A little more than a year ago we held an open house to celebrate our move into the Raikes Foundation’s new home on the north shore of Seattle’s Lake Union.

Since then we have been thrilled to see our offices evolve into a vibrant gathering place where we brainstorm with our grantees and partners, swap ideas about what’s working across our strategies and engage new audiences to support and accelerate the impact of our philanthropy.

Today we are excited for an open house of a different sort as we debut our newly renovated home on the Internet, www.raikesfoundation.org. We hope the website will become an equally vital resource for anyone who wants to learn more about our work and help us fulfill our mission to empower young people to transform their lives.

The site is a versatile and interactive source of information about our team, our philosophy, our grantmaking strategies and our grantees. There is a lot here, so we encourage you to explore.But we want to point out a few sections that we are particularly excited about:

• Our Story – Jeff and Tricia Raikes are not only our co-founders, they are actively involved in all aspects of our work. The Our Story section is a place to learn more about Jeff and Tricia and their vision for the Raikes Foundation.
• Partner Spotlights – Our partners are the heart and soul of our work, so we will be regularly profiling the people and organizations who are making change happen for young people every day.  
• Strategy and Progress Overviews – For each of our core grantmaking strategies -- in education, out-of-school time and youth homelessness -- we have provided overviews of our plans for the future and our progress to date.
• Our Grants – To learn more about our grantmaking, we have created a searchable database with key information about all of our grants going back to 2008 that we will update regularly.
• Blog – We will update this blog regularly with posts from Jeff and Tricia, our team and guest bloggers to keep you apprised of our progress and to deepen your understanding of what we are doing and why.
• Social Media Updates – The website will also serve as the hub for content we post on our growing roster of social media channels, from Twitter and Facebook to Youtube and LinkedIn.

We had a lot of help developing the site, particularly from our grantees and partners who allowed us tell their stories - and we look forward to profiling many more of them here in the months to come.  We also want to thank Barb Kinney for shooting so many of the great photos that are featured on the site, and our team at Rational Interaction who did such a nice job designing and building the site.

We hope you enjoy the new site and we welcome your comments and suggestions at info@raikesfoundation.org.