Antony Chiang, President of the Empire Health Foundation, issued a call to action for Threads Spokane participants: “This is our time.” Participants discussed how successes and learnings of past collaborations have built a foundation for working together even more closely on the path ahead.
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Leaders of the Spokane charitable community demonstrated great pride in their track record of collaboration among funders, nonprofits, government, and the corporate community. But this is a community that takes a long view of the work before them–recognizing that they need to work together in deeper ways, building greater levels of trust among players, in order to meet the challenges ahead. This is a community that exhibits a clear sense of shared ownership of its future.
As we have heard in communities across the nation, the sector in Spokane is concerned about downward pressure on resources, including the time to think and plan. The needs of the surrounding rural communities were more pronounced here than in other Threads cities, and leaders consistently spoke to the need to build new efficiencies into the ways in which their work is done.
