Olympic Community Action Partnership (OlyCAP)
Project: Flexible support for OlyCAP's Jefferson County basic-needs services
Request: $15,000
OlyCAP has been the federally designated Community Action Agency for Jefferson County since 1966. From its Port Townsend headquarters and community centers in Chimacum, Brinnon and Quilcene, it delivers the services that keep households out of crisis: energy assistance and weatherization, community meals, shelter at Caswell-Brown Village, affordable housing at 7th Haven, Northwest Passage and South Seven Senior Village, Coordinated Entry for the county, and housing for young people aging out of state care.
In 2025, Jefferson County delivery included $42,288 in Open Doors emergency financial assistance and $154,499 in home weatherization. Countywide energy assistance reached 1,209 households — 2,123 people, including 795 living with a disability and 649 aged 60 or older — covering an average of 42% of those households' annual energy costs. The three community centers recorded 64,230 visits.
Why "unrestricted" is the whole point
Approximately 84% of OlyCAP's revenue is government funding — federal, state and county contracts, most of it categorically restricted and reimbursed after the fact.
Which creates a mismatch. The money arrives sorted into categories. The households don't. A family walks in with a stack of problems that caused each other, and the only useful response is one that can address whichever piece is about to break first.
That is exactly what your donation can do and restricted grants cannot. It's what stops a shut-off notice becoming an eviction, and an eviction becoming a Coordinated Entry intake six months later at many times the cost.
The barriers are rural, and they compound
Distance comes first: Brinnon and Quilcene residents may be an hour from a food bank, a clinic or a DSHS office, and one broken vehicle severs access to all three at once.
Fixed incomes come second. OlyCAP's caseload skews heavily toward people with the fewest buffers; 35.8% are 60 or older, roughly 34% live with a disability, about 40% live at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. Many households simply cannot absorb a $400 shock of any kind.
Isolation comes third, and it's the reason the community centers matter as much as the checks do.
In 2025, emergency assistance requests concentrated in car repair, energy arrears, and water/sewer/garbage bills — the three categories that signal a household running out of runway.
Here are the problems you can help solve
OlyCAP operates on roughly 1.3 months of cash reserves. Because most contracts reimburse after the fact, the agency routinely fronts payroll and client assistance and waits to be repaid. That's a thin margin for an organization this important.
If this request isn't funded, the services don't close — but the flexibility does. OlyCAP would keep delivering every categorical program and lose the discretionary ability to say yes to the household whose problem doesn't fit a program.
What your donation makes possible
If we meet our goal, then OlyCAP would receive $6,000 for service delivery in rural Jefferson County; the travel and related costs of bringing energy assistance, housing and weatherization services to outlying communities; $4,000 for energy and housing stability, including arrears and shut-off prevention beyond benefit caps, and eviction prevention; $2,500 for community meals at the Tri-Area, Brinnon and Quilcene centers; $1,500 for a youth safety-net flex fund for people aged 18–24; $1,000 for direct service staff time.
Your gift extends OlyCAP's Jefferson County emergency-assistance capacity by roughly a third against the 2025 baseline. You’re strengthening a shared infrastructure the whole county depends on.
