Spokane nonprofit offers $43,542 to buy the Seahawks

Spokane, WA | March 9, 2026- A Spokane nonprofit has submitted what may be one of the most unusual bids in the history of professional sports.

Family Promise of Spokane has formally offered $43,542 to purchase the Seattle Seahawks.

Yes, forty-three thousand, five hundred forty-two dollars for a team worth an estimated $9 billion.

The number isn’t random. It was chosen intentionally to represent one dollar for every school-aged child experiencing homelessness in Washington State this year.

That symbolic number grew out of an idea that started much more casually.

The idea began as an office joke. When staff heard the Seahawks might be for sale, someone joked that the nonprofit should buy the team. But the longer the conversation went on, the more the joke revealed something real: just how powerful the Seahawks’ platform could be in changing lives across Washington.

The organization fully acknowledges the bid is unlikely to compete with offers expected to reach billions of dollars. But that’s exactly the point.

“We know we’re not going to outbid billionaires,” said Joe Ader, CEO of Family Promise of Spokane. “This isn’t about buying the team. It’s about showing that the number of kids experiencing homelessness in our state should shock us a lot more than our offer does.”

The proposal was submitted to Jody Allen, Chair of the Seattle Seahawks and Trustee of the Paul G. Allen Trust, and invites the Seahawks ownership group to partner with Family Promise to tackle one of the region’s most pressing challenges: family homelessness.

In the letter, Family Promise proposes an alternative idea: if purchasing the team isn’t realistic, the organization suggests dedicating a small percentage of Seahawks ownership or revenue toward ending family homelessness in Washington.

The nonprofit estimates:

• $13+ million dollars per year could end family homelessness in Spokane County.

• Approximately $816 million dollars could eliminate homelessness for every one of the 43,000+ school aged children and their families experiencing homelessness across Washington State.

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While those numbers may appear large, Ader says they become far more achievable when compared to the economic scale of professional sports.

“Professional sports have enormous influence,” Ader said. “Imagine if even a small portion of that platform and revenue were directed toward ensuring every child in Washington has a safe place to call home.”

According to Family Promise, just 1% of the Seahawks’ annual revenue would roughly double the organization’s operating budget, dramatically expanding prevention services, shelter capacity, and housing stabilization for families in Spokane County.

Family Promise is calling on Seahawks fans, famously known as the 12, to rally behind their team in this new statewide mission.

“Though the Seahawks may have Seattle in their name, the entire state carries the team in its heart,” Ader said. “What if the 12 helped ensure that every child in Washington had a home?”

The nonprofit hopes the proposal sparks a broader conversation about how major sports organizations can partner with communities to solve complex social issues.

“Our offer probably won’t win the Seahawks,” Ader said. “But if it helps win the idea that homelessness is solvable, then it’s a pretty good play.”

Another Year Closer to Ending Homelessness: Reflecting on World Homeless Day 2025

What makes a home? Is it the food we cook and share at its table? Is it the cheerful shrieks and incessant bickering of siblings at play and war? Or is it the reassuring familiarity which greets us as we step through the door; the patient hum of a box fan in the window, singing in tune with the rhythm of cars passing by outside? 

A home without these human elements is a hollow shell. Step into any vacant home, furnished or not, and you wade through a veil of expectancy that hangs in the air. Perhaps that melancholy feeling in your heart as your eyes pass over bare walls and dusty corners caught in sunlight is just the tendency we have to project human qualities onto otherwise inanimate things-- and yet, it is unshakeable.

A home without people suffers a phantom pain. It lacks. It yearns for the warmth, dirt, and bustle people bring. In their absence, it languishes, devoid of purpose and remiss in function.

It’s unsurprising, then, that we characterize such unoccupied homes as 'abandoned', 'condemned', even 'haunted'. To us, a home without people seems unnatural. Why, then, have we accepted people without homes as natural?

The Numbers

A home is meant to be lived in. People are meant to live in homes. But not all of us are so lucky. The causes of homelessness vary and intertwine. Poverty, low wages, lack of affordable housing, domestic violence, health challenges, limited healthcare, inaccessible education, systemic discrimination, and inadequate support systems– these factors all compound to keep people down. 

Helping an empty home is simple, by comparison. Just fill it with people. But at Family Promise of Spokane, we believe the inverse to be true as well. Helping a homeless person is simple: get them into a home.

Let’s not shy away from the facts. According to the United States Census Bureau, there are currently around 8.1 billion people on Earth. Of those 8.1 billion, between 1.6 to 3 billion are in inadequate housing, according to 2024 data from United Nations Human Settlements Programme.

Here at home in the U.S.? “The number of Americans exposed to homelessness on a single night in 2024 was the highest ever recorded.” The data shows that nearly 800,000 people in the U.S. are homeless, living in emergency shelters, in transitional housing programs, or in unsheltered areas entirely. Home is a luxury that many of us do not have, but it shouldn’t be.

And the children? The National Alliance to End Homelessness found in 2024 that more children live in homelessness nationwide than live in most U.S. states:

“The number of children experiencing homelessness during the 2021-2022 school year nationwide was greater than the total number of children in 28 states. Nearly 1.2 million children were either literally homeless (living in a shelter, or in unsheltered locations such as a car or tent) or doubled-up (sharing housing with friends or family beyond a unit’s designated capacity).”

Though these numbers were recorded in the year following the outbreak of COVID-19 in the U.S., which undoubtedly exacerbated the homelessness crisis, rates of homelessness have only increased every year since: up to nearly 800,000 in 2024 compared to around 600,000 in 2022. It’s unlikely that child homelessness numbers have fallen despite the waning of COVID-19.

The People

To be clear: homelessness is an issue for more than this one day of the year. It is a challenge that we would like to address 366 days of the year. At Family Promise, we strive to evolve our response to homelessness to be more effective, more efficient, and more trauma-informed. Although the problem of homelessness seems overwhelming, it’s still just a problem that can be solved like any other.

Though numbers inform much of our work, we must be careful to view our fellow people as more than these. People aren’t numbers, but the problems we solve for often are. Yet we’re not trying to solve people. Rather, we’re trying to give them the foundational stability in housing which frees them to grow and thrive enough to solve their own problems. When we resort to viewing people as numbers, particularly these big ones like 800,000 or 3 billion, our emotional understanding of the vicious cycle of homelessness fades. We are desensitized to the scale of suffering and need, and abstract a very real problem into something less uncomfortable. 

The widely cited 1992 study Measuring Nonuse Damages Using Contingent Valuation: An Experimental Evaluation of Accuracy demonstrated the severity of this 'extension neglect bias' in how we perceive social impact and issues. Put simply, humans struggle to conceptualize the true scale of larger numbers, which biases our decision-making and judgment. This is readily apparent in common attitudes towards homelessness where it is viewed as a personal failing, limited to a select few people. But the reality of homelessness is systemic, widespread, and endemic. Homelessness captures entire families, hurts communities, and continues in generational cycles: people who experienced homelessness as a child have 40% higher odds of becoming homeless as an adult, even if their childhood experience was brief.

The Day

These numbers are not indicative of a personal failing, but rather a societal one. Homelessness is not natural. Every child deserves a home. This World Homeless Day, we encourage you to fight homelessness alongside us. Every number we’ve cited in this piece today is a person, a child, a daughter or father. Even one left behind is unacceptable. 

We live in the most technologically advanced and materially rich era of human history yet. We have the means, the numbers, and the knowledge to end homelessness. Now, we need to find the heart.

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Samuel McLaughlin is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Family Promise of Spokane.

A Place to Stay, A Place to Play

Last week, Family Promise of Spokane unveiled our new Wulan Mar Playscape. Boasting a swing set, basketball court, jungle gym with slides, and sidewalks for biking and scootering, the Playscape will provide a private area for guest families and their children to play and socialize, all within a few steps of our Emergency Shelter. This ribbon-cutting event represented the culmination of a nearly two-year long effort made by volunteers, staff, and community partners. 

Fitting the Mission

Our supporters may recall our three-year goals as an organization. Among other things, we plan to change the use of our facilities at 2002 E. Mission Avenue from an Emergency Shelter to a resource hub. Why, then, invest in a playground for it? 

This Playscape helps further our goals to end family homelessness. As any parent knows, getting things done when your children want to play is no easy task. Family Promise recognizes the value of supporting guests in a trauma-informed way, and when parents know that their children are playing in a safe environment, it becomes that much easier for them to focus on taking care of life’s other demands. 

Play Often, Grow Strong

Children, too, benefit from the stability and safety offered by the Playscape. Homelessness is an inherently traumatic experience. The consequences of trauma and ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) are well-known, but recent research done by Dr. Christina Bethell at John Hopkins University found that positive childhood experiences can act as a buffer. Though trauma will always leave some kind of impact, the kind of positive childhood experiences that playgrounds foster help neutralize the long-term impact of trauma, particularly on mental health. 

Additionally, many of our guests flee unsafe living situations and domestic violence, which limits their options for safe outdoor play. Visting a neighborhood park poses an unnecessary risk of exposure. The Playscape mitigates this risk as a private space where children can forge new friendships, process experiences, and simply be kids.  

Teamwork

So, what appears at first glance to be just swings and slides becomes a critical resource for children to grow into resilient adults, capable of breaking the cycle of family homelessness. Its construction would never have been possible without the support of our wonderful volunteers, partners, and donors. We are sincerely grateful for your assistance and hope you will continue alongside us in our work to ensure every child has a home.