One Year at Skid Row Housing Trust

365 days. 586 individual donors. $737,980 raised. 737 people impacted. Lifetime Impact of 10,706.

 Without a shadow of a doubt, the work I am doing at Skid Row Housing Trust is some of the most challenging I have ever done in my life. The last 365 days has tested me in unimaginable ways. Establishing myself in a new city, attempting to build an individual donor system from scratch, raising money toward ambitious goals, and keeping our residents at the forefront of my mind, have all provided lessons that I will take with me wherever I go. Beyond the numbers and the day-to-day tasks, Skid Row Housing Trust has provided ample leadership lessons; lessons that shaped and will shape me for some time to come. If you will indulge me, I would like to share a few of those now.

Be Prepared for the Unexpected

When I joined the Trust, I joined three other fundraising professionals with the ambition of adding a volunteer coordinator that I would supervise. After spending six years as an office of one at Kent Youth and Family Services, I relished the opportunity to be a part of a team. I envisioned working on events together, joint asks and building a department with people committed to the same ideas. Then, out of nowhere, two of my fellow employees moved onto other positions at different nonprofits and another went on leave. All of sudden, our team of five was a team of two and some mighty expectations fell in my lap. While I haven’t done a perfect job, I am proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish with such limited resources. I have learned a lot about emergency planning and my own bandwidth. I have also shifted my expectations for work and where I find fulfillment. I am grateful for these lessons and will hold them forever.

Use Your Voice

When you reach a director/managerial role, there is a shift in the way people see you. I was hired for my fundraising expertise and an ability to create philanthropic systems. I am by no means the world’s greatest fundraiser, but I understand this work. For my first few months at the Trust, I was too bashful about defending my decisions and using my knowledge to back up what I believe to be true. Some of that was being new and some of that was a desire to find my place. In the chaos of the last six months, I have grown more confident and willing to use my voice. I have also learned to lean on those who don’t often speak up in meetings. Over and over again, I find unmatched wisdom in those who observe.

Be Patient/Be Persistent

“Rome wasn’t built in a day” is a tired cliché, but it holds true. Building an individual giving system for the Trust from the ground up has required patience for myself and my colleagues. There have been days filled with roadblocks and setbacks. There are days that have disappointed because things aren’t moving as fast as they should. In the past 12 months, I have learned a great deal about being patient and persistent at the same time. The idea of eliminating homelessness in Los Angeles County is too important to allow defeat and temporary failures to get in the way.

On the bad days, I try to continually remind myself of these things. They keep me motivated and pushing forward. I won’t make a career out of this work; my heart lies elsewhere, but I see a tremendous opportunity to leave a small legacy here at Skid Row Housing Trust. Something I can be proud of for years to come.

Be good to each other,

-Nathan

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An Annual Letter to the Graduates of Seattle U (2018)

Spend any amount of time around the campus of Seattle University and the idea of using your degree to make the world a more socially just place becomes engrained within you and any plans you might have for yourself rather quickly. This is Jesuit magic. They have built a university where you are expected to leave a more compassionate and caring human being. You may not share the same faith as those who lead the university, but you will leave understanding our common humanity.

This common humanity has been on my mind a lot lately. Recently, I moved away from Seattle (for a couple of years) to Los Angeles. I left behind a role as the Director of Fund Development and Community Relations at Kent Youth and Family Services to take on the role as Director of Philanthropy for Skid Row Housing Trust. Every day of the work week, I take a bus through the heart of Skid Row, walk down its streets, and interact with human beings forgotten by our common humanity.

For those unfamiliar with Skid Row, it encompasses 4.3 square miles of downtown Los Angeles and is home to 5,000 or so homeless men and women. This population is part of a larger humanitarian crisis across LA where 55,000 men, women, and children are homeless. Skid Row is notorious because in many ways it mimics a refugee camp but differs thanks to the conditions people find themselves. People live in tents, sleep on benches/sidewalks, have little access to facilities, often appear to be suffering from drug addiction, mental health disorders, or co-occurring disorder, and find themselves surrounded by mounds of trash/human waste. To walk through Skid Row is to walk through a neighborhood unrecognizable to most Americans.

While homelessness in Los Angeles is a humanitarian crisis, the crisis is playing out across the country. Seattle has 11,000 people living on its streets. Montana has seen a 33% rise in homelessness. Denver can’t build affordable or permanent supportive housing fast enough. Dallas is building tiny houses for its homeless and New York has a population that rivals LA. No corner of this nation is without a homeless challenge.

The solution to this challenge is multi-faceted. It involves job training, rental stabilization, properly funding support services, building market rate/permanent supportive/transitional/shelter focused housing, admitting we botched the war on drugs and shifting our focus to therapy, ending our lip service to mental health funding and putting our resources to work. These are policy and cultural shifts that must occur. These things take time. On our way to these long-term solutions, we can change ourselves.

Homeless people are people. They are your mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and best friends. They are people forgotten by policy, economics, society, and, as is often the case, themselves. They are our neighbors. All major religions and even those movements without any focus on a supreme being share something in common; love thy neighbor as you love yourself. Homeless people aren’t to be avoided, stepped over, and ignored. They are to be loved and supported. Volunteer, advocate, and fight for them. Fight for them as if you were fighting for yourself. Those things we believe demand we do nothing less.

Which brings me back to Seattle University… Your educational experience should do more than train you for a future position. It should train you to be a better and more compassionate person. For all my challenges with higher education, I most proud for a graduate experience where I walked away with such empowering knowledge. Now, it is time to put that knowledge to work.

Be good to each other,

-Nathan

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