Queen Anne Helpline Programs
Financial Assistance
We provide financial assistance to help with rent payments, utility bills, and medical costs. Our goal is to help keep people in their homes so they have a stable foundation during times of crisis or hardship. We work closely with other social service agencies to ensure our services are aligned and that collectively we are able to meet clients' needs. We always meet individually with each client to better understand their unique situation, make relevant referrals, and together determine
how best to address both short term and long term needs.
Continuing Education Fund
Our Continuing Education fund provides financial support for adults in post-secondary education or job training programs. Our goal is to help people become self-sufficient, and we believe that education is key. Our flexibility allows us to address each individual's needs, and may include: assisting a single parent with child care costs, paying for books, or purchasing a required uniform.
Thanksgiving for Seniors
Each November we enlist the help of our community in collecting Thanksgiving groceries, which we then package and deliver to 50-60 low-income seniors living in our community. Many of these seniors are isolated without family or other support systems, and would otherwise not have the opportunity to participate in a Thanksgiving Day meal.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
Recently a young man stopped by to thank us. A couple of years ago he was in nursing school but struggling to pay his bills, despite working part time. He came to us in a desperate attempt to find a way to avoid dropping out of school. After meeting and discussing his situation we determined we could help offset some of his school expenses through our Continuing Education fund, ensuring he could complete his program. Today he is employed as a surgical nurse and saving to buy his own home. As he explained, without our help he likely would have dropped out of school and would not be in the fortunate position he is in now ; working at a job he loves, earning a good salary, and saving money.
As a non-profit we recognize the critical importance of data and evaluation both to recognize our successes, but also, and perhaps most importantly, to understand where our programs are not working so we can learn and improve. For thirty years the Queen Anne Helpline relied on manual systems for client intakes, donor tracking, and communications. We are in the process of professionalizing and upgrading all internal office systems to enable us to work more efficiently, collect and analyze data and our impact, provide more accountability to our supporters, and ultimately best meet the needs of the population we are serving. We are in need of expertise and technology solutions, both hardware and software, to help us achieve this goal.