide discussion leaders and panelists in concert with local giving circles and other women’s organizations. Discussion will affirm a new wave of an old paradigm is remaking philanthropy. Across the United States and spreading abroad, starting at the grassroots level, community-led giving circles are growing rapidly.  The movement is a testament to the power of women banding together with real capital to advance important causes.

 According to Catalist Chair Paula Liang, “Our national board members and local affiliate leaders are honored to partner with The Wing to advance this important dialogue. They will focus discussions on active philanthropy, with the message that women can collectively have a significant impact on their communities.” 

Catalist supports the creation, development, and expansion of women’s collective giving and grantmaking nationwide and globally.  Catalist leads a network of women’s collective giving groups which help women pool their money to make high-impact grants in their local communities. The organization currently has more than 70 affiliates in the US, Australia and the UK, representing over $125 million in giving by more than 17,000 women since 1995.

The Wing is a women-focused, co-working space collective and club with locations in New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. It was founded in 2016 and currently has over 10,000 members. 

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Houston, October 2019

A few weeks ago my friend Stephanie Ellis-Smith, founder of Phila Engaged Giving, and I went to Houston for the Community Investment Network (CIN) conference, which celebrated its 15th anniversary by reflecting on its legacy of building up communities through investing their time, talent, treasure, and testimony (using our collective voice for change). CIN is national network of giving circles impacting communities of color. It connects and strengthens African-Americans and other donors of color by leveraging their collective resources to create the change THEY wish to see. The majority of their members are African-American from the Southeast.

Stephanie had some familiarity with giving circles in general, but was generally new to this organization. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know CIN as a board member of Catalist.

I went to Houston with the specific mission to further Catalist's relationship with CIN.  Five networks in collective giving -- The Latino Community Foundation, Amplifier (giving circles based on Jewish values), the Asian Women’s Giving Circle, Catalist, and CIN – have collaborated on a co-design project aimed at accelerating the size and impact of the giving circle sector on community transformation. (Read about the co-design work funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.) The missions of these five networks of collective giving groups are closely aligned, so rather than compete, we collaborate. We all use conferences to inspire affiliates to dig deeper into this work and to prepare the leaders to go home to their communities feeling elevated. Sometimes this work can be wonky but we came home from Houston reminded it must always be joyful!

Stephanie went to Houston strictly to listen, learn, and observe. Though we both are members of the Washington Women’s Foundation in Seattle, WA, Stephanie didn’t have much first-hand experience with giving circles, but has always been impressed with their personal engagement in their communities and the members’ commitment to learning and each other. Her work as a philanthropic advisor has been limited to high-net-worth individuals and families who are looking to become more strategic and dedicated in their charitable giving. Stephanie says “working with family groups is in some ways similar to a giving circle, but there is something uniquely special about a group of unrelated people voluntarily pooling their money to make investments in their local community.”

We anticipated meeting new colleagues and reconnecting with fellow philanthropists who give through collective giving grantmaking, pooling funds for community impact. But a genuinely worthwhile conference should do more than provide a few new tools and a pile of business cards.  Our goals for traveling to Houston varied, but we both were delighted that our trip to Houston yielded an unexpected joyfulness that rejuvenated us.

What struck us the most was the level of joy and camaraderie we observed, not just within each giving circle, but among them as well. Participants gathered to share stories and best practices and to learn. Their dedication to the work and communing with a cohort of like-minded people produced a powerful aura of goodwill that was hard to ignore.

For me, the joy came from stepping back from the work and taking stock of why and how we show up for the communities to which we belong and care about in the first place. In the opening session, Linetta Gilbert, formerly of the Ford Foundation and a founding visionary of CIN, spoke meaningfully about how to blend institutional philanthropy with individual philanthropy. And of course, this is exactly what collective giving groups do – inform the individual through group experience and then elevate the impact through collective giving. Ms. Gilbert spoke about the value of a listening tour and the power of starting any foray into philanthropy by asking “Who is absent?” How can we as philanthropists elevate community by seeking out the voices of those left out of the traditional philanthropic power dynamic? 

Ms. Gilbert and her co-presenter Darryll Lester, CIN’s founder, said of the partnership between funders and grantees: "Spend time with each other to get to know one another before doing business". Too often institutions begin the relationship with a transaction – the grant or the donation. Starting that way sets the tone for it to become forever framed and dominated by that transaction. At The Ford Foundation and now in her recent work, Ms. Gilbert invests in relationships first. Doing so allows us to understand the landscape behind the issue and to better allocate our resources and energy. It became clear to us that it is only from this level of engagement that we can begin to envision how all American communities can grow and thrive equitably.

For Stephanie, she found a deep sense of joy simply from the conference’s theme: “We are Philanthropists”. “It was empowering for me to be among African-Americans who proudly claim the mantle. While many debate whether the sector is hopelessly corrupt and ineffective, CIN’s giving circles harness all that is right with philanthropy and brings it into the Black community on their own terms.” Circles represented at the conference gave to individuals (from Black men and boys mentorship groups to struggling entrepreneurs or artists) and to traditional organizations. They also came to learn about innovative programs going on nationally that they could bring back to their circles to learn from or adapt for their own community.

The learning components tapped neatly into the spirit of the conference: community-based and Black-centered. Speakers who brought their expertise to CIN included land trust advocates from the South speaking about building land sovereignty for displaced black and indigenous people, representatives from Black community foundations talking about how and where to invest a circle’s funds, and community-owned grocery store investors on how to eliminate food deserts. We left inspired not just by the work, but by the communion of the network.

Collective giving embodies the best tenets of philanthropy. People pooling resources, sharing knowledge, and offering a hand up to those who need it brings out the best in all of us. Stephanie and I wish this blog could share the warmth of the hugs we received or the sounds of laughter we heard during those two days. Such a jolt of energy renewed my spirit and my commitment to helping people find joy in their giving through deep engagement and understanding.

Feel free to contact Stephanie or me about our work. We will explore more of these themes at the Catalist conference PowerUP! The Spark That Ignites Change in Seattle in February 23-25, 2020. As conference co-chair I am delighted we have so many talented speakers lined up, including Stephanie, who will be presenting on women of color philanthropists.

Alabama, July, 2019

This third in-person meeting of the Co-Design team was different, more personal, more emotional than the first two. As a team, we have been grappling, in the aftermath of our field-wide convening in April, with how strong a values statement we wanted to make to undergird the work. The question we were asked a lot in Seattle was: More #GivingCircles in service of what?  It was a great question.

It’s easy to say that hate is not welcome and if you fund terrorists, we won’t provide support. But the real issue is, do we go further and make a strong statement about equity and justice as common values, knowing those words might not be commonly understood among potential founders or funders, and off-putting to some.

Our friend and colleague Marsha Morgan, Chair of Community Investment Network which supports African American giving circles invited us to Birmingham for our Summer meeting so that we could meet with her Pastor, Bishop Van Moody who supported the First Step Act, and has been hosting panel discussions about Race and Reconciliation in their community. Several of us decided to fly down a day early so we could visit Montgomery as well, to see the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Justice and Peace, sometimes referred to as the Lynching Museum, in advance of our meeting.

We visited the Memorial first. The primary structure is an L-shaped pavilion cut into a square of grassy knoll on a hill, a bit reminiscent of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial. It is beautiful and haunting and exquisitely done.  The sculptures outside the pavilion are arresting and heartbreaking. Inside the pavilion, each of the 400 counties in the US in which the Equal Justice Initiative could verify one or more lynchings has an 8-foot Corten steel monument into which the names of the individual, when known, and the date of the lynching are cut. On some, there are just one or two names in large, easily legible letters. On others, there are two columns of tiny names. There is a 45-minute path you walk through this experience, starting with green lawn, some sculptures and explanatory signage. Then you enter the L-shaped pavilion.  At first, the monuments are on the ground and you walk among them, reading names and counties, as if they were people.  But soon you start to walk down hill, and the monuments are suspended, a little bit at first, and progressively higher every few yards. By the time you turn the corner and reach the end of the building, the 400^th monument, you can only see the name of the county on the bottom of the monument, because they are fully hung above you. That’s where I found the monument for Duval County, Florida, my adopted home town.  There were 7 lynchings in Duval from 1909 to 1925. The name of the first and last human beings who were lynched are not known, which is heartbreaking. As Marsha pointed out, it is as if those lives simply didn’t matter. 

The vertical monuments inside the pavilion seem to be arranged in a totally random manner.  Outside, there is another set of identical but horizontal monuments arranged, like coffins, alphabetically by state and county. It had just rained, and they shone as if they were bronze. I was able to find the Duval monument and the other 44 Florida monuments (Florida has 67 counties, so at least 22 have something to be proud of here) and read the names and dates I could not see from below. This set of monuments is available to be claimed by Counties who want to start the process of reconciling their past with their present. I don’t have a ton of hope that my community will take this on, but I do have a Tweetstorm in mind as soon as my desk is clear.

In a very subdued car, we headed next to the Legacy Museum, which is also run by the Equal Justice Initiative, and which traces the slow but inexorable crawl from slavery to mass incarceration. Through photos, statistics, primary source quotes, original signage from buildings, video and other media the interactive exhibits make a full-throated and undeniable case for systemic racism as the backdrop to mass incarceration, the wealth disparity between families of color and white families, and pretty much every other disparity. There are also rows and rows of huge jars of multi-colored dirt, with the names and dates of Alabama’s lynching victims; the product of a project to send students and other volunteers around the state to collect earth from the sites of the documented sites of Alabama lynchings. The walls and walls of these enormous jars make quite a statement.

Some Peach Cheesecake ice cream atop blackberry cobbler at a spot chosen by Marsha along the route to Birmingham picked up our spirits a bit. Liz Fisher, ED of Amplifier, which supports giving circles inspired by Jewish values, opined that this might suffice for dinner, but we all managed to eat later at the hotel.  Also, there may have been wine. 

We gathered the next morning to see what our consultants had come up with since we met last:  a growth model, a financial model and a business model. What we heard was energizing, and gives us a roadmap for the future, pending funding. Our final proposal has been submitted to the Gates Foundation, and we should know within two months whether they will provide the anchor funding for a 5-year campaign to showcase, scale, strengthen and sustain existing groups, and look to grow up to 1500 new ones over 5 years.

The Mission of what I alone call 5YC is to catalyze and connect the giving circle movement and to democratize and diversify philanthropy. The Showcase strategy will include things like a broad awareness campaign (imagine, if you will, never having to explain to anyone, ever again, what your organization does!), as well as special targeting to underserved populations; retirement communities, perhaps, or communities of color, and a HUGE marketing push.

The Scale effort will likely include online toolkits as well as incubators that work across many models as well as consulting with philanthropic partners and corporations to build giving circle networks within their organizations and supporting new networks for affinities not currently networked (i.e., LGBTQ).

The Strengthen initiative will involve an annual field-wide convening and other network-weaving activities. There is also an opportunity to use research and reporting to aggregate the work of the entire field

Sustain efforts will involve communities of practice, donor education, webinars, micro-grants for Networks in formation and back end technology infrastructure for networks who would like that assistance. 

The Co-Design team has decided to stay attached to the project through the end of Calendar 2019 to continue to fundraise and hire the ED, should we be fortunate enough to raise sufficient funds. 

And one final note: This isn’t the only values statement we landed on, but perhaps the one we will plant our flag on, and one I am particularly proud to have been a part of crafting:

 We believe in a philanthropic landscape in which ALL donors can participate in a way that fits their ambition, values, and personality. We are committed to building philanthropic infrastructure that supports collective givers, especially those traditionally underrepresented in philanthropy so that more resources are leveraged for communities, issues, and to reduce disparities. Communities are their own best experts and so we listen deeply, respect different opinions, and value all voices.

Seattle, Washington
by Kit Bakke, Washington Women's Foundation member and author

Seattle Bytes

We invite you take a few minutes (or even an extra day or two) to acquaint yourself with this part of our country. February is actually a good time to be here because tourists are at a minimum, so you can rub shoulders with the locals. We know Seattle’s not on most travelers’ radar, so here are a few bits and bytes that might help bring our city in clearer focus:

Weather

Back in the 1950s a well-known local newspaper columnist led a movement he called “Lesser Seattle” that tried to discourage people from coming here. Talking up the incessant rain was one of his major tactics. But in fact, Seattle has less rainfall, about 37 inches/year, than 13 major U.S. cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Houston and New Orleans. The problem, though, is that our rain comes down slow and steady—we average 225 cloudy days/year. Even though we’re 2 degrees latitude north of Maine, we don’t get much snow either—but when it comes, we panic (why? See below).

Geography

We’re a city of many steep hills. It’s those hills that close down the schools and keep us home from work with only an inch or so of snow. Their verticality also accounts for the electric motor assists on most of our bike-share equipment.

Further afield, we are accustomed to seeing snowy mountains ringing our horizon—we have the Olympics (which are not volcanic) to our west and the Cascades (still active volcanos) to our east. Topping the volcanos is Mt. Rainier, the third highest mountain in the U.S. after Denali and Mt. Whitney. The first American to summit Mt. Everest was a local Seattle man, Jim Whittaker. He and his team trained on Mt. Rainier for their 1963 Himalayan success.

Besides volcanos, our corner of the country is also known for earthquakes. Along with the rest of the west coast, we are part of the “ring of fire” that circles the Pacific Ocean. Young and active geological forces remind us that the earth is still changing beneath our feet.

We also have an abundance of water. Seattle is said to have the largest number of boats per capita. The boundary between the salt water (Puget Sound) and fresh water (Lake Washington) is maintained by a set of locks, which are the busiest locks in the U.S. and second in size only to the Panama Canal locks.

Lake Washington is a 20 mile long and very deep (over 200 feet) glacially-formed lake running along the eastern border of the city. On it float three multi-lane concrete bridges which serve thousands of commuters daily to and from Seattle’s eastside suburbs.

Why floating bridges? First envisioned by an engineer in the 1930s, the idea solved two problems: the lake bed is too soft and the lake too deep to build the piers to support a conventional bridge, and the span from land to land would require the towers for a suspension bridge to be over 600 feet tall. We also have a floating bridge over a salt water inlet, even trickier to build as it must account for tidal flow. These four bridges are the four longest floating bridges in the world.

History

Seattle is the only large city in the country named after a Native American chief. Local tribes lived here for centuries, raising their families and eating well off the abundant food found in the water and the forests. The first outsiders arrived in 1851 by boat to the shores of what is now the West Seattle neighborhood. Their intention was to stay, build a sawmill, raise their families and build a town, which they did.

Like many cities, Seattle had its “Great Fire.” In 1889, started by an overturned glue pot, it burned 29 square blocks and many of the city’s wharves. No one was killed, but it’s said that a million rats died. Rebuilt mostly in brick above the ruins, you can see the remains of the old city one story down on the “Underground Tour” in Pioneer Square.  

Seattle grew into a rough-and-tumble port city, full of gambling saloons and, during Prohibition, major smuggling operations. The term “skid row” originated here as the city’s most disreputable elements congregated in Pioneer Square where the logs were skidded down from the forests to waiting ships in the harbor.

Seattle has a strong labor history with many strikes, including a general strike. Socialists were elected to city and county offices. In 1936 one federal official described the U.S. as having “47 states and the Soviet of Washington.” Seattle was an early adopter in the growing number of U.S. cities that guarantee its citizens a $15/hour wage.

Washington men voted to give women the right to vote in 1910, a decade before the idea became national law. In 1926 Seattle became the first major city in the U.S. to elect a woman mayor. Bertha Knight Landes cracked down on gambling, bootlegging and police corruption perhaps a little too heavily, and she was not elected to a second term.

Bainbridge Island, a lovely 25-minute ferry ride from downtown Seattle across Puget Sound, was the home of the first Japanese-American families to be taken from their homes and interned during World War II. The federal government was worried about resistance to the idea of internment so they decided to try it out first in our far west and out-of-the-way part of the country. If you go to Bainbridge Island, you will find a historical park dedicated to telling.

The World’s Fair hosted in Seattle in 1962 is the first such event to have posted a profit. Many of the buildings from the fair are still in use and form the core of the popular Seattle Center.

Seattle is one of two U.S. cities holding the title of a UNESCO City of Literature. Maybe because of all those cloudy days?

People

            Seattle and our region is or has been the home of a dozens of people whose artistic talents have been appreciated nationally and globally. Here are just a few: musicians Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Curt Cobain, Mark O’Connor and Macklemore; artists Jacob Lawrence and Dale Chihuly; and writers August Wilson, Theodore Roethke, Timothy Egan, Jonathan Raban, Elizabeth George, David Guterson, Tom Robbins, Deb Caletti, Nancy Pearl, Frank Herbert,  Dan Savage, Neal Stephenson, and Garth Stein.

We can’t close without naming many of the businesses that were born here and that have transformed our region. The technology bent of many of them owes a nod to Bill Boeing, who, from 1916 onward, drew flocks of engineers and innovators to his Boeing Airplane Company. Other familiar corporate faces headquartered in greater Seattle are Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Weyerhaeuser, Paccar, Alaska Airlines and Expedia. Seattle is also home to the largest private philanthropic foundation in the world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.