Windermere Property Management | Willamette Valley Real State | Realty
                     CREATING CARING CONNECTIONS
with MARY ANN VANDERGRIFF
When people in the West Seattle community are in need, they’ve learned they 
can turn to Windermere broker Mary Ann Vandergriff. After a company backed 
out of providing turkeys for 40 elementary school families the Tuesday before 
Thanksgiving, the school’s family support worker called Vandergriff in a panic. 
Just a few phone calls later, the big-hearted broker had rounded up 40 vouchers 
for 20-pound turkeys.
“I  HAVE ALL THIS STUFF IN MY HEAD… THINGS 
THAT COME TO ME,” SHE SAYS. “I  LOVE A 
CHALLENGE; GIVE ME A COMPLICATED PUZZLE.”
Volunteering was a big part of Vandergriff ’s childhood, 
so it was only natural that she got involved with the 
Windermere Foundation soon after joining the company 
in the early 1990s. As a single mom of two, Vandergriff 
was especially drawn to the mission of the Windermere 
Foundation, which collects a portion of the proceeds 
from homes bought or sold through Windermere to 
donate to projects that benefit low-income and 
homeless families. “Giving kids a chance, that’s the 
most important thing to me,” she says.
As the Windermere Foundation representative for 
the West Seattle offi ce, Vandergriff  has worked 
with countless organizations over the years. 
Early on, she jumped into spearheading 
fundraising for Project Cool, a program from the 
King County Coalition on Homelessness that 
provides students with backpacks stuffed with 
school supplies.
More recently, her offi ce has supported the West 
Seattle Helpline, which provides emergency 
assistance to neighbors in need. Last year the 
team spent a service day setting up Clothesline, 
West Seattle Helpline’s free clothing store. “We 
completely put that store together, from laying 
carpet to organizing clothes to organizing the 
hangers that were donated,” Vandergriff  says. 
“When you have 40 of us brokers in a day, you 
can move mountains.”
Although it creates more administrative work, the 
West Seattle office spreads its giving budget—about 
$25,000—throughout the year so that they always 
have some seed money on hand to fulfill a need 
when asked. They’ve helped mothers with breast 
cancer pay their bills while going through treatment, 
outfitted children in new winter coats, purchased 
appliances for a food bank, provided computers for a 
school, and made sure families had enough to eat 
during holiday breaks.
The list of organizations they’ve helped only grows 
over the years, and Vandergriff wouldn’t have it any 
othPerer sweanyt.“aYtoioun hse alpr eo nceo mpemrsuon iacat tai otinm teo,”o lsh e says. 
“Itt mhaaty  cnaont  bbee  buisge, dit  masa yle bcetu srmesa.ll, but even 
changing the life of one or two children makes a 
difference.”
By Haley Shapley – 
Originally published in Windermere 
Living