Surviving the Coming Tough Times

I am writing this note to my friends and colleagues in the nonprofit and academic community inspired by Paul Maritz who wrote a note to the entrepreneurial community. 

I moved to Seattle in 1998 and during the Gujarat Earthquake I experienced the outpouring of generosity from our community. The same is happening today as we in the Seattle area and the rest of the world are coping with the COVID 19 outbreak. 

We are in for some hard times and all of us will have to come together to ensure that when this crisis passes, we will still have depended on the organizations and institutions to maintain the vibrant community we have.

First some good news. There are many teams working on a vaccine for Covid19, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have stepped up its work and are supporting testing and medical institutions in the discovery of a much-needed vaccine. My colleagues at the University of Washington are also doing the same and the hope is that a year from now, we should have something that will bring this scourge to an end. The world will recover, and life will go on.

However, we must invest in our community and provide the much-needed resources now.  For my nonprofit colleagues many of you have had to cancel your yearly fundraising events but take heart from what Upaya Social Ventures (https://www.upayasv.org/) was able to do with its online fundraiser. The community stepped up and raised more funds then Upaya had set out to do.  Bellevue Life Spring had planned its luncheon for March 17 and they too have created an online fundraising effort and are on track to meet or exceed their goal of $450K (https://www.bellevuelifespring.org). Given the school closures it is even more important to serve our kids with meals and other necessities. Reach out to them for guidance.  More will be asked of you and your teams at this time to provide the needed services for our community and we all thank you for that. 

The homeless are particularly vulnerable we will need to support organizations like Chief Seattle Club which provides homeless services and cannot afford to close. And according to Colleen Echohawk their CEO our work is more precious, more important, and more vital than ever. You can donate towards this effort at their website. Please include "COVID-19" in the notes section. There are many such organizations find them and support them.

The Seattle Foundation has launched its COVID-19 Response Fund and through this Fund, they will rapidly deploy resources to community-based organizations at the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak in the Puget Sound region. Local corporations, foundations and members of our community have stepped up to support this effort and they have already raised close to 10 million towards this cause, but we know more will be needed. The COVID-19 Response Fund is dedicated to increasing resilience among the region’s most vulnerable communities. The first phase of rapid-response grants will address:

• The economic impact of reduced and lost work due to the COVID-19 outbreak
• Immediate financial needs caused by closures and cancellations
• Increased demand for medical information and support
• Fear and confusion about the outbreak

One-time operating grants will fund organizations that have deep roots in community and strong experience working with residents without health insurance and/or access to sick days, people with limited English language proficiency, healthcare and gig economy workers, and communities of color, among others. The Fund expects to move an initial round of grants within the next few weeks. Learn more about the Fund here.

Our local businesses are also getting hit hard especially the restaurant business as so many of us are now working from home. One friend suggested that if we cannot go out and eat buy gift certificates that we can use later, as this will give them some much needed cash. Amazon, Microsoft and other organizations are all stepping up, but we too can do our part.

I am very proud of my colleagues at the University of Washington and other Universities that have had to pivot to online instruction. We are learning to use tools and continue to give instruction at the same time. We are slowly becoming experts at Zooming or Teaming to teach but we require help from my techie friends and colleagues, so we become even more proficient at the use of these technologies. Please reach out to us and share your expertise with us and help us set up our systems so we can be as effective as possible in delivering the same quality of education to your daughters and sons who are our students.  

To all my friends and colleagues around the world; there are many local efforts similar to what is happening in Seattle find them and support them, all us will have to do more and come together as we practice social distancing. Let’s do so in a way that can ensure we continue to invest in the key community infrastructure that makes them livable, safe and equitable. Oh and one last thing donate blood if you can our blood supplies are critically low go to https://www.bloodworksnw.org/.

Reach out to me if you need help.

Thanks

Akhtar