Q3 2025 REALTOR® Good Neighbor Brings Others Along
September 29, 2025
Seattle King County REALTORS® congratulates Joe Easterday of Windermere Mount Baker, the winner of the Q3 2025 Good Neighbor Award! Although Joe is involved in many charitable activities, this award specifically honors his work with Project Cool for Back-to-School, a program operated by the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness. SKCR’s Good Neighbor Committee presented a $500 check to the Coalition on his behalf on September 24.
Project Cool is an annual community-led effort to supply backpacks filled with age-appropriate school supplies to over 1,000 students experiencing homelessness in King County. Every summer, volunteers provide the bulk of the unboxing, sorting, and stuffing work to have the backpacks ready by the beginning of the school year.
“Project Cool is very much a volunteer-led project, and we couldn’t do it without our volunteers” said Kevin Lee, the senior programs manager at the Coalition who oversees Project Cool. “We welcome individuals who hear about it at one of our meetings and organizations that get their staff teams involved. Some volunteers have been doing it for over a decade.”
In fact, Joe Easterday has been involved with Project Cool since 1989. “When I first moved to Seattle, I was involved with a volunteer group at Seattle Emergency Housing Service in Yesler Terrace,” Joe recalled. “On my first day on the job, we took a group of kids on the bus to King 5 to collect backpacks and school supplies for the school year.”
Now as the Designated Broker at Windermere Mount Baker, Joe invites his office to participate in Project Cool every year with up to 20 agents and staff volunteering. “Project Cool is based in South Seattle, which is where our office is,” says Joe. “That makes it an easy partnership.”
“Everyone loves it,” said Flora Fleet, one of several agents at Windermere Mount Baker who nominated Joe for the Good Neighbor Award. “He has gotten our whole office involved, and we now support this organization every year.”
Another agent, Claire Newman wrote on her nomination form, “Through encouraging us as brokers to volunteer, it has opened our eyes to the increasing problem of affordability and encouraged us to put our money where our mouths are.”
Project Cool is a way for the Coalition's member organizations to offer practical help to the families with whom they work, as well as an easy way for other groups to learn and be involved, like the Windermere Mount Baker office. But also, as the Coalition's Executive Director Alison Eisinger reminds us, “it is only a small piece of what they really need, which is housing.”
More About the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness
The mission of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness is to “mobilize our community to challenge systemic causes of homelessness and advocate for housing justice.” The Coalition's members are organizations who work directly with people experiencing homelessness, and as a coalition they pool information and resources to advocate for the populations they serve. Through monthly meetings and regular trainings members are informed on legislation, policy, funding, and advocacy efforts. The Coalition also convenes a Policy & Advocacy Workgroup that engages members in advocacy campaigns.
“Our work is informed by our members who are doing the work on the ground with around 25,000–30,000 people in King County experiencing homelessness, more than half of whom don’t fit in our shelter system,” explained Eisinger. “We advocate strongly for local, state, and federal investments to do what we know works, which is to house and support people, and to ensure that our member organizations are adequately funded and supported through their government contracts.”
Find out more about the work of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness and how to get involved on their website https://homelessinfo.org/.
