Post Convening Thoughts

Last week, the North Sound Partner Convening was focused on food insecurity – the first time that we have had a single topic convening. The room was filled with folks passionate about the topic, who know what is needed in their organizations and for the people they serve.  

We ended the day with a question – I think of it as ‘how should we spend the next dollar?’ Since 2023, the ACH Board has approved discretionary spending each year allowing North Sound ACH to award grants to partners working around the Vital Conditions for Well-being. More than 80 projects have been funded across the region to seed innovative ideas, even though the ACH does not have funds to sustain the work. That is the reason we focus on capacity building: working in partnership with other organizations, and seeing what other resources may be available to continue the work. Leverage is a key theme – how we can grow resources through our investments.

We are not the same as a community foundation, but we can use ACH resources to jump start innovation and support capacity. 

We ended the convening by asking attendees to share ideas of how we should set the criteria for the funds available in 2026. The requirements already include that applicants are:

• Members of the Collaborative Action Network,
• In collaboration with at least one other Network partner,
• Connected to at least one of the Vital Conditions,
• Agree to reporting and site visit requirements.

Last year we had close to $4 million to distribute and received nearly $12 million in requests. We anticipate that this year will show even more need than we have funds to support. It takes us back to leverage. How can we work together to bring more resources to this important work?

Report outs from the table discussions were rich – and sometimes contradictory – reflecting how hard it is to say no to any request when we know the need is vast. The ACH team is still compiling all of the notes, but here are few things I heard as recommendations:

• Simpler applications, with some ability to submit in alternative formats, such as video
• Don’t require outcomes to be listed; yet you want the dollars to go where they will have the greatest impact
• Don’t require applicants to compete with each other (i.e., share the dollars equally to all applicants); yet there were recommendations to put dollars where there is the greatest need, and in communities facing the highest disparities
• Support what is currently in place (replacing lost funding); yet support new ideas and partnerships
• …and more – 20+ tables reported their ideas and we’ll look at them all. 

We will prioritize proposals that address food insecurity, and accept proposals aimed at other Vital Conditions focus areas. We hope to have the applications posted on our website the first week of April, and that will be a heavy push to make that happen – stay tuned. 

We live in times of contradiction and inconsistency and that can be exhausting. The sun has come out, daylight hours are growing which means plants are starting to bud. And people in communities are still being stopped and detained, and bombs are dropping again, folks are in need and looking to us to help. It asks a lot of us and people in our communities. 

We are grateful to you all, your families and teams. Thank you for all you do and we hope to see you all again soon.