I was invited to facilitate a convening of the Human Services Coordinating Council of Hanover Township, with nonprofit leaders, township staff, and mental health board members. My leading question: what is the challenge you came into this work to help solve that still feels out of reach?
Funding that is tight, short-term and inflexible, forcing leaders to weigh mission against keeping the doors open. One response named the bind exactly: "how to focus on mission while still being financially viable". Too little affordable housing and too few shelters. Eligibility rules that screen out the very people a program was built for. Families squeezed by tighter budgets, reduced state assistance and fear around immigration. Insurers shaping decisions about care, and government changes that land hardest on clients.
The top answer was each other
My follow-up: what would most help? The top answer, even ahead of money, was each other.
Then they got to work, right there in the room. Asked what they already had that could open a door for someone else, agencies offered access to crisis funds, free legal clinics, and university connections for interns. One agency that had climbed out of the negative offered to walk others through the reserve policies behind its turnaround. Another left having met an intern candidate. The most-repeated ask was a directory of who does what, so no one solves these alone.
All of that started with two questions. A powerful question gets people sharing what is really going on, and these two work well beyond human services. Try them with your team, your board or your network:
- What challenge did we come here to help solve that still feels out of reach?
- What do we already have that could open a door for someone else?
What the Council named as still out of reach has its own post: Help That Exists, and the Distance to It.