Finding Our Home
Capital Campaign
Although Qqs has supported community leadership and wellbeing for more than 27 years, we’ve done so without the benefit of dedicated office and program space to call our own. After nearly 3 decades of working off the sides of people’s desks, in precarious rentals, or in temporary buildings, we are close to realizing our vision for a home we can be proud of — an office with room for our growing staff, generous space for our community programs, and the capacity to support our community as a climate resilience hub in extreme weather events. And we need your help!
The Opportunity
We envision a space where our growing staff have dignified space to do their hard work on behalf of our people. Where we can welcome our community for programs, workshops, and to access essential services like our food bank. Where we can share meals and moments in our community kitchen and library, and plan ahead for the magic of our seasonal land-based programming. And where we can safely welcome vulnerable community members during climate emergencies in the first building purpose-built in our community to accommodate those affected by extreme weather, wildfire smoke, and prolonged power outages.
This is a space that our staff and our community both need — and deserve. It’s a vision that’s long overdue, well underway, and possible only with your generous help. We’re close to our realizing our vision, but we need your support to raise another $250,000 to complete the final phases of our building project.
Timeline
What’s happened so far?
Mid-2024: We acquired a centrally located lot in the heart of Bella Bella and worked with our friends at L&L Contracting, a Heiltsuk-owned company, to clear and prepare the lot for construction.
Fall 2024: We completed final excavation and preparation and poured our initial foundation to get ready for the first phase of construction.
Winter 2024/2025: We framed the building, poured our inside floor, and worked with BC Hydro to organize a temporary electrical hookup. We plumbed the building, completed our interior framing, and built it up to lockup phase (doors and windows installed, siding and roof completed).
Summer 2025: We stained the exterior of our building, levelled our lower-level floor, and completed installation of our heat pump system.
What’s next?
Fall 2025: We have secured a team to complete the electrical wiring in our building. Once this is completed, our crew can finish the interior walls and move onto the furnishing stage. We can then get our major appliances on order, and our furniture will be built onsite and in our own woodshop.
We need your support!
We have committed to completed this project without impacting the operations of our thriving and essential community programs and services. We have kept costs down by doing the majority of the work in-house with our incredible work crew, including milling almost all of the lumber for the building. We have been able to do this thanks to the incredible capacity of our team members, and major gifts from Right Relations Collaborative, All One Fund, and First Peoples’ Cultural Council.
We need to raise approximately $250,000 CDN to complete the final phases of this work, including the electrical install, the interior finishing, and the furnishing.
This will support the cost of service installation ($60,000), interior finishing ($40,000), hardware/fixtures ($15,000) appliances ($20,000), backup power ($40,000), and furniture/furnishings ($50,000) with a 10% buffer built into the budget to account for
The impact of your gifts does not stop with Qqs. It reverberates throughout our community to everyone who relies on our food bank and hamper program, borrows books from our library, learns to produce and preserve foods through our food sovereignty programming, finds community amongst their neurodivergent peers in our support programs, or witnesses the budding cultural leadership of their children as they attend our land-based programming in Koeye.
Everything we do is rooted in community, and our community deserves this space to grow and thrive.
Your Gift
Because Qqs is a charitable organization, we are pleased to provide a charitable receipt to Canadian donors.
We can receive secure, online donations through CanadaHelps.org
We are also happy to work with you to arrange donations by cheque, cash, EMT, or wire transfer if that is your preference.
All donors will be acknowledged on our website when the project is complete.
If you have questions or ideas to share, please contact Jess today!
