Serious Community Involvement

Our area is blessed with a great sense of citizenship as demonstrated by how many people are involved in their communities. We know because we get hundreds of requests to donate pizza to the widest possible spectrum of local organizations and causes.

After years of saying "yes" as often as we could, we realized that our participation was directed by whoever happened to call. Our charitable motivation for making gifts was sometimes adulterated by the advertising benefit we knew we would receive because the pizzas we gave away were "Pagliacci" pizzas. Our donated pizza usually went not to needy people but to volunteers or contributors, which made us, at best, cheerleaders for the good work of others. The generally correct observation that "other businesses do the same thing" is scant solace to a company that aspires to be the best and suffers from introspection.

Out of that discomfort, Pagliacci Pizza sought a new way. We concluded that Pagliacci Pizza needs its community participation to be significant, to directly impact needy people and to be truly charitable, without advertising inducement.

To do that, Pagliacci Pizza concentrated on a transitional housing project which provides housing, training and counseling to needy people who are hard at work to complete their personal transition to becoming independent and self-reliant members of society. In 1995, Pagliacci Pizza purchased a nasty motel that had been problematic for society and teamed with Urban Pipeline to commit it to transitional housing. Our financial commitment to this project is large and long-term - it's like taking on a mortgage. We like the priority that gives to our community involvement. We also like that our community involvement has no advertising value.

We do this in lieu of donating pizzas, which means we say "no" to a lot of people to whom we used to say "yes". Most organizations respect our decision (a few have even offered us donations) and we can still cheer their good works.

Valley House

Pagliacci Pizza purchased Seattle's 18-unit Civic Center Motel where it operates a home delivery store and where The Urban Pipeline operates transitional housing units. The Urban Pipeline is a nonprofit affiliate of the City Foursquare Church, which is across the street from the Civic Center Motel.

The transitional housing is for people who have jobs but who are not fully prepared for success on their own. In the meeting rooms of the former motel, residents receive training in life skills, training in job market skills and personal counseling. As part of their life skills training, residents are taught to discipline themselves to pay rent. Rents are less than half of market rents. The rent subsidy comes entirely from Pagliacci Pizza and The Urban Pipeline, without any government funding. Residents may stay for as long as a year. The goal is that when they leave they will be successful job holders with good references and they will have saved enough to get an apartment.

The Civic Center Motel was reportedly Seattle's oldest motel building and one of the first motels in the country. It had fallen on hard times and been closed by Seattle police as a public nuisance because of prostitution and drugs. Seattle City Councilwoman Margaret Pageler said "it's wonderful that this can now be converted to a business that really has a productive role to play in the community." A spokesperson for the business said "Pagliacci Pizza is proud that the property will be used to directly benefit the people who were victims of the illegal activity that once flourished there."

Dorene Centioli-McTigue, the founder of Pagliacci Pizza, said "Giving away pizzas to charities is nice, but it's not the same as feeding the hungry. Pagliacci Pizza wants to do something that is more substantive and more direct. The Civic Center Motel project does that. We'll be making a big difference in the lives of real people and the entire community will benefit from their success."

The total project was expected to cost about $750,000, considerably more than what Pagliacci Pizza normally would spend to open an outlet. Dorene Centioli-McTigue, the founder of Pagliacci Pizza, said the long-term financial commitment to the project is a positive force for the company because it raises community involvement to the importance it deserves. "Too often companies, Pagliacci included, have thought of community involvement as a mere afterthought or, worse, as a form of advertising. This project helps discipline us to put community involvement on a par with paying the mortgage. I like that."