We advocate for durable, equitable and sustainable funding for the youth development sector.

Thriving organizations are fully funded to ensure living wage jobs for their employees, sufficient and updated infrastructure (space, technology, and materials), and the full cost of doing business as a not-for-profit. We advocate to ensure a diverse range of youth-serving nonprofits have the infrastructure and resources needed to provide high quality, identity affirming, strengths-based supports for young people.

Why advocacy?

We engage in advocacy in order to bring awareness to the cross-cutting issues that affect young people, build public will to ensure stable and equitable funding for high-quality directive service programming to support young people to reach their full potential.

How do we engage?

• We convene an Advocacy Committee representing our membership to guide our advocacy work and build out our annual member-led advocacy agenda.
• We inform and catalyze our members to be engaged in our annual agenda through regular online communications (including newsletters) and live convenings with key decision makers and elected officials.
• We represent the interests of our members in various coalitions across the region. YDEKC is a member of the Seattle Human Services Coalition Steering Committee, the King County Alliance for Human Services, the Brave Commitments Table, Washington Nonprofits, the Child Welfare Advocacy Coalition, and the Washington Coalition for Homeless Youth Advocacy. Nationally, we are also part of the Every Hour Counts coalition of intermediary organizations for thriving youth.
• Learn about YDEKC’s Advocacy and Policy Operating Protocols here.