Who We Are
Who We Are Founded in 1987, SHSC was created to ensure that human service providers have a unified voice in public policy and budget decisions affecting our communities. Over nearly four decades, SHSC has helped secure significant local investments in human services, contributing to more than $365 million annually from the City of Seattle and over $180 million annually from King County. Our member coalitions represent over 200 organizations dedicated to shaping public policy:
➢ Coalition for Ending Gender-Based Violence
➢ Community Health Council of Seattle & King County
➢ King County Early Learning Coalition
➢ Meals Partnership Coalition
➢ Seattle Food Committee
➢ Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness
➢ Coalition for Equitable Aging
How We Work
SHSC serves as a coalition of coalitions, bringing together leaders, providers, advocates, and community partners to address shared challenges and advance common goals. We convene members through:
• A City Budget Task Force that develops annual policy and budget priorities
• A statewide Wage Equity Committee focused on improving compensation for frontline human service workers
• Community education and civic engagement efforts, including candidate forums and public policy resources
What We Do
SHSC provides leadership, coordination, and organizational support to member coalitions. Our collaborative structure helps organizations share information, align advocacy efforts, and address emerging challenges together.
Because our leadership is drawn directly from member organizations, our work remains rooted in the experiences of service providers, frontline staff, and the communities they serve.
Together, we are building a stronger, more equitable human service sector for Seattle and King County.
How we are funded
SHSC membership is open to human service coalitions, agencies, programs, and community members who actively support the vision and mission of SHSC, pay dues, and participate in SHSC coalition work. Our members can include for-profit/ non-profit organizations, individuals, community and civic groups, businesses, funders, and other interested partners
SHSC Mission
Leveraging the power of collective advocacy for a strong human services system that advances community well-being. We do this through policy advocacy, education and civic engagement.
SHSC Vision
We envision a community of abundant, accessible, and sustainable resources, where people are interconnected, unburdened, and thriving.
SHSC Values
• Collaboration – Pulling together with our individual and mutual gifts towards a common purpose.
• Sharing Power – including all voices and centering those with lived experience.
• Courage and resilience in the face of opposition and barriers.
• Collective Responsibility – answering to our community and honoring their trust with integrity.
• Liberation – working for our collective liberation across barriers and oppressive systems.
• Collective Care – practicing sustainable leadership and caring for one another with empathy.
• Solidarity – standing with targeted communities and acting in unity towards our collective liberation.
• Joy – facing difficult times with joy, abundance, and optimism.
History
In the early 1980’s, cuts at the federal level began to impact people on the local level in Seattle. Several groups of community health and human service providers began advocating to the City of Seattle for investments needed locally to help people meet their basic human needs. This group led a successful campaign for the first low-income housing levy in 1986 and then went on to form the Seattle Human Services Coalition in 1987 ensuring that there would always be a unified voice to advocate for meeting basic human needs. The City made its first investment in community-based direct human services in 1987 for $500,000. With steadfast advocacy and education, current annual funding is now over $50 million a year in general funds alone, plus locally levied funds. Persistent work by members led to this degree of local investment—found nowhere else across the country. Over two decades later the members of SHSC continue to carry that work forward. By being part of the Seattle Human Services Coalition you are cultivating both your organization, in order to better serve the community, and the common good of the community as a whole.
SHSC has broadened and deepened our impact over decades, but we all have stayed focused on our shared goal and vision to help our communities meet their basic human needs.
Milestones
The Agenda for a Just & Thriving Community - Seattle & King County can build a just and thriving community if we make it a community priority, and if we remove institutionalized barriers that keep this from occurring. The resources currently exist within our community to sustain the basic human needs of each of our community’s members if we choose to direct them towards that goal. Acting together and putting people first, we do have the power to reach our shared vision of a Just & Thriving Community.
The Agenda for a Just & Thriving Community (AJTC) goes beyond strategic or public policy planning: it is a process that defines and calls for the steps necessary to create a just and thriving community.
Learn more about the Vision for a Just and Thriving Community →
Creation of the 2020 Vision - in 1999-2001 coalition and community members began exploring the question "What would it take to meet basic human needs, including eliminating institutional racism, in King County by the year 2020?" This three year visioning process identified a broad but powerful shared goal that tied all of the diverse pieces of our community together.
Identifying Institutional Racism - The Identifying Institutional Racism (IDIR) Folio is a result of a collaborative commitment to eliminating racism. The IDIR Folio was created by human service providers to help an agency or program identify racism within the organization and provide tools toward eliminating it.
