Catholic Charities of Spokane
Promoting Life and Dignity throughout Eastern Washington
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Catholic Charities Eastern Washington affirms the dignity of every person by addressing the myriad problems faced by some of our most vulnerable and at-risk community members. For many community members, problems are generational and pervasive - such as poverty, homelessness, mental health challenges, addiction, abuse, and neglect. Many of the individuals and families we serve have no other option for services and support. Catholic Charities serves anyone in need, regardless of ethnic diversity, race, religious belief, age, physical condition, disability, sexual or gender identity or marital or family status. We also do not discriminate based upon sobriety or use of substances and do not believe that individuals need to prove their readiness for our programs by requiring programmatic or entry benchmarks prior to receiving services. We address grave disparities in our community and in our social systems by providing top-notch services and support that guide and empower individuals.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
House of Charity
Emergency, low-barrier shelter providing meals, clothing, shelter, shower, mail, and case management services to individuals experiencing homelessness. Includes overnight sleeping programs for men and women, as well as Respite services for clients discharged from the hospital needing extended basic care. Respite works in conjunction with Providence Healthcare and other local hospital medical providers, alleviating significant strain on their emergency departments.
St. Margaret's Shelter
Emergency shelter providing a variety of services for families experiencing homelessness to regain and stabilize their housing, including shelter, transitional housing, rental assistance, employment, and related housing services.
Permanent Supportive Housing
Service-enriched apartment homes for low-income seniors, persons with disabilities, farmworkers, and chronically homeless individuals and families across seven counties with over 1,100 affordable units.
CAPA/PREPARES (Childbirth & Parenting Assistance/Pregnancy & Parenting Support)
Childbirth & Parenting Assistance in Spokane and PREPARES in Eastern Washington provides assistance to pregnant and parenting individuals and families with children ages 0 to 5 years old. Available in 51 locations.
Catholic Charities Walla Walla
Regional office serving southeastern Washington with Senior Services and Housing, Immigration Services, Counseling, Emergency Assistance, and a recently opened youth shelter, the HOPE Center.
Immigration Legal Services
Legal services and representation for lawful immigrants and refugees of all nationalities, ethnicities and religions.
Rising Strong
A holistic, family-centered drug treatment and housing program that supports families while they begin to recover from addiction, heal from trauma, and rebuild their lives.
Food For All
This program, including a working farm and greenhouse as well as collaborative partnerships with local farmers’ markets, enables low-income SNAP eligible individuals and families access to sustainable, fresh, nutritional food throughout the region.
Senior Services & Volunteer Chore Services
Program assisting low-income seniors with transportation, various maintenance and household tasks, promoting independence for low-income elderly and disabled clients and allowing them to remain in their homes and community.
Parish Social Ministry
Adult formation in Catholic Social Teaching as well as Catholic Relief Services, Campaign for Human Development, and Emergency Assistance.
Where we work
Affiliations & memberships
Catholic Charities USA 2017
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of clients served
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Decreasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Catholic Charities is one of the largest and most comprehensive social and human services agencies in Eastern Washington. We address wide-ranging needs of vulnerable and at-risk populations in 13 counties, including one urban and dozens of rural communities. We aim to accomplish improvement and solutions to some of the biggest challenges in our varied communities.
We are working to solve homelessness; help families and individuals avoid homelessness; provide affordable, low-income, and/or fully-subsidized supportive housing for those who are formerly homeless, veterans, farm workers, seniors, and more; provide mental health resources, mentorships, and parenting classes for at-risk parents of young children; bring support and expert services to rural areas with limited resources; and provide legal services to immigrants and former refugees to help them restart their lives on a strong footing.
Catholic Charities Eastern Washington acts as an innovative and collaborative partner with many nonprofit, business and civic organizations in our region. We employ more than 300 people, engage more than 6000 volunteers, and touch the lives of more than 75,000 people every year.
Through all of this work, we affirm the dignity of every person. We do this in collaboration with our partners and clients through programs that respond to crisis, provide stability, and advocate in hope for people who need it most.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Catholic Charities Eastern Washington is engaged in a dynamic strategic plan with 6 foundational pillars. Three pillars describe what we do, and the remaining 3 characterize how we do the work.
Our work pillars comprise three phases commonly experienced by the most vulnerable in our community. The crisis response pillar encompasses our work providing shelter to those who are currently experiencing homelessness. We operate 3 shelters, covering single individuals, families, and families facing separation by Child Protective Services due to addiction. Our shelters utilize a housing first model and provide individual and/or wraparound services for short or longer-term stays. We also provide diversion services to prevent homelessness for those close to eviction.
The stability pillar includes our extensive housing portfolio. We provide housing to groups who are most vulnerable in our community, including low-income seniors and/or disabled, farm workers, veterans with children who have experienced homelessness, low-income individuals and families, and those designated as chronically homeless. The stability pillar also provides innovative food support for people who are low income and often without access to healthy and nutritious food, as well as chore services for low-income seniors wishing to age with dignity in their own homes.
The advocacy and hope pillar is made up of an array of programs addressing human needs beyond the basics of food and shelter. We provide furniture for low-income and newly housed residents, mental health counseling, high-quality childcare, pregnancy and parenting support for parents with children from birth to the child's fifth birthday, emergency services for diapers, clothes, utilities help, etc., and immigration legal services.
Our Catholic Charities Walla Walla office covers the southern, rural counties of Eastern Washington. Services provided from this office strategically cover all 3 pillars of our work: crisis response, stability, and advocacy, and hope.
The remaining three strategic pillars articulate how we do our work. They include taking care of our people as a high-quality employer; doing our work collaboratively through partnerships with the Catholic parish network as well as nonprofit, civic, and business relationships; and utilizing a dynamic and innovative approach to organizational development and strategy, central administrative support, and financial services.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Catholic Charities Eastern Washington is a regional leader serving vulnerable community members. We are the leading provider of supportive housing in the region, the official provider of Diversion Services for Spokane, leading the statewide PREPARES program for at-risk parents of young children, actively supporting regional offices in rural communities, and drawing national attention for our innovative and effective approach to providing housing, rehabilitation services, and support for those who are climbing out of homelessness. Catholic Charities Eastern Washington is also experienced and skilled at building and leading partnerships with community collaborators.
Catholic Charities is committed to the highest standards of good stewardship and accountability. Our policies and procedures have been reviewed and meet the standards of the charitable accountability of the Better Business Bureau's Philanthropic Advisory Service (2005-2014). Catholic Charities continually attains the coveted and highest 4-star rating for sound fiscal management by Charity Navigator. Catholic Charities adheres to all accreditation and other industry-appropriate standards and best practices.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Catholic Charities was founded in 1912, and over more than 100 years we have grown to serve more than 75,000 individuals a year. Here are some recent accomplishments:
Catholic Charities is a strong local partner. We recently mobilized community-wide partnerships to address homelessness in Downtown Spokane by moving our downtown shelter, House of Charity, to a 24/7 model.
Catholic Charities has drawn national attention for our approach to solving homelessness. We built 5 homeless housing buildings offering 250 units. These provide supportive housing to chronically homeless individuals, connecting them with resources and case management to help them reduce recidivism and address other needs, such as physical and mental health, vocational training, education, assistance accessing prescriptions and benefits, and more.
We partnered with Providence Health Care to care for individuals who are homeless and discharged from the hospital with nowhere to go. In our Respite Program, individuals receive care and guidance from a nurse on staff, meals, shower facilities, and constant supervision. This program saves local hospitals more than $15 million annually. The national Catholic Health Assembly presented the Respite Program at House of Charity with its highest honor, the 2016 Achievement Citation, for our innovative and life-changing program.
St. Margaret's Shelter for homeless families provides shelter, food, clothes, job coaching, educational resources, domestic violence support and training, parenting classes, case management, and ongoing aftercare. St. Margaret's earned a national Family Strengthening Award from the Annie E. Casey Foundation for excellence in programming for families (2006).
Catholic Charities remains flexible to meeting the most urgent needs in our community. Here's what's next:
We will open another 50-unit building in late 2017 for people experiencing chronic homelessness. We will build two more buildings in the next two years, bringing a total of 150 more units of affordable housing, as well as tens of millions of dollars in construction and related-industry jobs to the region.
We are in the process of building up our regional rural offices for self-sustainability.
We are constantly adding partners and services to our supportive housing programs to ensure our clients' needs are met and barriers to rehabilitation are minimized.
We worked with several service providers and community leaders to develop Rising Strong, a collaborative, data-driven program for families with parents struggling with addiction and facing the removal of their children to the foster system. At Rising Strong, parents and children receive on-site treatment and wraparound supports. This program will minimize the trauma experienced by children by diverting them from entering the foster system, save local taxpayers about a million dollars each year, and reduce recidivism of families struggling with addiction.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Catholic Charities of Spokane
Board of directorsas of 11/17/2022
Mary Helen Black
Kids Newspaper
Mark Murphy
Senior Helpers
Bishop Thomas Daly
Catholic Diocese of Spokane
Dr. Karlene Arguinchona
Providence Health Care
Steve Patterson
Eric Byrd
Bruya and Associates, PC
Fr. Stan Malnar
Catholic Diocese of Helena
Skip Molitor
Peggy Sue Loroz
Gonzaga University
Lara Perry
Mike Wilson
Beatriz Schweitzer
Schweitzer Engineering Labs
Rob McCann
Catholic Charities Eastern Washington
Sr. Bernadette Nannyonjo
Fr. Miguel Mejia
Mary Helen Black
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Not applicable