The Housing Equity Action Research Team (HEART) was formed by Spokane Alliance to focus on expanding affordable housing in the West Central neighborhood. This effort grew from community organizing work at the West Central Abbey. Guests and volunteers at the Abbey's Wednesday night free Dinner Table identified the lack of stable, affordable, and dignified housing as their top concern. Members of the West Central Development Project, the West Central Abbey, and the Salem Lutheran Church have come together to work on this issue.

When the coronavirus pandemic began Dr. Luiz Manriquez, family physician and leader with the Spokane Alliance, knew that Spokane County did not have enough hospital beds to care for the number of predicted cases. With support from the WSU Elson S. Floyd School of Medicine and in coordination with the Spokane Regional Health District, the Spokane Alliance created the Community Health Monitoring Program.

Everyone gets sick. And everyone deserves time to get better, without risking their economic security or safety. Now about 40,000 workers in Spokane receive earned sick and safe leave, as a result of our work.

In response to our work, Spokane City and County secured local and state funding to build a Mental Health Crisis Stabilization Facility. The facility will divert people who have committed a low level crime and who have mental health or substance abuse issues from jail to a stabilization facility. 

In 2006, the IAF Northwest created SustainableWorks and in 2009 it was spun it off into a separate nonprofit economic development enterprise. SustainableWorks’ mission was to create living wage jobs and the pathways to them, provide social and economic benefits for families, and improve the environment by upgrading the existing building stock.

A regional initiative of IAF Washington - uniting the Spokane and Sound Alliances - the Budget and Policy Center, and other statewide allies, All In For Washington aims to engage Washington state residents to make a collective judgement on financing for government services such as K-12 education, higher education, physical and mental health care, public safety, and the social safety net.

To provide good jobs in Spokane and develop a skilled local workforce, we worked with the City Council to pass the Quality Jobs Ordinance. This built on our previous victory with the Spokane Public Facilities District (PFD) that made the expansion of the Convention Center and Arena a truly local project. 

Following almost 9 weeks of work by Spokane Alliance members and allied organizations, the Spokane Public Schools school board voted unanimously to provide a public statement to the community in response to recent bullying.