Think about what both business and non-profit organizations, together, provide for our community – and how interrelated they must be to maintain a strong, healthy, sustainable and successful Issaquah.

Local non-profit and civic service organizations – Rotary, Kiwanis, the Food and Clothing Bank, Issaquah Schools Foundation, Life Enrichment Options, Eastside Baby Corner, artEast, the History Museums, Friends of the Issaquah State Hatchery and others – are critical cornerstones of our community. They provide needed social safety nets. They address important community needs. They bring people together. They add a sense of character, history, diversity and dynamics to our town and our region.

And they matter greatly to businesses.

Businesses of all sizes know that a strong and flourishing non-profit sector is vital for economic success and community prosperity. This is why each year tens of millions of dollars in treasure and talent flow from Issaquah businesses to local and regional non-profit and civic service organizations. When businesses do well, the community’s most treasured organizations, charities and civic groups also thrive.

The Puget Sound area is one of the world’s most generous regions. Businesses and their employees willingly provide copious amounts of energies and resources to address communitywide issues through these local non-profit and civic organizations. This is in addition to the other methods which businesses support our community – the taxes they pay, the people they employee, the infrastructure they create.

This is not only true in the considerable community support provided by industry leaders like Microsoft, Boeing, Puget Sound Energy, and Costco, but also through the everyday support and commitment of local hometown small businesses who give generously to fund local education programs, food bank drives, environmental causes and more.

It is easy to chastise the abuses of Wall Street, but let’s not paint the private sector with one broad negative brushstroke, when so much of the opposite is true for most employers.

Here in Issaquah, and in hometowns across the country, we see companies large and small giving back to their communities and providing meaningful support to local non-profit, civic service and charitable organizations. And together, this partnership is one of the features that helps make our community and our region the great place it is to call home.