Draft for review. Already known, no need to report: the logo isn't in yet and nothing on this site can take payment. Worth reporting: anything that looks broken or cut off, and anything that makes this feel less than trustworthy.
Snohomish County, Washington
We invest in roots — capacity, dignity — until life's hard moments don't block people from helping.
In practice that means supply drives and benefit events, run by volunteers, with every cost written down where anyone can check it.
One thing is open for funding at a time. Everything finished keeps its page, with what was bought and what it cost.
Ninety-six identical bags of cold-weather and foot-care supplies for people living outside in Everett, bought in bulk cases and funded one item at a time. Four times the size of the first run.
The first drive. Twenty-four backpacks, forty-five items in each, handed out in a church parking lot in November. Everything was ordered inside a week.
A silent auction at a local brewery, raising money for Domestic Violence Services of Snohomish County. A benefit event rather than a supply drive — same idea about getting a town involved in itself.
The whole method is that nothing is vague. If you can't check it, we haven't finished writing it down.
We find the supplier, check the goods are actually in stock and purchasable, and publish the case size, the unit price and the link. The arithmetic sits on the page so you can redo it.
Supplies are bought as whole cases, so an item is either funded or it isn't. You can cover the whole thing or five dollars of it, and progress is live — your contribution shows up in the number the moment it lands.
Once an item reaches its price it stops taking money and gets ordered. The list is worked from the top down. If a contribution overshoots the last few dollars, it moves to the next unfunded item — or you can ask for it back. You choose which at checkout.
Closed drives and events keep their pages, with what was bought and what it cost. The record is the point — it's how you tell whether the last one actually happened.
Roots Worth Tending is not a registered 501(c)(3). It's a small volunteer effort, not an incorporated charity. Contributions are not tax-deductible, and you shouldn't claim them as such.
Nobody here is paid. There's no office and no overhead — a contribution buys the thing it was given for, at the price shown, from the supplier named.
That's also why the prices are all linked. You don't have to trust the arithmetic; you can check it in about thirty seconds, and if a supplier's price has moved since a page was built, the link will show you that too.
If something here doesn't add up, say so and it gets fixed.