United Way of King County

United Way of King County is on a racial equity journey. We envision equitable and just communities where all people thrive. Systemic racism has caused our already unfair world to become even more inequitable. The only solution is to join with community and dismantle these racist systems that are at the root of the issues.

In our past, United Way has supported communities of color and made grant investments to try and offset the disparities caused by our racist systems. That isn’t enough. The power must be shifted to community.

Racial Equity in Action

How are we advancing racial equity? The commitment is for it to show up in all aspects of our work, including:

• Investing in community-based organizations that fight the effects of structural and institutional racism and reduce the inequities we see. See the full list of community investments.
• Developing new ways of doing work that puts the decision making power in the hands of the communities impacted by those funding decisions. Two examples of this are the Black Community Building Collective and the Indigenous Fund.
• Actively working to change the systems that cause inequities in the first place through programmatic work and advocacy agenda.
• Our commitment to racial equity includes working internally to continuously improve our organization.  In 2020 we committed to organizational assessment and training with the consulting team at Equity MattersThis link will take you away from uwkc.org.  Following the assessment, we have implemented a range of changes. This report from September 2021 shares the results of the assessment and on-going implementation.

We hope you’ll join us in this work.