Community
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Flexible Funding Accelerates Community-Led Solutions
Engaging a Local Advisory Team to guide funding decisions supports promising community-led solutions that might be overlooked or excluded by more traditional grant practices.
Winona Stevens (center) meets with her team at Native American Reentry Services
Winona Stevens had a difficult decision to make. A state contract offered funding to support the work of the organization she leads. But, the contract requirements undermined the cultural practices of the work.
Winona is the Executive Director and Founder of Native American Reentry Services (NARS). NARS is dedicated to helping Native American, Asian Pacific Islander, and other Aboriginal people overcome the challenge of incarceration and reentering the community post-incarceration.
The decision came down to the practice of sweat lodge ceremony. Winona explained, “Sweating promotes mental, emotional, spiritual well-being, and self-regulation. All of which are important for helping individuals maintain balance, heal, and grow while they are incarcerated and during reentry. When policies and funding guidelines limit how sweat lodge ceremonies can be practiced, the impacts for participants aren’t the same.
“…it should be about you… seeing you for what you’re really trying to do”
Native American Reentry Services staff participating in a smudging ceremony
“That’s ceremony, and ceremony is done a certain way and prayer is done a certain way and they [the state contract] just kind of took it upon themselves to make some decisions for how it was going to be done. And our Elders are of the mind that we have to adjust in certain ways based on the situation, but there is a line where it’s no longer ceremony and you’re just going through the motions, so we drew our line in the sand.”
For organizations, like Winona’s, that serve historically marginalized communities, it can be very challenging to find funding that aligns with their mission and allows them to do the work they know their communities need to heal and grow. “When you’re filling out grant applications, it’s tough to know what they want.” Winona explained. “And then sometimes you feel like you’re positioning yourself like, ‘what do they want to hear?’ but it should be about you…seeing you for what you’re really trying to do.”
Winona recently had a chance to practice that concept of seeing community organizations and leaders for ”what they’re really trying to do” by being part of the Pierce County Community Reinvestment Project Local Advisory Team (LAT). The Pierce County LAT is a group of 8 local leaders who worked together to guide $1.8 million in Community Reinvestment Project funding and an additional $239K in GTCF-aligned funding to 30 By/For Black, Latine, and Indigenous organizations in Pierce County.
“Normally I’m on the asking side.” Winona shared. “It’s very interesting to be on this side of the table and look at other grassroots organizations and be able to recognize them for the great work they are doing.”
COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT PROJECT LOCAL ADVISORY TEAM
“We knew that we needed some more flexibility, because there’s probably going to be great local ideas that people could do that we couldn’t account for.”
The Community Reinvestment Project (CRP), headed by Washington State Department of Commerce, is a community-designed plan to uplift Black, Latine, and Indigenous communities disproportionately harmed by the historical design/enforcement of criminal laws and penalties for drug possession (also known as the War on Drugs). To help implement the plan, Commerce partnered with community foundations in six counties across the state to convene Local Advisory Teams to help distribute funding through a low-barrier, community-informed process. Greater Tacoma Community Foundation (GTCF) contracted with Commerce to convene the Pierce County Local Advisory Team and support the delivery of funding based on the Team’s recommendations.
Korbett Mosesly, CRP Managing Director, explained how Commerce hoped these Local Advisory Teams would ensure important needs in each community wouldn’t get overlooked. “We knew that we needed some more flexibility, because there’s probably going to be great local ideas that people could do that we couldn’t account for. So, we wanted the Local Advisory Teams to have a flexible budget to deal with communications needs, so that people knew what resources were available, and some flexible funding to say, ‘Hey, we think that this is an important critical component to our community.’”
CHALLENGES OF LOCAL ADVISORY TEAMS
Engaging people with lived experience through a Local Advisory Team advances community-led solutions that funders might consider as “risky bets” or not rigorous enough. However, there are challenges that come with community-based cohorts. Seth Kirby, GTCF Chief Impact Officer explained, “Government and Philanthropic funders often create performative grant committees to endorse already-created plans. So, there has to be intentional design to make the process truly community-led. Representation is also a challenge because no single person or group represents an entire community. And, once a committee is selected, there can also be perception of self-service or favoritism.”
Desiree’ Wilkins Finch, President & CEO Tacoma Urban League, served on the Pierce County Local Advisory Team
DESIGNING FUNDING TO SUPPORT COMMUNITY-LED SOLUTIONS
To address these challenges and better understand needs, barriers, and approaches, GTCF consulted with community organizations already working with CRP contracts, GTCF Board Members engaged in CRP work, and a state-wide CRP Funder Consortium. GTCF then activated a 3-person Pierce County Local Advisory Team Leadership Table with people whose lived experience and community leadership aligned with Commerce’s CRP goals. The Leadership Table consulted with GTCF to inform team values, process, a timeline for funding, and recommendation of five additional community members to serve on the team.
” It felt like we were doing this together. We talked about the challenges of funding. We talked about what we knew and some of the roadblocks that we and others in our community were facing.”
Recognizing the importance of upfront resourcing for their efforts, each Local Advisory Team member initially had access to direct $100,000 in CRP regrant funding. This funding could go directly to each team member’s nonprofit or business, or to other CRP-aligned efforts in Pierce County.
In December 2024 and January 2025, Pierce County Local Advisory Team members engaged in a human-centered design workshop with UW-Tacoma Global Innovation & Design Lab to help develop a process for distributing CRP regrant funding. The design workshop included discussion about pressing needs and barriers they have encountered working within Black, Latine, and Indigenous-led community efforts. Team members also engaged in ideation around values that would guide funding and prototyping of distribution processes. Understanding that this iteration of CRP funding was allocated for a single fiscal year, the design workshop centered around the question, “How can a one-time investment make a long-term impact for Black, Latine, and Indigenous Kin communities in Pierce County?”
Pierce County Local Advisory Team Members with staff from GTCF and UW-Tacoma Global Innovation & Design Lab
With the goal of mitigating barriers from a complicated application process and meeting Commerce’s deadline of distributing funds by March 2025, the Pierce County Local Advisory Team decided on a process where each member recommended up to 5 recipients prioritizing grassroots efforts that meet critical needs of Black, Latine, and Indigenous-kin folks in the area. LAT members collectively reviewed all recommendations and GTCF engaged in a due diligence process for each one to ensure alignment with CRP goals and IRS regulations.
“We just know how to create communities. We know how to restore ecosystems. We know how to do relationships.”
In total, 30 organizations were selected to receive funding. Recipients included local farms that support food sovereignty, a family resource center that offers bi-lingual cooking classes, counseling and recovery programs that utilize traditional wellness practices, and a sports program that helps Native Youth reconnect with their cultural heritage through lacrosse, a historically Indigenous game.
LOCAL ADVISORY TEAM INSIGHTS
Local Advisory Team member Desiree’ Wilkins-Finch, CEO Tacoma Urban League, said one aspect she appreciated was, “the intentional community building. It felt like we were doing this together. We talked about the challenges of funding. We talked about what we knew and some of the roadblocks that we and others in our community were facing.”
Melissa Meyer, Rose Island Farms served on the Pierce County Local Advisory Team
Another team member, Melissa Meyer, owner of Rose Island Farm in the Summit-Waller area, shared, “How important it is to have ourselves be represented. BIPOC community members must be represented in these decision-making spaces to ensure this legacy of community care and support continues and that it gets centered – so it doesn’t get lost – because everyone says they want to do equity, but we’re actually ensuring that it does happen.”
Winona was excited that she was able to help direct funding to organizations in Tacoma’s Eastside neighborhood. “I was really glad to open some of those funds for the Eastside because that’s where our family is from. There are a lot of strong activists there… a lot of people really fighting for East Tacoma.”
For Winona and many of the other funding recipients, this infusion of funding from Commerce’s Community Reinvestment Project will help them continue to offer culturally-informed programs that have proven to make a positive difference for the people they serve. However, with the Community Reinvestment Project being a one-time investment, there is still need for sustainable support. Winona and other Local Advisory Team Members shared some of their insights on ways funders can help support community-led solutions.
WAYS FUNDERS CAN ACCELERATE COMMUNITY LED SOLUTIONS
Build Relationships
“I always say accountability takes trust and transparency. And that’s why I think it’s important for funders not to just be out here writing checks, but building relationships by being active in the community, walking through our doors, sitting and talking with us. Come down to the office and let me show you our programs. Come and talk to the volunteers. Come and talk to people whose lives have been changed because of the work that we do.”
-Desiree’ Wilkins Finch, Tacoma Urban League
“Yeah, I think it’s steering away from governments and getting creative with intentional relationships, and folks who are really wanting to listen and create something different outside the box that empowers communities locally.”
– Melissa Meyer, Rose Island Farms
Trust That Communities Know What They Need
“We just know how to create communities. We know how to restore ecosystems. We know how to do relationships. We’re often overlooked and left out of conversations to help, but we come from a long tradition of regenerating these ecosystems and relationships.”
– Melissa Meyer, Rose Island Farms
“We know what we need and people in this community are doing amazing work even with the little they have, so it’s giving them an opportunity to dream in a way they haven’t been able to dream and to bless other people. I know some of the people we funded. They wanted to give a grant to a Black business they knew that was doing important work in their community.”
– Desiree’ Wilkins-Finch, Tacoma Urban League
Fund What it Takes to Do the Work
“Capacity building is something that I know a lot of organizations need. We really need capacity-building support. We haven’t had our phones updated since the nineties. The staff deserves to be paid a fair wage. They deserve to have benefits. They deserve to have resources. We can only do that with unrestricted funds or funds specifically for capacity building.”
– Desiree’ Wilkins-Finch, Tacoma Urban League
“There was this grant, some nationwide funder, and it was pretty significant. We had to do something innovative and different. My idea was to create an Indigenous Database system that kept track of recidivism rates, but also captured Native specific work like sweatlodge and other ceremony. We didn’t end up getting that grant, but we got some other funding -that wasn’t as much – from a different source. We’ve tried to put the database together with the funds we did get, but it’s been a struggle because we don’t have enough to make it work with all the functionality we really wanted it to have. Databases seem to be thought of for larger, million-dollar organizations. Smaller orgs like ours don’t really get funding for that.”
– Winona Stevens, Native American Reentry Services
Long-Term, Sustainable Funding
“You actually do folks a disservice when you don’t resource people fully. Really step back and ask, ’What’s it gonna look like for you to really get this going? Do you need 3 years? Do you need 5 years? What does that look like?’ Let’s not just create something. Let’s create something that thrives, that has sustainability and longevity built in.”
– Melissa Meyer, Rose Island Farms
Contact GTCF to learn more about how you can help accelerate community-led solutions in Pierce County.
RESOURCES
Community Reinvestment Project -Pierce County Local Advisory Team
Washington State Department of Commerce Community Reinvestment Project
Protocol for Culturally Responsive Organizations — Coalition of Communities of Color
Native American Reentry Services