Welcome to a new year with Civic Commons

Note: The following is an email update that was sent to Civic Commons contacts in January 2022. Not seeing it in your inbox? Sign up for future email updates via the form at the bottom of our website.

Greetings from Civic Commons, and welcome to a new year!

Civic Commons continued to grow and evolve in 2021, our third year in operation. Our mission — to reimagine the systems for regional change by elevating community voice, fostering belonging, and igniting new models of cross-sector collaboration — remained as important as ever. As our region continues to face major disruptions and challenges, we can see clearly that shared prosperity, belonging, and network weaving are essential components to recovery and healing.

Through it all, we have relied on you, our supporters and friends, to do this important work. Keep scrolling for some of the highlights from 2021, and a look ahead at what’s to come in 2022.

(L to R) 2021 Civic Commons team members Michael Brown, Alex Peri, Frank Nam and Caitlin Moran. Photo by Guenther Creative.

Growing our team

We added two new team members to Civic Commons in 2021 and a third at the start of 2022:

Marty Kooistra (he/him) is Civic Commons’ newest project manager. A champion of coalition-based work at the intersection of community development, equity and affordable housing, Marty previously served as executive director and board president of the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County and has held several leadership roles with Habitat for Humanity.

Caitlin Moran (she/her) is our new content and communications manager. Caitlin comes to us with a background in journalism and community engagement; most recently she was director of The Evergrey newsletter.

Alex Peri (he/him) is the new operations coordinator for Civic Commons. Alex brings over a decade of operations expertise to Seattle Foundation and Civic Commons, with experience working across both the public and private sectors.

And finally, a note about one of the original members of the Civic Commons team, Frank Nam. At the start of January, Frank transitioned away from the team to start his own consulting business. But because Frank is family, he will continue to be integrally involved with Civic Commons and continue to support the We Belong Here work as a project consultant.

Frank has a wealth of knowledge and cross-sector experience that will be vital as we continue to support a narrative around belonging and shared prosperity. You can continue to reach him at his new email address: franknam@gagyoconsulting.com.

Reaching new audiences

With a dedicated person leading our content and communications efforts, we have revamped our social media presence and launched a new Instagram account. (You can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.)

The Civic Commons website continues to be a source for connecting with the community and learning more about what we’re up to. On our blog, we launched a feature called Common(s) Questions where we ask community members about everything from the local equity efforts they’re spearheading to their favorite spots for out-of-town guests.

And check out the latest Civic Commons video for a revamped look at our mission and work.

Connecting and building belonging

With in-person events on hold, 2021 was another year of Zoom calls and virtual gatherings. That did not stop us from connecting and convening folks around our goals of belonging and shared prosperity.

We began 2021 with our second-annual Belonging Gathering, a virtual summit of with dozens of cross-sector partners held over three days in February and March. These conversations formed the foundation of a regional Belonging Compact — more on that below.

Then, in April, we brought a panel of experts together to introduce the community to the Scorecard for Shared Prosperity. In November, we dove deeper into the Scorecard with a lunchtime workshop where participants engaged in the first three Scorecard dimensions and shared ideas for furthering shared prosperity in our community. (Keep scrolling to learn more about what’s new with the Scorecard.)

We also teamed up with The Evergrey for a virtual event called So You Voted ... Now What? The February conversation was a follow-up to the 2020 presidential election and featured U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, King County Council member Girmay Zahilay and Andrés Mantilla, director of the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

The We Belong Here podcast continued with a second season and six new episodes. Two highlights were a conversation about stopping Asian American hate and a discussion about helping Afghan refugees in our area. Check out all this year’s episodes on our website or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Using shared prosperity as our guidepost

The Scorecard for Shared Prosperity underwent a regional expansion and graphics refresh in late 2021, thanks to a collaboration with Greater Seattle Partners. You can now access specific data for King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties, or view the dimensions and indicators across all four counties in the regional view.

Along with hosting two Scorecard-focused virtual events, we also penned a Seattle Times op-ed about the importance of shared prosperity and released a video that gives step-by-step information on how to use the Scorecard. 

What’s ahead in 2022

The upcoming year brings even more exciting new initiatives and programs from Civic Commons. We are currently at work on a new Belonging Compact, a collaborative document that outlines what belonging is, why it is important, and the set of shared principles guiding these efforts. The third-annual Belonging Gathering will take place this spring — stay tuned for details!

Our Democracy Network — a small group of nonprofits, government agencies and service providers that first convened ahead of the 2020 election — is working to evaluate the local civic engagement landscape and develop a tool for gauging the success of related engagement efforts. This project is taking place in partnership with Public Agenda, a national research and public engagement organization, and is intended to facilitate a greater understanding of civic life in the Puget Sound region and lay the foundation for a variety of future civic initiatives.

And speaking of connecting with partners, Civic Commons has also brought together several mission-aligned organizations (Seattle CityClub, Citizen University, Leadership Tomorrow, sea.citi, and NewImpact) under the initial frame of a Civic Collaboratory. Along with sharing many of the same goals, this group faces many of the same challenges around scaling our work for greater impact. We will convene monthly to see if, working together, we could leverage our collective impact and accelerate our work toward civic transformation.

Last but certainly not least, we’re thrilled to be working with community leaders and national partners on an effort connected to the racial wealth gap. We’ll have more to say about this in the next couple of months, so stay tuned!

The Civic Commons team is beginning this year with a deep sense of gratitude to all of you who help make this work possible. We always welcome your feedback or ideas; feel free to get in touch at the email addresses below.

Until our paths cross again, we wish you a safe and reinvigorating start to 2022.

—Civic Commons staff