Emerald City Angels
Emerald City Angels is a junior guild supporting Seattle Children’s Hospital, and I serve as its Junior Guild President. Three friends and I founded it in October 2023, after a workshop where we learned to knit hats for newborns and preemies. The idea was simple — a handmade hat is a small thing to give and a real thing to receive — and it grew into a guild that raises money for the hospital and puts hats and blankets into the hands of its smallest patients.
Supporting research at Seattle Children’s
Our first campaign raised more than $20,000 for Seattle Children’s Research Discovery Fund — money that goes directly into pediatric research. This is the part of the mission I care about most, and it is the same reason I want to go into medicine.
Treating a child who is sick today matters enormously. But research is what changes the odds for every child who arrives next year, and the year after that. A better protocol, a gentler treatment, an earlier diagnosis — these do not come from any single hospital visit. They come from years of careful work that no family’s bill ever pays for directly.
That gap is exactly what guilds exist to close. Research and uncompensated care are not funded by what insurers reimburse, so hospitals like Seattle Children’s depend on volunteer guilds to make up the difference. Emerald City Angels is one of many such guilds, and our contributions have gone toward research and pediatric care, medical equipment, and play therapy for children in treatment.
It is a strange and wonderful thing to realize that an afternoon of knitting, multiplied across enough people, becomes laboratory time.
How we raise it
Most of our fundraising happens through micro‑volunteering — short, hands‑on events that let busy people contribute without clearing a whole weekend. In our first October we ran four sessions at Microsoft’s annual Giving Campaign, teaching employees to knit hats for premature babies, and we have been back every year since. The click‑clack of needles in a tech building is a sound I did not expect to love.
The model works because it stacks two kinds of giving. Volunteers donate hours and make something real with their hands, and many employers then match those hours with financial contributions. One evening of knitting turns into both a hat and a check.
What we’ve raised
In October 2023, our first GiVE campaign raised roughly $20,000 through a combination of volunteer hours and direct donations. In 2024 we raised over $15,000 more, alongside a growing pile of handmade hats and blankets.
In the Guild Association newsletter
Seattle Children’s wrote about the guild in the Winter 2024 issue of its Guild News, under the headline “New Guild Uses Volunteer Opportunities to Build Community and Raise Funds”:
The new guild raised more than $20,000 for Seattle Children’s Research Discovery Fund!
Seattle Children’s Guild News, Winter 2024
If you would like to get involved — volunteering, donating, or simply passing the word along — I would love to hear from you.
White Coat Dreamin