COO Funded Partners
Updated COO grantee partners by strategy area below.
To read more about COO Partners, check our News page.
Jump to a section: Systems & Policy Change | Place-based and Cultural Communities Partnerships | Learning Community
Systems & Policy Change
Our institutions and policies shape who has access to wealth, health and prosperity.
Communities of Opportunity partners are working to advance policies that:
Support community priorities
Integrate equity into policies at all levels: neighborhood, organizational, city, county and state, and
Expand representation of cultural communities by stepping into leadership roles
Systems and Policy Change awards are administered by the Seattle Foundation.
*King County Best Starts for Kids funds are restricted from use in political campaigns, state lobbying or any non-charitable or illegal purpose.
2023-2025
2020
2023-25 Award - Systems and Policy Change - $200,000
The partnership between the White Center Community Development Association (WCDA), Community Roots Housing, FEEST, Healthpoint, Southwest Youth and Family Services and YES Foundation, seeks to mobilize a community-wide policy advocacy effort to create a community preference housing ordinance for King County.
2023-25 Award - Systems and Policy Change - $125,000
Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) will be coordinating and mobilizing its organizing and policy strategy efforts around health equity and unemployment insurance for all, regardless of immigration status.
2023-25 Award - Systems and Policy Change - $125,000
In 2023-2025, Voices of Tomorrow (VOT) will work toward systems and policy change that will bring economic equity to immigrant and refugee Family Child Care (FCC) providers in King County.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
Funds will be used toward the Tubman Center for Health & Freedom’s ongoing efforts to address the urgent need for more BIPOC health practitioners by driving policy change to secure public investments in innovative, community-designed healthcare workforce solutions.
2023-25 Award - Systems and Policy Change - $125,000
In 2023-2025, The Mockingbird Society (TMS) is seeking to advocate for policies to establish a racial equity focused county-level “Office of Homeless Youth,” a cross-system coordinating body among housing, employment, education, behavioral health service providers, child welfare, juvenile justice systems and service providers which will center youth and young adults experiencing homelessness and engage them as core members.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
Surge Reproductive Justice (SRJ) will support and facilitate the Doulas for All coalition, a doula and birth worker led effort, working to address maternal and perinatal health outcomes by advancing Medicaid reimbursements for doulas.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
Through “Campaign for Cash” (CFC) and the CFC's Core Leadership Team, Statewide Poverty Action Network will work to change the narrative around poverty and champion cash assistance policies in Washington State.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
Through policy advocacy, the Seattle Indian Health Board will continue its work to implement culturally attuned systems and policies for addressing the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People crisis and reducing gender-based violence among Native populations in Washington State and the greater Seattle-King County Area.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $200,000
The partnership between the New Americans Alliance for Policy and Research, Somali Community Services of Seattle, Partners in Employment, Iraqi Community Center of Washington and Horn of Africa Services is looking to give refugees a platform to voice their needs to policy makers in order to tackle the inequities in economic opportunities available to them.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
Funds will be used toward Open Doors for Multicultural Families’ ongoing efforts to support and provide community oversight to the implementation of new language access programs and policies in Washington’s K-12 public school system.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
By utilizing tactics that center the voices and experiences of those most directly impacted by the criminal legal system, Look2Justice (L2J) seeks to expand its current network of 400+ organizers to at least 1,200 organizers over the next years to reach 10% of the incarcerated population across Washington State and collaborate towards advancing policies that will transform the state's criminal legal system.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $200,000
The partnership between the Indian American Community Services, Muslim Community Network Association, Eastside for All and the Housing Development Consortium seeks to advance policy and systems change toward housing justice while effectively addressing racial disparities in East King County.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $200,000
This partnership between the Horn of Africa Services, Somali Community Services of Seattle, and the Oromia Center in Washington seeks to address gun violence and the school to prison pipeline that affect BIPOC immigrant and refugee youth disproportionately in the New Holly, Rainier Vista, High Point and Yesler Terrace communities.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
FEEST will continue to develop low-income BIPOC and immigrant youth leaders to build collective power and organize for transformative and systemic change in their schools, including building a culture of holistic health equity in schools in South Seattle and South King County
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
In 2023-2025, Fair Work Center (FWC) seeks to build organizing power among food service industry workers to ensure employers follow existing local and state policies and workplace protections.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
Disability Rights Washington (DRW) seeks to support its Disability Mobility Initiative (DMI) with the long-term goal of advancing policy toward the prioritization of funding to create an accessible and equitable public infrastructure and transit system that benefits all Washington residents.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $200,000
The Crescent Collaborative (Africatown Community Land Trust, Byrd Barr Place, Community Roots Housing, First Hill Improvement Association, Friends of Little Saigon and Seattle Chinatown International District PDA) are working together on a multi-pronged, community-driven anti-displacement strategy that unites and elevates cross-community voices around shared issues in affordable housing; economic opportunity (small businesses); healthful, safe communities; and community capacity with an eye towards equitable community development.
2023-25 Award - Systems & Policy Change - $125,000
Chief Seattle Club will continue building its organization’s platform for long-term homelessness and housing advocacy for Native people in King County.
2023-25 Award - Systems and Policy Change - $125,000
In 2023-2025, Casa Latina (CL) will continue its work to improve the working conditions of domestic workers in Seattle, King County and Washington State by changing the policies that affect them.
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience & Response: $125,000
Gender Justice League and partners, The Black Trans Task Force and Heartspark Press will activate, and advocate for trans and non-binary people who are experiencing significant barriers to safe housing (permanent and non-permanent) due to the intersection of transphobia, misogyny, and the COVID-19 crisis.
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $30,000
InterIm CDA will advocate for the promotion of equitable development and ensure that the COVID-19 crisis is not used to further displace Asian, Pacific Islander and Refugee and Immigrant communities.
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $125,000
To support organizing with Black and Indigenous communities and communities of color in Seattle and King County towards a just COVID-19 recovery framework that centers policies that prevent further displacement and gentrification and promote resiliency through community stewardship of land.
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $50,000
OneAmerica will continue advocacy efforts to shape a just, community-led recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic.
2020 Grant Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $125,000
CHOOSE 180 and Community Passageways will work in partnership for the development of a sustainable advocacy strategy led by those most impacted by mass incarceration, thus ensuring the health and well-being of incarcerated or court-involved young people; and that equitable public health and systemic changes made in response to COVID-19 are expanded upon and made permanent.
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $133,000
The Community Health Board Coalition will support systems change and policy development work that will address the disparate impact of COVID-19 among communities of color by focusing on addressing mental health issues that are rooted in structural racism and exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19.
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $42,000
The Muslim Community & Neighborhood Association will advocate for city policies in East King County that protect low-income immigrant and refugee renters from eviction during and after the COVID-19 crisis.
2020 Award - Policy & Systems: $100,000
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $20,000
Got Green fights for transformative change at the intersection of racial, economic, gender and climate justice by building community power in South Seattle.
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $50,000
The YES! Foundation of White Center serves children, youth and young adults through relationship based programs that foster self and social awareness, promote education and repurpose power in an under resourced community.
Also See Currently Funded Partners, Above
2020 Award - Policy & Systems Change: $100,000
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $50,000
Seattle Indian Health Board (SIHB) is a community health center that provides health and human services to its patients, while specializing in the care of Native people. SIHB is recognized as a leader in the promotion of health improvement for urban American Indians and Alaska Natives, locally and nationally.
Also See Currently Funded Partners, Above
2020 Award - COVID-19 Resilience and Response: $57,000
The Statewide Poverty Action Network is an anti-poverty advocacy organization that works through in-person community organizing and online advocacy to advance equitable policy solutions for low-income people in Washington state.
2020 Award: $200,000
The Collaborative will pursue a multi-pronged, community-driven anti-displacement strategy that unites and elevates communities’ voices for: affordable housing; economic opportunity (small business); healthful, safe communities; and community capacity to engage in equitable community development.
2020 Award: $100,000
Work to strengthen the systems and policy work to build a survivor-led movement in King County that transform the criminal legal system and promote policies that support the people most impacted by violence.
2020 Award: $100,000
Para Los Ninos (PLN) will educate and support Latinx families engagement to support students’ academic success from birth on.
2019 Award: $40,000
The WICRC will build relationships with public officials and develop leadership within the Native community through a series of advocacy and listening events with the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families.
2019 Award: $75,000
Civil Survival provides civic education and mobilizes formerly incarcerated individuals and their network of family and friends to advocate for greater participation and advocacy that results in better quality of life and outcomes, including in housing and employment.
2019 Award: $40,000
This coalition harnesses the voice of parents and young people to build community power and advance policy goals and strategies that end the use of discipline practices that disproportionately affect students of color in public schools.
2019 Award: $125,000
A collaborative project to increase the influence of two-spirit, gender diverse, queer, and transgender people of color to lead grassroots movements and demands for change by becoming meaningfully involved in the political process. Participants will work to address issues that are specific to these communities on a local and regional level and in the neighborhoods where they live and work.
2019 Award: $30,000
This organization will engage small family businesses to mitigate changes in the neighborhood and to strengthen Little Saigon in Seattle's International District as a cultural hub for the larger Vietnamese population.
2019 Award: $40,000
This project would increase advocacy capacity among Somali parents through practical skill building. The Task Force will advocate for policy changes to make public schools more accessible to and effective for Somali families and to use those newly developed skills to address other community needs.
2019 Award: $29,700
This project will strengthen cross-sector collaborations between neighborhood organizations and the school district to promote healthy youth development in Southeast and Central Seattle and more effectively address mental health and violence issues in the community that hamper the futures of students.
Place-based and Cultural Community Partnerships
In King County – one of the most prosperous metropolitan regions in the United States – race, income, and ZIP code are major predictors of a person’s health and life expectancy. Low-income communities and communities of color regularly experience institutional racism that leads to disparities in health and well-being. To reverse these inequities, these new partnerships are designed to support leadership and civic engagement among groups that have historically been marginalized, sharing in decision-making and power, and working together to improve outcomes for all communities in our region.
Learning Community
Capacity building and shared learning are central to the vision of the COO Learning Community and are necessary in disrupting systemic racism and building greater equity in King County. COO provides opportunities for people to learn from one another, develop tools, test models together, build skills, and strengthen relationships and networks.
Through sharing experiences and lessons, COO aims to uplift local endeavors, bring communities and leaders of change together, and build upon successes for long-term change. These aims are supported by activities under four main Learning Community strategy areas: Active Learning, Critical Connections, Capacity Building & Equity Innovations.
The outcomes of these activities create skills, tools, infrastructure and relationships needed to move King County closer to our equity goals.
Sama Praxis is a trusted consultancy that provides strategic coaching and design thinking for people working together to build a just and loving world.
Headwater People is designing and hosting a series of communications workshops for Communities of Opportunity in 2021!
Contacto Consulting is a consulting firm that brings together people and organizations to foster equitable communities and belonging, supporting COO communications capacity building.
COVID-19 Storytelling: King County Equity Now (KCEN) will focus on solutions to improve the on-the-ground, lived experiences of Black communities in King County experiencing the disproportionate impacts of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis.
COVID-19 Storytelling: Collectivo de Pueblos Orginarios will engage South King County youth and adults who are from indigenous communities of the P'urhepecha, Ñuu Savi and Kichwa Otavalo.
COVID-19 Storytelling: Washington Dream Coalition will engage members of undocumented communities throughout King County to explore research questions relevant to community needs and resilience and systemic changes for long-term impacts.
COVID-19 Storytelling: Tesfa Program will uplift experiences of Amharic-speaking Ethiopian community members throughout King County.
COVID-19 Storytelling: Centro Cultural Mexicano will focus on the direct and estimated long-term effects of COVID-19 on low-income Latino children in King County, including housing stability, education, food security, physical health, and social-emotional well-being.
The National Development Council (NDC) leads a consultant team including, BDS Planning & Urban Design, Craft3, and Moving Beyond on the COO Learning Community Commercial Affordability Pilot Project.
Cascadia Consulting Group supports the administrative and coordination of the COO Learning Community.