Pierce County Resiliency Hub

Relationships Build Resilience  

Major changes to federal funding and policy are reshaping Pierce County’s human services, from government agencies to grassroots nonprofits.   

In response, leaders from nonprofits, libraries, school districts, hospitals and local governments began meeting in late 2025 to form a Pierce County Resiliency Hub.  The goal of the Hub is to use reliable, locally owned data to identify and activate cross-sector approaches to ensure enduring support for county residents.  

Pierce County Resiliency Hub members gather monthly, with convening and data support from Greater Tacoma Community Foundation (GTCF).  These meetings offer regular time together for relationship building across service sectors, data sharing, peer problem solving, and planning for ways to work around the next disruption before it hits. Hub members share information and learnings between the Hub and the networks they are already engaged with. 

“Pierce County has always had the relationships.  What Philanthropy can do right now is resource those relationships—invest in the infrastructure that lets people who already trust each other work together to cultivate resilient adaptive ways of taking care of our communities.” – Seth Kirby, GTCF Chief Impact Officer

Reliable Local Data

Nonprofits and government agencies rely on government data to guide their work.  Things like public health surveys, dashboards, and research help track who needs services, where gaps exist and how the risk factors are changing.  Since early 2025, researchers estimate that more than 3,000 federal data sets have been removed from public access.  When data disappears, so does the shared picture communities need to make decisions that meet the needs of residents.  

To fill this gap, the Pierce County Resiliency Hub is working to build and maintain its own sets of reliable local data.  When government agencies and local service providers see the same picture, they can build solutions together. Building data that supports the shared visibility of Pierce County’s needs and opportunities is a valuable outcome of the Hub’s work.   

One example of the type of data the Hub is sharing is this Vulnerability Map which uses Census data to identify neighborhoods that have significantly higher concentrations of people vulnerable to hunger, loss of healthcare, housing insecurity, and restriction of justice. 

Credit: Data selection and methodology by Dr. Ali Modarres. Visualization and Mapping by Samantha Eilert.

Eight indicators were selected for this analysis:

• Disability
• Non-Citizen Foreign Born Population
• Median Household Income
• Uninsured Population
• Medicaid Recipients
• Income Below Poverty Level
• Same-Sex Households
• SNAP Recipients

For each indicator, Pierce County census tracts were ranked statistically. Ranking from all indicators were summed up and applied to the map above.

Using a ZIP Code overlay, the following five were identified as most vulnerable to negative impacts from federal funding and policy changes:

• 98402
• 98371
• 98499
• 98439
• 98444

 Resiliency Hub Members are bringing together data from their various service sectors to help build more data like this Vulnerability Map to help inform their work and identify Pierce County needs and opportunities. 

People Working Together  

The Pierce County Resiliency Hub brings together sector leaders from public agencies, service providers, elected officials, and funders.  Each Hub member serves as a lead to share information between their networks and the Hub.  Hub members are sharing information across a broad range of networks including: Pierce County Human Services Coalition, Mid-County Leadership, Emergency Food Network, Centers for Strong Families, The Black Collective, the Washington State Hospital Association, and more.

By bringing information from networks into the Hub, cross-sector leaders can make more informed decisions about their priorities, alignments, and action plans.

Connect With The Hub 

If you want to share information and data with the Hub or connect with members in your sector, you can contact them directly or email GTCF’s Community Impact Team.