Spokane's YMCA is one of seven Washington state chapters that are sharing a combined $140,000 provided through The Walmart Foundation and its Washington State Giving Council for hunger relief.

The contributions were recently announced by Walmart, the nation's largest retailer. The money for the Y chapters are part of an ongoing campaign by the Arkansas-based company to support summer feeding programs in 300 urban and rural communities.

In case you only think negative things about Walmart, consider this: According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Walmart easily exceeds all other U.S. corporations in charitable giving.

According to its most recent list, Walmart tops the list with more than $342 million in giving in 2011. Second was Goldman Sachs with $337 million.

The Washington grants stem from research and studies suggesting that lower-income families often find themselves not providing their children nutritionally complete meals during warmer weather.

Across the entire state, Walmart this year is providing $172,000 to the Y chapters and other groups through its Summer Feeding initiative and another $125,000 through the Walmart State Giving Council, a separate state-specific foundation

Other YMCA  chapters receiving grants are in Auburn, Bothell, Everett, Seattle, Tacoma and Shoreline.

They will share a combined $115,000 Walmart Foundation grant and $25,000 State Giving Council grants to support youth lunch programs.

We found this at the Walmart.com charitable contributions link:

Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are in the second year of a $2 billion cash and in-kind hunger relief campaign that extends through 2015. The Foundation’s contributions are strategically aimed at ending hunger for the 1 in 6 Americans that do not know where their next meal is coming from. As such, the Foundation seeks to fund initiatives that integrate hunger relief into our four focus areas (hunger/wellness; education; workforce development; environmental sustainability).

Another website devoted to finding vacation rentals just added a bunch of listings in Washington state.

Dwellable just this week brought online listings for more than 1,000 Washington state rentals.

And to be honest, not that many are in Spokane, at least as of June 26.  We searched and found three vacation rentals.

But it's going to grow, according to Dwellable CEO Brenda Spoonmore. The company was launched in Seattle in 2011 but only this week added Washington properties.  Spoonmore said she has Eastern Washington ties, having family in Dayton and Pullman.

Plans are to add Idaho listings some time later.  “By the end of year, we will cover all of the U.S. plus some additional areas in North America (eg, Whistler),” she wrote in an email.

Spoonemore is co-founder with another partner who also co-founded popular food mashup Urbanspoon.com.

“Not coincidentally, there are some similarities between the Urbanspoon approach to restaurants and ours to vacation rentals,” Spoonmore added.

We hear that the state of Washington has gone from one craft distillery a few years ago (based in Spokane), to more than 20 in production today.  See the post below for the connection.

We'll take on the challenge of verifying that number and trying to list the full names of those craft distillers.

Anyone having names or suggestions, leave them here as a comment. Thanks.

Washington's Department of Revenue said in a news release Monday that it has vastly improved the online tool retailers use to find sales tax rates across the state.

The state charges sales tax based on where a product is delivered, not where it originated. The new web tool, found at http://dor.wa.gov, offers several ways to look up location codes and tax rates. Those include address searches, improved maps, and latitude and longitude, according to the news release.

Washington retailers, you be the judge.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has a new list, based on three years of research, showing the 10 states working hardest to cut dependence on oil, and the 10 states most vulnerable to gas price spikes.

To read the executive summary on the method to the rankings, go to the continuation of this entry (click on continue reading below).

Washington is No. 6 on the list of working hardest to get free of oil dependence. The ranking is:

1)  California
2)  Oregon
3)  Massachusetts
4)  New York
5)  Connecticut
6)  Washington
7)  Pennsylvania
8)  Minnesota
9)  New Mexico

10)  Hawaii

The states most susceptible, according to the survey:

50)  Alaska
49)  Wyoming
48)  Nebraska
47)  Ohio
46)  West Virginia
45)  Oklahoma
44)  Mississippi
43)  Kansas
42)  Alabama
41)  North Dakota