2023 Financials*
REVENUE
Your gifts: 622,269
United Way: 1,666
Grants & contracts: 893,054
Program service fees: 465,081
Investment income: 193,551
Total: l 2,175,621
EXPENSES
Women’s residence & family shelter: 347,849
My Friends’ House: 576,125
Domestic violence response & prevention: 597,865
Sexual assault response & prevention: 326,108
Marketing & development 86,962
Community outreach: 43,481
Administration & support: 195,665
Total: 2,174,056
*Unaudited
Glimpses of Your Impact
Speaker sparked great generosity
You stepped up for crime victims
Communities rally around children
YWCA gratitude awards 2023
Several folks made YWCA especially thankful this year. Here are just a few:
Jill Juers, board vice president, led YWCA advocacy efforts. With the depletion of VOCA (Victims of Crime Act) funding and no idea how well Washington State might fill the gap, she successfully rallied the board and supporters to ask legislators for the resources to help keep communities safe.
Advocate Angela Torres inspired us with her courage in the face of cancer and her passion for helping anyone experiencing abuse. We miss her big heart and dedication to the YWCA mission. (See a tribute to Angela from her coworkers.)
Another huge debt of gratitude goes to Adopt-a-Family supporters for the joy you brought to client families. Meg Cochran and the volunteers she organized were our secret weapons for keeping all the packages straight and making sure they were beautifully wrapped.
And because Jill Zagelow shares her YWCA love with her friends, one of those friends – who happens to work at Umpqua Bank – recommended YWCA Walla Walla for an unrestricted $10,000 grant from his employer!
We are grateful to all who moved the mission forward with gifts, time, and voices lifted to share the word about the YWCA. Thank you!
Message from the Executive Director: Lessons in hope
By Anne-Marie Zell Schwerin
When I was 16 and he was 13, my brother Pete announced that I was the dizziest person in our family.
I protested, but he went on.
“You get happy about the dumbest things. It’s embarrassing, so just don’t get all excited around my friends.”
I told my grouchy brother not to worry – I didn’t want to be anywhere near his friends.
But he did make me think.
Serial optimism isn’t especially helpful, and badly timed positivity can be patronizing and hurtful.
How do we square positivity and optimism with suffering and tears, when the way forward isn’t clear or wonderful?
I’m grateful for the texture and nuance experience brings, because it’s helped me shift my focus to hope. Optimism is seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don’t want to see.
Hope is bigger and requires more courage.
Hope is our job at the YWCA, walking alongside clients carrying loneliness and despair; championing parents working hard for their family’s wellbeing; encouraging girls uncertain about middle school; and listening to kids all summer long.
Your support of this work is like holding a flashlight so someone can take a step and then the next one and the next one.
None of us knows what’s coming next, but together, we trust we’ll get where we need to be.
About four years after calling me “dizzy,” my little brother taught me a big lesson about hope. I was away at college. He was home, a volunteer firefighter and first responder. First on the scene of a horrible car crash, he recognized the victim thrown from the car as one of his classmates.
He didn’t have the training or experience to save her life. But he had the courage to stay with her so she did not die alone. He gave her hope at a time when she needed it most.
It was a huge load for a 17-year-old boy, and secondary trauma wasn’t part of the training then. He took a few weeks off from responding and spent a lot of time outdoors with his Eagle Scout friends. Ultimately, he decided to continue his volunteer service and learn everything he could. He endured. He didn’t give up because it was hard or the path unclear.
Pete retired a few years ago from a 30-year career as a firefighter and paramedic in Florida.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches, “Optimism and hope are not the same. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better.”
— From To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility
2023: Your support made it possible
- 642 domestic violence and 134 sexual assault survivors entered the YWCA doors for support services like safety planning and shelter
- 21 women Living in New Circumstances (LiNC) learned life skills and how to connect to community resources
- 131 adults and 155 children spent 5,726 total bednights in shelter
- 301 girls talked about healthy relationships and gained self-confidence in Mariposa class
- 37 survivors found empathy and solidarity in support groups
- 488 healthy snack breaks delighted the kiddos at My Friends’ House
- 22 shelter residents secured permanent housing through BMAC
- 1,541 calls to the crisis line were answered with information and referrals
- 286 people felt safer after getting help filing protection orders
- 2,532 kids played and made crafts with the Fun Factory
- 30 pursued greater self-knowledge in a series of Enneagram personality classes
- 55 families were “adopted” for the holidays
- 190 survivors had advocates by their side as they navigated the court system
- 49 children grew in their readiness for school and life at My Friends’ House
For photos of the full four-page printed report, click here.