When Heather Tuininga answered her phone on a seemingly normal day in 2012, she had no idea she’d be met with the frantic voice of a friend on the other end. She certainly didn’t know then how that conversation would become the catalyst for a movement that would affect so many lives.
“My friend Barry was breathless when I answered,” Heather recalls. “He said ‘Heather, I just learned there are girls being sold for sex in the hotel down the street. Right here, in Bellevue, Washington! What can I do?’”
While this discovery was startling to him, Barry wasn’t telling Heather anything she didn’t already know. Her knowledge of trafficking and sexual exploitation began in 2004 when she traveled with colleagues from the Gates Foundation to India. There, she was exposed to the realities of sex trafficking for the first time.
“What I learned on that trip was these women didn’t choose that life. They were forced into it, sold into it, and desperate to survive it. And they’re just the same as me. They’re mothers, sisters, and daughters, all made in the image of Christ.”
Heather went on to learn about the domestic human trafficking problem, particularly in her home state of Washington. In the greater Seattle area alone, an estimated 500 youth are regularly being forced into sex work and prostitution. The National Human Trafficking Hotline received tips on nearly 12,000 cases of human trafficking in the United States with more than 21,000 victims in 2024 alone. Around 8,000 of those cases dealt with female adult victims while almost 3,000 were related to minors.
These numbers are staggering, but they likely only represent a fraction of those forced into the dark world of trafficking in the United States.
“It’s easy to think this kind of thing is only happening in other parts of the world, but this is happening here. It’s in our hotels, in our cities, in our massage parlors, in the back rooms of bars.”
A new approach
So, when Barry asked, “What can I do?” Heather wanted to find an answer.
“We were sick about it,” Heather says, “and we knew then we wanted to do something.”
Barry and Heather joined three others to figure out a next step. What the five founding members of a soon-to-be alliance discovered was a complex network of leaders and nonprofits struggling to work together to meet the needs in their state alone.
“It was super messy,” Heather says. “All the organizations working in the anti-trafficking space were competing for resources. They were all working on different aspects of the same cause, but they weren’t working together. Because of that, victims were falling through the cracks.”
That prompted the group to consider a different approach to the fight.
“We didn’t need another nonprofit; we needed something that could tie these nonprofits and their work together.”
The SAFE model
Rather than create a new organization, Heather and her team opted to create a new model. The Strategic Alliance to Fight Exploitation (SAFE) in Washington is a group of givers who want to end sex trafficking by supporting vetted nonprofits already engaged in the work. Rather than seeing one another as competitors in the work, the SAFE model helps these nonprofits work together to end sexual exploitation and human trafficking.
“It’s a strategic way for those who care about the issue to link arms and do something to move the needle together,” Heather explains.
The SAFE model allows the alliance to discern and fund the most important needs in the movement every year.
“We listen to the experts in the field – the nonprofit leaders on the front lines. We regularly meet with them to find out what the most critical needs of the movement are at that time. Then, we get to work funding those needs through the alliance.”
Heather suggests thinking of the model like an hourglass. At the top are the donors who give to an NCF Giving Fund designated for SAFE. Their dollars move through the middle of the hourglass and are dispersed to the nonprofits working with SAFE to meet critical needs in the anti-trafficking movement.
“SAFE is this movement-funding machine,” Heather says. “We have this money in our Giving Fund that people have given because they care about the cause, and we grant it to organizations that are doing the work in a movement-minded way.”
It’s as simple as that. The experts decide on the needs, the money comes in, and SAFE sends it out to vetted nonprofits working on prevention, intervention, and restoration needs.
“Ultimately, the SAFE model works because it allows us to send almost all the money that comes in back out with one goal: to meet the most critical needs so people aren’t exploited anymore.”
Seeing the impact
Now, over 10 years into the work, the SAFE model has certainly made an impact. In their first decade, 276 donors invested more than $2 million dollars into the anti-trafficking movement in Washington state. As a result, more than 4,800 nights of safety were provided for victims wanting out of trafficking, some 15,441 youth were engaged in prevention education funded by SAFE, and 818 survivors received help to get out and stay out of the sex trade.
The SAFE model has also now spread outside the boundaries of Washington, with groups in Florida, Minnesota, Colorado, and California using the same model to fight trafficking in their communities too. That’s thanks, in part, to SAFE’s partnership with NCF.
“We’ve been so blessed to have people like Connie Houghland and Val Hetrick at NCF who saw what we were doing with SAFE and took an interest in it,” Heather says. “They stepped up to help me package the model in a way that it can be shared with others to do work in their communities for the causes they love.”
For Heather, this multiplication of the model is the realization of a hope she’s had since SAFE’s beginning.
“Our dream when we created SAFE was to see this model reproduced to impact all kinds of causes around the country. And thanks to NCF, that has become more possible.”
The next chapter
Now, 11 years into founding and serving SAFE in Washington, Heather is following God’s leading toward a new role.
“It’s time for me to step out and let someone else step in, pick up the torch, and run with the movement further than I can,” she says.
For SAFE in Washington, this means the introduction of Audrey Baedke as the new director. Having worked in the anti-trafficking movement for 20 years, she brings a wealth of experience to guide SAFE into its next season.
Heather will remain on the board of SAFE in Washington and act as an advisor to help the organization as it continues. She’ll also continue to work with NCF to share the model with others. Her prayer is to see injustices all over the country met with alliances of givers who want to make an impact.
“I believe SAFE is a spark,” she says. “And if we can get sparks across the country, it will become a fire that can’t be put out. That, I believe, could change everything.”
To learn more about Impact Alliances, contact Connie Hougland, NCF’s vice president of charity experience and market strategy.
