The first Saturday morning in May I had the privilege of leading a service project for my Seattle NAPO chapter. NAPO is the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals of which there are 4,000 members worldwide. We have a Greater Seattle chapter that meets monthly on the first Tuesday evening in Bellevue. This Seattle chapter has 35 plus members and I am currently serving on the board as Treasurer.
Service to others is an important personal value of mine; volunteering in some capacity for organizations I participate in is a pretty easy segue. Our chapter decided to support a non-profit this year and put a call out for applicants. I participated in the site visits of the two non-profits that were the finalists and with that visual assessment piece; we decided to support Gay City Health Project.
Gay City is Seattle’s LGBTQ center that promotes wellness for the LGBTQ communities by providing health services, resources, an art venue, and a sense of membership. I led a team of 6 organizers for 5 hours overhauling a storeroom that had become extremely cluttered. It was a physical project with many thousands of pounds of papers hauled out for shredding or recycling. A large SUV was filled with garbage items that were taken to the transfer station. We brought in stronger shelving units to make better use of vertical space and saw the flimsy wood shelving that we moved out to the street with “free” signs quickly walk away. We zoned the areas of the storage room, used every storage container we had available, and labeled everything. Event t-shirts and swag were divided by sizes and folded. It was an amazing transformation of a space. Unfortunately as the storeroom was in a basement and the lighting was not great, I don’t have high enough quality before and after photos to share.
Thank you Gay City for the opportunity to serve. Deputy Director Susan and Marketing Director Robert worked tirelessly with us. We had a blast. If you know of a non-profit or even an individual in need that could benefit from some volunteer organizing support in 2017, please email me at denise@simplifyexperts.com.
Pictured above, the group of organizers who helped to transform the storage room for Gay City.
-Denise Allan