Turning Commitments into Action
Five years ago, amidst the COVID pandemic and a historic uprising for racial justice, we realized we were still mostly asking communities to react to ideas we had already formed, which didn’t respond to the most pressing needs of our communities and community-led organizations. Recognizing this reality, we committed to trying something different — letting community leadership shape things from the beginning.
That shift has changed more than our programs. It’s affected how we decide what to fund, how we think about risk, what success looks like, and who gets to make the call when trade-offs are hard. For us, “centering community” stopped being a step in a process and became the context for everything we do. The culmination of this change was our adoption of a new name and identity in December 2025.
Becoming Waters Meet
As we’ve reimagined our relationship with community and how we approach our work, we’ve taken an important step to redefining who we are. Our new name reflects a deep belief in the power of coming together. Just as a creek feeds a stream, and a stream swells as it joins a river, we believe meaningful change happens when people, ideas, and experiences meet in shared purpose.
Community impact by the numbers.
We believe, and community has shown us, that our role moving forward is to support community leaders and by and for grassroots organizations to build the power necessary to dismantle and rebuild broken systems.
of all our 2024-2025 grants and sponsorships went to by and for grassroots organizations serving prioritized communities
brought into community through a combination of grants and contracts with service providers in 2024-2025
Building Connections Initiative
Flowing with Community, Building Momentum
Operationalizing our community-led approach to funding meant rethinking how we run programs and disburse grant funding. Building Connections represents our commitment to 20 by-and-for organizations, who we are supporting with general operations funding and engaging in a co-creative process to build a stronger nonprofit sector in our region.
As our flagship program, Building Connections represents a major investment of our foundation’s time and resources, as well as the time and expertise of our community leaders. Waters Meet began this program by intentionally building space in community and fostering connection between community leaders.
We hosted three separate two-day sessions with cohort members and a dinner celebration where we shared space, stories, and traditions. These meetings have been a space where community leaders have created and strengthened the relationships necessary to build momentum towards collective action.
The cohort experience is being guided by the Gathering of Native Americans (GONA). This approach is built around phases of belonging, mastery, interdependence, and generosity. In 2025, we intentionally centered grounding and belonging to build a strong foundation for our work together.
Key themes for the initiative
So far, partners have identified five themes that we will continue to develop and collectively respond to, including:
Creating & Mobilizing Shared Co-Op Infrastructure
Collaboration & Alignment for Solidarity
Liberating Ourselves & Others through Healing, Health & Wellness
Gathering the Continuum of Collective Wisdom & Legacy Builders
Advancing Collective Action
March 2022
Equity Healing Framework
The Equity Healing Framework created a new vision for how Waters Meet Foundation (then Empire Health Foundation) would approach our work and relationship with community. This new approach emphasized the need to transition from designing and implementing strategic initiatives to deeper community partnerships and support of community-led efforts.
Waters Meet Timeline
March 2022
The Equity Healing Framework created a new vision for how Waters Meet Foundation (then Empire Health Foundation) would approach our work and relationship with community. This new approach emphasized the need to transition from designing and implementing strategic initiatives to deeper community partnerships and support of community-led efforts.
2023
In 2023, Waters Meet Action Fund (then Empire Health Community Advocacy Fund) supported the Justice Not Jails campaign to defeat Measure 1 — a Spokane County proposal focused on building more jail cells. Justice Not Jails was a multi-racial coalition of stakeholders, many with lived experience with the criminal justice system. The campaign was a resounding success and the ballot measure failed by a nearly 2 to 1 margin.
2023
As we sought to live into the values of the Equity Healing Framework, we worked as staff, leadership, and board to recenter our organization’s relationship with community. Through community dinners, individual meetings, and outreach we explored new ways of showing up in community. An important aspect of this outreach was the report Activating Community Voice, produced by Roanhorse Consulting. This document reflected how our community partners view the way we were showing up in community and created space for reflection and growth for our organization to better walk alongside community.
February 2024
In 2024, our foundation board adopted a new Impact Investing Policy that aligns with our commitment to leverage our full resources on behalf of our community partners. We are shifting investments from traditional markets to our local community partners. Traditionally, we have only activated 5%-8% of our resources directly towards our mission each year. Our goal is to shift 100% of our investments to mission alignment and align 10-15% of our investments directly with our community partners and program work. These investments will build collective wealth of communities that have been persistently excluded from access to capital and investment.
May 2024
The 10-Year Strategic Direction created an operational framework for living into our organizational commitments to community. We believe that people with vision, and organizations with resources, can foster the sustainable systems change necessary to achieve health equity.
April 2025
The Building Connections Initiative, a cohort experience co-created with 20 by and for grassroots organizations from across our region, is our effort to align our grantmaking and programming with community. This initiative includes annual general operating grants and program that’s designed with and for the grassroots organizations leading the cohort.
September 2025
Since 2023, Waters Meet Action Fund has been working with re:power — a nationwide power building and organizer training organization — to build advocacy and organizing skills with our community partners and leaders. In September 2025, Waters Meet Action Fund hosted the re:power Spokane Summit with our partners at Inatai Foundation. This four-day training event brought more than 50 organizers from across our region to build skills and lasting connections.
December 2025
As we’ve reimagined our relationship with community and how we approach our work, we’ve taken an important step to redefining who we are. Our new name, Waters Meet, reflects a deep belief in the power of coming together. Just as a creek feeds a stream, and a stream swells as it joins a river, we believe meaningful change happens when people, ideas, and experiences meet in shared purpose.
Waters Meet Foundation has been directly engaged with the homeless service community since the summer of 2022. Throughout this work we have focused on using our resources to encourage equitable investments in our unhoused community and support frontline service providers.
Our convening work led to a far more prominent role when we stepped up to administer state funding designated to pay for the decommissioning of Camp Hope through the Encampment Resolution Project (ERP). Our role in that project continued into June 2024, when the City of Spokane took over the ERP contract. From October 2024 through the end of September 2025, we played a similar administrative role as the contracted operators of the city of Spokane’s Housing Navigation Center and Specialized Shelter model.
While we are no longer under contract with the state Commerce Department and ended our contract to coordinate the city’s dispersed shelter model in September, we continue to look for opportunities to support our unhoused community. The latest opportunity came about in the form of one-time money that we were able to leverage to buy 30 tiny home units.
We are currently in the site development phase of the pilot tiny home project — New Roots Tiny Home Village. Our goal is to complete development of this project in 2026 in order to pilot this long sought housing solution in Spokane.
Community Reinvestment Project
Waters Meet facilitated the convening of Spokane County’s Local Advisory Team. This team of community leaders guided Commerce funding throught the Community Reinvestment Project (CRP) — a statewide initiative investing in Black, Latine, and Indigenous communities disproportionately impacted by the racist war on drugs.
distributed in state funding to local organizations
organizations led by people of color
local people served by funded organizations
of those served were people of color
Waters Meet Action Fund
Integrating our Policy and Advocacy Work
In 2024 and 2025, Waters Meet Action Fund, the 501(c)4 policy and advocacy arm of our organization, made important progress in building community power in alignment with our 501(c)3 Foundation work.
These two years saw several milestones, including:
A multi-year advocacy capacity building campaign in collaboration with the national grassroots organization re:power that culminated in a four day skills building re:power Spokane Summit
State legislative advocacy and education in partnership with Capitol Path Consulting
The launch of a dedicated website and social media platforms for Waters Meet Action Fund.