Convening

By planning, hosting and facilitating convenings, Seattle Foundation acts as a connector and catalyst, encouraging collective problem-solving, introducing new perspectives into public conversations, and aligning efforts across sectors to drive long term community well-being. Convenings offer opportunities to center community priorities as well as create safe spaces for genuine community building.

For example, grantee partners are convened regularly: N2N grassroots grantees gather each Fall to celebrate successes, learn from one another and participate in skill building and wellness activities. Policy oriented grantees meet casually to understand strategies, cross cutting priorities and offer support to fellow changemakers. 

Responsive Efforts

Given our role as a local community foundation, rooted in relational grantmaking, Seattle Foundation’s Responsive efforts allow us to respond to community concerns that meet immediate needs, leverage timely opportunities and respond to external crisis.

For example, in 2025 Seattle Foundation awarded $1M in Care + Response funding to organizations caring for and protecting the rights of communities targeted and most impacted by that year’s political and social climate. 

In addition, based on community surveys, we’ve helped to bring specific expertise requested, such as nonprofit risk assessments, advocacy do’s and don’ts, and other topics relevant to the political and social climate. 

Funder Collaborations

Funder Collaboratives are efforts to strategically increase our impact in the community by working with our institutional peers, enabling us to achieve more together than we can alone.

• Working with at least two other institutional philanthropic partners to achieve shared outcomes
• Established goals are aimed at something larger than a grant term
• Established mechanism for grantmaking exists to accomplish goals
• Shared decision-making model
• Values shared learning and refinement of individual practices
• Tied to CP Theory of Change and Blueprint for Impact