Every family Mary's Place serves is supported by a community of partners. Thank you to the donors, volunteers, businesses, foundations, and public agencies who help make sure no child sleeps outside. Today, more partners are leading the way to a new kind of partnership: bringing their expertise, assets, and networks alongside their generosity.
Mary's Place recently welcomed business, philanthropic, and community leaders in for Leveraging the Power of Your Community, a Community Solutions pre-learning session. The afternoon explored what becomes possible when partners bring their distinctive strengths to the work.
Mary's Place CEO Dominique Alex moderated a conversation with four partners from Amazon, the Schultz Family Foundation, McKinsey & Company, and Dick's Drive-In. Each has helped turn an idea into lasting support for families in our community.
A crisis no one can solve alone
Every day, our emergency family shelter intake line receives 40 to 50 calls from parents searching for a safe place for their children to sleep.
Family homelessness has many drivers at once: high housing costs, gaps in income, domestic violence, health needs, and limited access to childcare and transportation.
"Family homelessness is a complex, systemic crisis, and no single organization or sector can solve it alone," Dominique shared as she opened the session.
Mary's Place responds through a three-pronged approach: Emergency Family Shelter, Mobile Outreach for families living outside, and Homelessness Prevention, which helps families stay in their homes. In 2025, that work helped 1,426 families move into or keep stable housing.
Every part of that work depends on partners. The most effective partnerships start with a clear need and a shared goal, then ask what each partner can uniquely bring.
More than funding or volunteer time
A gift or a volunteer day makes a real difference. But partners often have much more to offer: legal expertise, real estate knowledge, forecasting, design, construction, trusted customer relationships, and the ability to bring others to the table.
When those strengths meet community needs and nonprofit experience, the result can be solutions that are innovative, scalable, and built to last.
Amazon: from a project to a relationship
Yousri Omar, director and associate general counsel at Amazon and co-chair of the Mary's Place Board of Directors, has helped lead Amazon's volunteer and philanthropic work with Mary's Place.
The partnership started with a community need and an available asset. In 2015, as Seattle and King County declared a state of emergency on homelessness, Amazon owned several hotels in South Lake Union awaiting redevelopment. Together, Amazon and Mary's Place turned one of those properties into a private-room family shelter. In 2017, the two organizations did it again with a former motel.
Both projects were new territory. Mary's Place brought deep knowledge of what families needed. Amazon brought real estate, infrastructure, employees, and a willingness to try something unconventional to address a critical need. That success built trust, and the project became a relationship.
In 2020, Mary's Place at The Regrade opened inside an Amazon building on its downtown campus as a permanent family shelter. Today, the site of this session provides a home for now for approximately 225 family members.
Amazon's contribution has grown with the need. It now spans real estate and facilities expertise, philanthropy, employee volunteering and donation drives, and professional services. Amazon attorneys built an ongoing pro bono legal clinic to help guests with civil legal challenges, with additional immigration support developed through the partnership. Amazon's Housing Equity Fund also supported our new campus in Burien, extending the partnership into the next generation of shelter and affordable housing.
Schultz Family Foundation: funding ideas early
Marie Groark leads grantmaking at the Schultz Family Foundation, a longtime champion for children and families.
The Foundation's belief in innovation helped Mary's Place pilot new approaches, including Diversion, which helps families find safe alternatives to entering shelter. Together with United Way of King County, the Foundation also helped launch Family Resource Exchange events.
Marie shared that what made the partnership unique was Mary's Place's willingness to pilot programs and create learning that could be shared and used nationally. Early philanthropic investment gives new ideas room to be tested, and the learning and data that follow can build confidence for broader public investment in King County and beyond.
McKinsey & Company: turning data into better decisions for families
How many families will need shelter, and when?
The team at McKinsey & Company brought their analytical expertise to help Mary's Place answer this critical question. Working alongside Mary's Place leadership, the team developed a forecasting model to better anticipate demand for emergency family shelter and support more proactive, data-informed planning.
The partnership brought together two complementary strengths: Mary's Place's deep understanding of the families it serves and the realities of operating emergency shelter, and McKinsey's experience translating complex data into actionable insights. Together, the teams worked to create a practical tool tailored to the organization's needs, balancing analytical rigor with simplicity and ease of use.
Beyond the model itself, the collaboration reflects the value of bringing private-sector capabilities to complex social challenges. By strengthening Mary's Place's ability to anticipate future needs, the partnership aims to help the organization plan resources more effectively and make informed decisions in an environment where every available shelter space matters.
Dick's Drive-In: a local brand that shows up for families
Jasmine Donovan is president and CEO of Dick's Drive-In and granddaughter of founder Dick Spady. She served on the Mary's Place Board of Directors for several years, chairing its finance committee.
For more than 10 years, the Spady family has championed Mary's Place and the work to end family homelessness. Through Change for Charity, Dick's made it simple for customers to support families. The partnership also helped catalyze the annual No Child Sleeps Outside campaign, which has grown from $100,000 to $5 million. Today, No Child Sleeps Outside is more than a campaign. It is our mission.
What a transformative partnership looks like
Each partnership looked different. But the pattern was the same:
· Start with the community need
· Respect nonprofit expertise and the lived experience of families
· Identify the capability only your organization can bring
· Build the relationship for learning as well as impact
The lesson: start with the problem, not a predetermined form of giving. Ask what the community needs, what the nonprofit knows, and what the company can uniquely bring. After more than a decade, trust and adaptability keep the partnership growing.
Alyson Moon, Mary's Place Community Impact Director, closed with an invitation for everyone in the room: move beyond asking "What can we give?" and ask "What can we help make possible together?"
Solving family homelessness takes all of us
Thank you to Yousri, Marie, Michael, and Jasmine for sharing their experiences, and to every partner who brings their full strengths to this work.
Because the goal isn't simply to support a program.
It's to build a community where every family has a safe, stable home, and no child ever has to sleep outside.