What I Learned at the Roots Gala (Besides How to Win Raffles)

...281 days to go...

At Thursday night’s ROOTS Rise Up gala, Jen and I won a $3,000 gift certificate from the event’s outstanding caterer, Gourmondo, in a raffle. I guess good things happen when you show up for a good cause! Supposedly it’s good for a 20-person dinner party (complete with open bar), which does sound pretty fun. But it also would feel really out of touch with what I’m trying to accomplish this year. So I’ve been spending the week thinking about what we might use it for that’d be helpful for the cause (stay tuned!).

But let me back up. As I’ve written before, ROOTS provides shelter and support for up to 45 young adults aged 18-25. Attending its gala, we got to see firsthand examples of the difference ROOTS makes in these young adults’ lives via two speakers: Gino and Gilbert. Both speakers had relatively brief stays at the shelter and used it as a launchpad to secure jobs with upside potential and full-time permanent housing. It certainly feels good as a volunteer and a donor to see outcomes of self-sufficient young people, all brought about with just a little bit of help.

The success stories didn’t surprise me, but I learned one thing that did: it costs $100 for ROOTS to provide one person with a safe bed for the night. That’s $3,000 per month - even with Seattle’s insanely high rents, that’s easily enough for a nice apartment.

If you’ve been inside ROOTS, it’s obvious this isn’t wasteful spending. The shelter operates out of an old and dark former fraternity house with few windows and little natural light. Sometimes it seems as if there is no margin on anything: today at breakfast for instance, we ran out of both sugar and creamer for coffee. While the microwaves appear to have been fixed (or replaced) since my last visit two weeks ago, the coffee urn had broken. The clothing offerings consist of three racks in the basement with a small number of donated items, not well organized by size or style.

The contrast to Mary’s Place (the other shelter I volunteer at), which benefits from Amazon’s corporate generosity in the form of an in-kind gift of several luxurious floors of one of its downtown office buildings, is striking. Mary’s Place has a beautiful kids club with new toys and an XBox with a jumbo television, floor-to-ceiling windows with expansive views of downtown, and a well-organized marketplace almost overflowing with clothing, shoes, and basics like underwear and socks. The contrast shows that shelter is just fundamentally expensive, even without spending much on the physical plant.

Why is that? ROOTS runs lean. Excluding volunteers, there are about 10 staff supporting up to 45 guests - roughly one staff member per 4.5 guests. With overnight workers, case managers, a nurse, directors for development and operations, and an executive director, there’s no obvious place to cut. I don’t know how much staff is paid but I’m confident its not excessive, and even at minimum wage (plus benefits) those salaries alone probably eat up most of that $100. And that’s before the cost of rent, utilities, food and janitorial services. There is no fat to be found here (or even, apparently, sugar).

Beyond its barebones efficiency, there is another way that dollars donated to ROOTS go further. Helping young adults overcome homelessness also means they have more years ahead to build and enjoy stable lives.

I was happy to wake up the morning after the gala to an email informing us that ROOTS raised over $220,000 from the gala! Jen and I donated $5,000 - 50 nights of shelter. To her infinite credit, Jen pushed me over dinner to go higher than that, but I pushed back just a bit. We’ll likely give more before the end of the year, but I’m still trying to better understand the outcomes produced by emergency shelters, particularly those like ROOTS which also provide transitional services like case management, nursing support, and the like. I’d like to understand factors like the percentage of guests who find permanent housing, the percentage who maintain it longer-term, and the average lengths of guests stays. These questions distinguish temporary relief from lasting change - both valuable, but different in ways that matter.

For now, I’m grateful ROOTS gives young adults a place to stabilize and plan their next steps. I’m grateful that we, collectively, were able to meet the fundraising target. And yes, I’m grateful for that raffle win too.