Aligning Mission and Money: A Conversation with Duwamish River Community Coalition
Audience: Aligning Mission and Money
Are you or your organization considering bringing your finances into better alignment with your values or mission? Maybe you’ve got some misgivings, or you’re not sure where to start. Just Futures asked various organizations why and how they aligned their investments with their mission. We hope their answers can be a resource for you!
Here’s what Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC) had to say about aligning their finances with their mission. To read what other organizations are saying, check out our case studies collection. Note: Some of the people and workplaces featured in this series are Just Futures clients. Others are not. In all cases, their answers reflect only their unique experience aligning their investments with their mission.
1. What does it mean to you to align your financial resources with your mission and values?
For us here at DRCC, we are now 25 years old. We'll be celebrating our 25th anniversary in October. When we founded, Seattle's one and only river was designated a federal Superfund site. So, heavily polluted, heavily contaminated from centuries-long industry growth…I'm able to just put everything into the river, and just kind of be done with it. So, that looked like pushing Indigenous people right off the land, altering the river's natural flow and state, straightening it, channelizing it, making it deeper in order to be able to carry freight and wartime vehicles. Boeing operates here on the shores of the Duwamish river. So, I think a lot about the capitalism, the over-militarization of the region, colonization at the expense of all these people, Indigenous peoples, who lived around the area, farmers who tended to the land.And now, Seattle gets to prosper as a city, as a people, based off of those big changes that happened. But we live with the contamination and the repercussions of all those decisions. So, for DRCC, as an organization, when we were founded to advocate for the proper cleanup of the river for animals, habitat, and people, for riverside communities, it means kind of that rebalancing, right? Trying to make it right again. I don't think there's ever really a way to make it right. We can't undo a lot of the harm that has already been done. But as an organization, we try to make it right in our communities. We try to educate people, to hold a lot of the industry and the responsible parties accountable to what they say they're gonna do to hold their end in cleanup efforts of the river.
I work on the administrative side. Money, to me, isn't inherently dirty. It's just this arbitrary currency to exchange goods and services. So, I believe in trying to take as much of that and helping people as much as possible. We need money right now to make this world turn, and to make certain things happen. So I'd rather use money to support people. A lot of our staff live in this community, you know, frontline community, dealing with these environmental disparities coming from the pollution of the river. So, we’re trying to support people in our communities as much as possible.
2. What changes did DRCC make?
In 2024, we signed on with Just Futures to offer a 401(k) to all staff, regardless of status, 100% vested after their 90 days introductory period, and offering that non-elective Safe Harbor contribution, 3%. And I think that was really just cool to see, because a lot of our staff don't understand retirement. They don't have that kind of planning, they don't have that kind of intergenerational wealth, the financial literacy. It's been cool to just have that 401(k) plan as a baseline. You don't even have to contribute. DRCC is already contributing. And we’re helping to provide the education, the financial literacy. We’re supporting our staff to make their own contributions automatic, and then leveling up every year, an extra percentage. So that's one change from 2024.Prior to that, it was about adding health insurance, vision care, just the basics. This year was just about adding long-term disability, life insurance. And at the end of this year, I'm hoping to fully divest, close out our Chase account. We'll see how that goes, just trying to consolidate, and then also just divesting from big oil and institutions that support big oil.
We want to support more people in regenerative economies. We really don't want to put more money into the hands of those polluting the earth and digging oil.
We met with Just Futures’ Director of Investments Cisco about aligning our organizational investments with our values. That's very much an interest of ours. We’re still building our reserves and trying to think about what makes sense for us as we continue to grow as an organization.
We also have an upcoming change. We’re doing a compensation analysis. It’s our first time ever doing something like this. We’re doing market research to understand and plan for how we can compensate our staff not just at market rates, but to really pay our people the right amounts based off of the area, based off of experience. The goal is to really create more robust, transparent, equitable pay practices. So, it all goes hand-in-hand. It just makes sense to offer these sorts of, not just benefits, but also the infrastructure, and that transparency to our people. Because people are nonprofits’ biggest assets.
3. What challenges or concerns did you encounter?
I've only been at DRCC for 5 years, and so I don't know who the other competitors or options were. But from my understanding, in the interview process, Just Futures was on a short list of good fits. And I think because you guys were starting out, I think we were on a waitlist to learn more. A lot of this was done in 2022, 2023, before y'all launched.But everything I read and understood, it was just very much aligned and vibing with everything we stand for, too. And I think it was just magical to feel seen, and to know that there were trusted experts, like George and Mika, who were just so knowledgeable and open. They were easy to understand. They didn't talk over us. They were just very approachable. And the one-on-one office hours just made it really easy for me to imagine sending my staffers to you. I trust that you can meet them where they're at. So, I don't think there were any initial challenges. If anything, it was more, where have you guys been all our lives? It made sense in so many ways to partner and to have y'all lead us with our first ever 401(k). You’re exactly what we needed, then and now.
We don't know what we don't know, so I think it's just great to ask the questions to take that first step in reaching out and knowing that there are others who are going through a similar kind of grappling. And it was just so easy working with Just Futures. I just remember everything, the implementation, all the paperwork, it was just very easy. And thankfully our board leadership and our ED agreed. It's not like we had to pull teeth or convince anyone. You made a really convincing pitch. We were all in lockstep with each other.
4. What ultimately gave you confidence to move forward?
I'd probably have to look deep into our notes to see who else was there and why we ultimately chose Just Futures. Again, I just remember it was really our confidence in Just Futures, your team. I can't remember who else was on some of those initial calls, but I just remember George and Mika just being very available, accessible, very easy to understand. And there was no hard sale or pressure, or that kind of sleazy feeling where you're just trying to close a deal. It was just very calm and easy. They went over all the details, they gave recommendations about how to explain the plan to our staffers.Ultimately, we chose you because you offered a plan that was very easy for everyone. You made it clear that we weren’t locked into anything. We can always add more later on, or amend the plan to acknowledge and celebrate long-standing staff. But we really just wanted everybody to get an easy foot in the door. We wanted to start somewhere, knowing that a lot of our people haven’t had access to retirement investing before.
So, Mika and George were just very easy to understand, and available, and nice. And it just made it really, really easy.
5. How have the changes affected your organization, staff, members, or community?
For us, again, it just really builds on the things we offer our staff. I mentioned before that we've been doing a compensation analysis and working really hard to strengthen our benefits suite. There are little things that I know our staff are not thinking about until they have to, until something big, catastrophic happens. So, I love that part of my job is getting to do a lot of the long-term planning and look into boring things that are not top of mind for other people. The 401(k) adds to that sense of stability, that sense of long-term protection. You don't have to think about it. It's just automatic, and it's there when you need it.And again, putting our money where we want it to work for people. We believe in that, and that it doesn't have to be this dirty thing. It can be regenerative instead of this extractive thing put into institutions and corporations that don't really care about the people.
For our staffers, I check on the quarterly statements, and it's just wild how much the balances are growing. We try to talk about it every once in a while. I nudge folks to use the free 15-minute office hours with your experts. No question is too big or small or insignificant to just check in with someone.
And I try to do the financial reports for staff to just see where we are as a team. We’re at 100% participation rate. And I think our 401(k) helps with staff retention, people really feeling good about where they work and wanting to stay here longer. We have some folks who've been with us for over a decade. Some of them are thinking about retirement. Our last executive director, he didn't have that with DRCC. So, I'm just glad we're able to make those changes now for the people we have now and into the future.
Again, because our staffers are our community members as well, and when they are taken care of, in my view, the mission thrives, and the external constituents also get better services. The program delivery looks and feels different because our people are taken care of, from the inside out.
6. What advice would you give to another nonprofit or foundation considering similar changes?
Everybody is so different. Just start asking questions. Start somewhere, you know? Start learning, unlearning, getting the information you need, and making the moves that are right for the organization, for your people, where they're at.I know it took a lot of reserves for us to be able to keep the lights on year after year, and then envision our 401(k) plan. It made sense for us, given how we added incrementally. So, it took a lot of research, a lot of planning years in advance. I would hope that other groups who are considering this for their people and their staffers take all of that into consideration. I hope others find Just Futures as good of a match. And starting somewhere to learn is a great first move. Make the right moves that feel right-sized for the organization and for the people.
And I've learned, too, that it's hard to take things away from people once they're already given. So, start small, start easy. Start with something basic. Because it'll be harder to scale back. Really do your due diligence and research to gather the information that makes the most sense. It made sense for us after celebrating our 20th anniversary. So I hope there are other folks that can have that amount of growth, too. I hope more organizations can make retirement benefits a possibility for more and more of their people.
~dana wu / 吳 淑 如 (she/her/they/them), Director of Operations & Finance, DRCC
To learn about how Just Futures might help you align your finances with your values, book an intro call with us!