CEO Update

Last week marked the beginning of Spring, which came after switching our clocks yet again for Daylight Savings Time. I hope that we all realize that the days don’t change because of clocks – they change because of how our planet is in orbit in relation to the sun. Spring comes regardless of a clock. 

We have increased daylight hours, hopefully getting a little warmer each day. In our household we eagerly await watching plants begin to bud, trying to remember if that particular plant is something coming back from last year, or is it a volunteer that landed in the yard.  

Spring is this magical time of opening, renewal, and rebirth as we move from the Spring Equinox – that moment when both the northern and southern hemispheres get an equal amount of light because of the earth’s axis. I chuckle because when I was young I was taught that the seasons changed on the 21st of December, March, June and September. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned that the “first day of spring” wasn’t because of a calendar, so it might fall on a different day each year – mind expanding information! 

Folks are eager to get outside. People are planning vacations, planting gardens, and outdoor markets. Work and play will be taking us outdoors. We hope we see you as we are out and about. 

As we move into spring, I am feeling burdened by the impact of local, state, and national decisions, especially when these decisions directly affect community members, neighbors, colleagues and family. Washington’s budget deficit is forcing cuts and layoffs, and those reductions cause communities to face reduced access to food, housing, transportation, health care and more. 

I often turn to voices from current and past leaders as I wrestle with my own emotions:  

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Talmud

“The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up – ever-trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?” Terry Tempest Williams

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be… This is the inter-related structure of reality.” Martin Luther King, Jr

“It is in the shelter of each other that people live.” Irish Proverb

“To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it.” Audre Lorde

I can get pulled into a debate about whether I am impacted if someone bans the word “woman” but that’s distracting (me) us from more important questions. I’ve written before about moments when I feel this internal primal scream being lifted up. And for me, as spring starts here in the Northwest, I got caught in images of people who were being prepared to be deported, watching their faces and heads shaved, then bent over as they were led into cages, and bent over as they walked up the steps into an airplane. 

And I had to accept a hard truth, this too is my country – treating people without humanity, without dignity, without due process. I realize that you may see the same images quite differently than I do. So much trauma – to those being deported, and to the staff (also human beings) who are being directed to treat other human beings in such a way. I am at a loss as to how shaming, demeaning, and dehumanizing anyone gets us one minute closer to justice and safety.  

We live in multiple realities at the same time. We can appreciate the changing of the seasons, recognize that our planet is alive, and that we can keep our cultures and communities growing and thriving. 

And we have some pretty serious work ahead of us too. For North Sound, we’ll continue to turn toward each other, to lift up love and opportunity and belonging, to resist anyone who asks us to “other” people in our community. We will never be a region where everyone feels like they belong if our starting point is to try and figure out who doesn’t. 

We are grateful to be in space with you and we thank you for just doing all the work that you do.

Last week marked the beginning of Spring, which came after switching our clocks yet again for Daylight Savings Time. I hope that we all realize that the days don’t change because of clocks – they change because of how our planet is in orbit in relation to the sun. Spring comes regardless of a clock. 

We have increased daylight hours, hopefully getting a little warmer each day. In our household we eagerly await watching plants begin to bud, trying to remember if that particular plant is something coming back from last year, or is it a volunteer that landed in the yard.  

Spring is this magical time of opening, renewal, and rebirth as we move from the Spring Equinox – that moment when both the northern and southern hemispheres get an equal amount of light because of the earth’s axis. I chuckle because when I was young I was taught that the seasons changed on the 21st of December, March, June and September. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned that the “first day of spring” wasn’t because of a calendar, so it might fall on a different day each year – mind expanding information! 

Folks are eager to get outside. People are planning vacations, planting gardens, and outdoor markets. Work and play will be taking us outdoors. We hope we see you as we are out and about. 

“It is in the shelter of each other that people live.” Irish Proverb

As we move into spring, I am feeling burdened by the impact of local, state, and national decisions, especially when these decisions directly affect community members, neighbors, colleagues and family. Washington’s budget deficit is forcing cuts and layoffs, and those reductions cause communities to face reduced access to food, housing, transportation, health care and more. 

I often turn to voices from current and past leaders as I wrestle with my own emotions:  

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Talmud

“The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up – ever-trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?” Terry Tempest Williams

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be… This is the inter-related structure of reality.” Martin Luther King, Jr

“It is in the shelter of each other that people live.” Irish Proverb

“To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it.” Audre Lorde

I can get pulled into a debate about whether I am impacted if someone bans the word “woman” but that’s distracting (me) us from more important questions. I’ve written before about moments when I feel this internal primal scream being lifted up. And for me, as spring starts here in the Northwest, I got caught in images of people who were being prepared to be deported, watching their faces and heads shaved, then bent over as they were led into cages, and bent over as they walked up the steps into an airplane. 

And I had to accept a hard truth, this too is my country – treating people without humanity, without dignity, without due process. I realize that you may see the same images quite differently than I do. So much trauma – to those being deported, and to the staff (also human beings) who are being directed to treat other human beings in such a way. I am at a loss as to how shaming, demeaning, and dehumanizing anyone gets us one minute closer to justice and safety.  

We live in multiple realities at the same time. We can appreciate the changing of the seasons, recognize that our planet is alive, and that we can keep our cultures and communities growing and thriving. 

And we have some pretty serious work ahead of us too. For North Sound, we’ll continue to turn toward each other, to lift up love and opportunity and belonging, to resist anyone who asks us to “other” people in our community. We will never be a region where everyone feels like they belong if our starting point is to try and figure out who doesn’t. 

We are grateful to be in space with you and we thank you for just doing all the work that you do.

As a longtime nonprofit leader, each year conversations emerge about what kind of lobbying nonprofits can engage in. Anxiety about impacting one’s nonprofit status with the IRS has people refraining from anything that even feels close to lobbying, while other leaders understand that advocacy is not the same as lobbying. Even 501c3s – within defined limits – are not prohibited from lobbying. It is always good to check with your legal counsel or auditors to make sure you have an understanding of what is allowed for you, your team and your organization, but silence is not an option.

Do you need to figure out who your elected officials are? Here is a handy link – (usa.gov/elected-officials). Just put in your physical address and it will populate elected officials at the county, state and federal levels for your street address. 

This year has brought a lot of changes – and stresses – to decision makers at the federal and state level, especially around funding for core programs that serve people in need. 
Here in Washington, state legislators are facing an unprecedented budget deficit, and are constitutionally mandated to pass a balanced budget. They need to hear from you – non only about what you prioritize – so that they proactively pull down every awarded federal dollar that they can, before the opportunity to do so slips away.  Please encourage Washington to provide the authority to state agencies to draw down available and approved federal dollars while they can.

At the federal level every contact with Congress and the Senate matters. This is not about what party you support of how you voted. It is about the community that we want to see for ourselves and loved ones, now and into the future. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. I would not be where I am if not for structural investments made by federal and state governments, and sacrifices made my parents and grandparents. Now I am a grandmother and I want to see my children and grandchildren avoid suffering and struggling. 

I’d like to live in a country that does not leave children vulnerable to preventable diseases, where people in need are not abandoned to fend for themselves, where we are thinking about today and tomorrow and next year. We have to be good stewards for each other, and for the planet that we inhabit.  

I urge you – check to see who your elected officials are (usa.gov/elected-officials) and let them know how much your needs are connected to the needs of others in the community. It is the only way forward – together – that we will create a region where we all feel we belong.   

Although I’m still saying Happy New Year to most people I see, time is feeling more and more fluid lately.

About two weeks ago we shared space with close to 250 people during the January 2025 Partner Convening. We started just two days after inauguration Day, and we anticipated the week might feel heavy and tense – we even considered rescheduling it. And we are so happy that we stayed the course. 

I think about gratitude a lot – it’s my constant reminder that even when dark forces are afoot, there is so much to be thankful for, that people are doing amazing things in communities every day. You nourish and restore, and for that our team is grateful; you share your struggles and your journeys with us and with each other, and for that we are grateful. And you share your passion, creative ideas, and future opportunities with each other – that is the radical imagination that Angela Glover Blackwell calls for in her Radical Imagination podcast and what we lift up in North Sound Voices (our podcast). You all are making change in real time!

Sometimes I get to sit back and watch the work that you do, and the relationships you form with each other. I hope that you have some sense of the magic that you create when you work together. We live in a time where outside forces want us to be afraid of each other, to separate us, but being in space with you feeds our souls, nourishes the heart and connects us to each other. We will advance thriving and equitable well-being because we believe in the importance of our relationship to each other and the world around us. 

Believe it or not, we’re already talking about the August Convening. There are close to 240 partner organizations in the Collaborative Action Network, so imagine having one or two from each organization in space together – wow. More to come as we pull initial ideas together.  

Be well, and we look forward to seeing you soon again –