We are a community in action, with each of us doing our small part to heal a broken world.
Everyday, Real Change has a big impact on people’s lives and on our city.
We are a community in action, with each of us doing our small part to heal a broken world.
With your help, Real Change serves about 800 vendors every year. Each of them has a story. Lisa Sawyer, who can be found working downtown at Fourth and Union, is just one.
Lisa grew up in Seattle and graduated high school in 2006. When her apartment building caught fire in 2013, she and her boyfriend moved into a hotel. Their savings lasted just one month.
When one life crisis comes after another, it can feel almost impossible to get back up. Homeless and living at Tent City 3, Lisa panhandled for money to survive.
When Lisa heard about Real Change, she was eager to try. “I was getting older and didn’t like begging and holding up a sign.”
Since she became a vendor, Lisa’s been elected vendor representative by her peers, completed a training for emerging advocates and held a paid advocacy internship. She’s testified in front of lawmakers and helped organize lobbying in Olympia.
Now, Lisa has reason to smile. She’s moved from despair to hope and has a larger sense of her own possibility. “It feels good to achieve something on my own,” she says.
While Lisa’s efforts are her own, it takes a community to make a person whole. Each of our supporters is part of her success.
This May, Real Change has the ambitious goal of raising $195,000 to support our work of healing lives and building for change.
We made a very strong start during the Seattle Foundation’s GiveBIG day of giving. In just 24 hours, 431 people contributed $75,813. With our match from Wyncote Foundation NW, donors have already contributed $125,813.
Please help Real Change reach the rest of our goal by June 2.
This year, we’ve launched a new strategic plan to build on our strengths and help more people than ever. Here’s what your continued support will help Real Change become over the next three years.
Readership is growing and engaged
Real Change’s quality journalism just might be the best-kept secret in Seattle. Despite winning 16 first-place regional journalism awards last year and getting a record 26 Washington Press Association awards, including the 2015 Sweepstakes Award for racking up the most amount of wins at a banquet held May 9, we are still known by many as “the homeless newspaper.” Far too many potential readers have no idea what they’re missing.
This, too, is a huge barrier to vendor success. Real Change plans to increase our readership by at least 2,000 people a week by 2017.
This year, Real Change hired our first communications staff member and launched a new mobile-friendly website that has full integration with popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
The new Real Change app, available for Android and iPhone, accepts cashless payment for a digital edition of Real Change that you can browse in your favorite e-reader. If we reach our goal, one in five Real Change newspapers will be purchased digitally by 2017.
We’ll offer deeper content on our website, push our stories out through social media and attract new readers with teaser articles to make people want more.
We are a model organization working at the intersection of race and class
People of color are three to four times more likely to experience homelessness or incarceration than whites. Real Change expanded our mission this year to include a commitment to racial equity.
We’re increasing the diversity within our staff, board and volunteers, putting issues of race and class at the center of our advocacy and expanding our cross-class organizing model to include race.
By 2017, we’ll expand our class-awareness workshops to reflect this broader commitment and be a model organization working at the intersection of race and class.
Our vendors are recognized as social justice leaders, and a vibrant activist community is standing with them.Real Change is at our best when our vendors are heard. The vendor-led Real Change Organizing Committee is building institutional power from the bottom up among those who have the least.
When our OutsideIN Campaign demand to “make 1,000 safer by 2015” made it to the top of the city agenda and led to long overdue new options for emergency shelter, vendors learned that when we all work together, we can win.
Vendor activism succeeds because a whole community stands behind them. By 2017, we will enroll at least 2,250 readers as “Change Agents.” These are people who have pledged to take action on priority issues identified by Real Change and our allies.
With your support, we are building institutional power every day alongside those who have the least.
We have diverse leadership and are investing in our future.
No one knows what the future holds, but we want to be sure we’re ready.
We’re building leadership across the organization, so that many voices contribute to our success.
We’re putting money in reserve, so we can weather temporary setbacks and avoid crisis.
We’re investing in our board and building the deep bench of expertise and support we need to take this essential community institution into a powerful future.
We’re building the street paper movement of tomorrow
After 21 years, Real Change is North America’s leading street newspaper.
June 22-26, Real Change will host the Global Summit of the International Network of Street Papers (insp). More than 120 delegates from 25 countries will come to Seattle University for four days of networking, workshops, keynotes by various thought leaders and evening events.
This will be the first time the international conference of street papers is held in the United States.
Many events will be open to the public. Look for more information on our website and in the paper as the date approaches.
We’d love to see you there.
Last year, an amazing community of 1,817 donors provided more than half of our annual budget. Your support is an essential part of Real Change’s success.
Please help us reach our $195,000 spring goal with your gift today. Your support changes lives, builds for power and creates a future when opportunity is equally available to all.
Mail your tax-deductible gift to 219 First Ave. S., Ste. 220, Seattle, WA 98104, or make a secure online donation at
main.realchangenews.org. Thank you for doing your part.