Together, nonprofits build community resiliency across North Central Washington

This spring, Upper Valley MEND’s Community Cupboard found itself needing to spend more than double the allocated budget to meet the unprecedented demand for food.

“Food is the last thing that you spend money on. You can't afford to not pay your rent because then you won't have a roof, and you can't afford to not pay your gas because then you can't get to work, but you can afford to skip a meal…With places like the Community Cupboard, people know that they can get food,” said Interim Executive Director Hillary Clark.

To offset rising grocery costs, the pantry tried to mitigate. It limited egg allotments to one dozen per household per month, and even decided to stop buying other staples such as milk, which costs about $1,200 a month.

“There were a few weeks when we were trying to stick to our budget when shoppers were saying things like, ‘Wow, you don’t have much in here,’” said Interim Community Cupboard Manager Lily Roberts, in an Upper Valley MEND newsletter.

The need prompted a wave of support from the community. Churches and other community organizations held food drives, collecting 2,500 pounds of food for the Cupboard. A local volunteer donated half the cost of buying milk for a year, asking that it be used as a match to inspire more donations. According to Clark, nearly $60,000 in donations poured into Upper Valley MEND, with $20,000 directly allocated to the Community Cupboard.

What unfolded this summer offers a glimpse into what led to the Community Cupboard back in 1983: community churches noticing food insecurity in the upper valley, and coming together to create a local food bank. The momentum carried into the formation of the nonprofit organization Upper Valley MEND in 1988, which provides food, housing, healthcare and emergency financial services to one quarter of the area’s population today.

“If people know that they can rely on a safety net while they live here, people are able to build stability and personal resilience in their lives. That's sort of what MEND does, and the only reason why we can do that is because people step up and take care of this place, and they give to MEND, and they volunteer, and they tell their friends,” said Clark.

While Upper Valley MEND has become a go-to resource in the upper valley, its efforts are not isolated, nor unique to the region. Across North Central Washington, hundreds of nonprofit organizations are working together to weave an invisible net of support. Hand-in-hand, these groups form a civic and economic infrastructure of resilience — from local food pantries like the Community Cupboard, to regional support networks such as the Chelan-Douglas Community Action Council, to broad-based organizations like Our Valley Our Future and the Community Foundation of NCW, which pool resources and expertise to increase impact.

“It takes all of us. Everybody's got a role to play, whether you're the person who's buying an extra thing of peanut butter and some canned goods at the grocery store and leaving them at the checkout when they do their drive, or you're donating your dollars, or you're setting up a legacy gift to support the needs of the community for generations to come – we all play a part,” said Beth Stipe, Executive Director of Community Foundation of NCW, a philanthropic organization that supports over 600 charitable funds.

One of the Community Cupboard’s largest nonprofit partners is the Chelan-Douglas Community Action Council (CDCAC), whose Food Distribution Center provides about two million pounds of food annually to food banks and meal programs throughout the two-county region. CDCAC works with 60 to 70 partners, 20 of which receive direct support from CDCAC, such as food, funding, training opportunities, Americorps volunteers, and networking. Every quarter, it brings staff and volunteers from each of the pantries together to share information, coordinate, and discuss challenges.

“The fact that we have the Community Action Council supporting all of the pantries in the area, and we all sort of work together, really helps make sure that the people all across the valley can get food when they need it,” said Clark.

While CDCAC plays a large role in addressing food insecurity across the region, it’s only one facet of the community action council’s broader mission to alleviate poverty. It also helps with housing, education, adult literacy, home heating and weatherization.

“Each community action agency relies on feedback from their community. And so over the years, we've really focused on five or six different community services for particularly low income individuals,” said CDCAC Executive Director Alan Walker.

These initiatives are driven by information collected in a community needs assessment, which CDCAC completes every few years. Historically, the agency had the capacity to reach 50 to 100 people for the assessment, which would inform subsequent decisions.

For the most recent assessments, it has partnered with Our Valley Our Future, a collaborative nonprofit that sources diverse community input to guide long-term regional planning.

“Through Our Valley, that [assessment] grows to 3,000 people, and so we are just getting a much better understanding from a more diversified population of what they see are gaps or opportunities in our region,” said Walker.

Our Valley Our Future was created about a decade ago as a result of a handful of local leaders seeing the need for more organizational and jurisdictional collaboration to address the region’s ongoing challenges. Beginning at the grassroots level, the nonprofit uses surveys, interviews, and public forums to identify shared values and priorities across Chelan and Douglas counties.

“That creates a lot of power behind this sort of effort, because you’ve got thousands of people saying, ‘These are the changes happening, these are the challenges we’re facing, and here’s my own idea to make things better,’” said Our Valley Our Future Coordinator Steve Maher.

That feedback shapes a five-year Action Plan, which outlines community-driven goals and specific “Action Items,” such as projects, programs, or partnerships designed to address local needs. Each focus area also includes a “Game Changer” project, a long-term initiative aimed at advancing the region in a fundamental way.

“Because of what we do and how we do it, we create a framework for people to collaborate…That helps decide where public and private investment should go,” said Maher. 

The plan’s implementation is delegated to lead partners, which includes over 80 nonprofit organizations, businesses, community groups, and government agencies. CDCAC is one of those partners, leading several projects that align with its expertise in housing, education, and workforce development.

“If it's in that action plan, it has been community generated and driven, and so there's no question that people here support it. That puts a lot of power behind these programs and projects in the Action Plan when they go and seek funding,” said Maher.

One example falls under the plan’s focus area “Our Shared Prosperity,” which includes an initiative to grow Latino-owned small businesses. One of the needs identified to achieve this was 24/7 access to a licensed commercial kitchen – a project that aligned with CDCAC’s individual goals of supporting small businesses and small farmers, as well as providing nutrition classes. As a result, it is in the process of building a commercial kitchen at its new Food Distribution Center.

“You have a local family that are making tamales out of their home, and they're selling those predominantly to friends and family and through a network that they've established. Well, they'd really like to do more,” said Walker. “By creating a licensed commercial kitchen, that just opens up their window of opportunity to take this little, small dream of theirs and grow it.”

Our Valley Our Future serves as a facilitator – pooling resources to get every group on the same page, working together, and leveraging collective resources to drive change. The framework has not only led to concrete projects like CDCAC’s new commercial kitchen, but also helps public agencies, nonprofits and businesses align their efforts toward shared goals. To Maher, this kind of cross-sector collaboration is increasingly rare, but  vital.

“Things are so fractured right now – Congress has shut down, there’s major divisiveness going on on a kind of a national basis between the political parties. Nobody seems to be working together,” said Maher. “To be able to continue to do that on a local level and do it well is amazing. It really makes progress possible. It makes filling these needs possible. It also makes living in a community better.”

Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media