Looking back on a year of Work With Us

In the spring of 2025, the Alaska Humanities Forum unexpectedly lost significant federal funding, similar to many nonprofits across our state and country. During that crisis, we leaned into our core beliefs, centering the importance of connecting Alaskans and re-imagining our role in strengthening communities through partnerships. Staff Polly Carr looks back on a year of challenge, creativity, and community building.

In early June 2025 I was sitting down with some of our staff, brainstorming. “Which workshops should we offer? How will we schedule these with our existing work? Who on our team will be able to help?” And, of course: ”Are we really going to make this happen?”

I could feel the undercurrent of urgency: after losing significant federal funding, our organization was scrambling to figure out how to navigate this crisis, and each of us were trying to manage our own anxiety and stress from uncertainty. As Vice President of Programs and Partnerships, I felt a particular weight. We’d spent the past two years building our staff’s collective skills in order to offer more impactful workshops and community-building experiences. I wanted us to bring that vision to fruition, and I wanted to keep our team whole. All ideas were on the table.

It became a sprint, writing descriptions of workshops, formatting flyers, thinking through pricing, and having many conversations about how we could sustain our work through partnerships. Luckily, we weren’t working from scratch: the Forum has decades of hosting community dialogues, leadership development, cross-cultural engagement, and storytelling experiences. We just needed to direct our energy and knowledge toward a new strategy, and make it a reality.

The result was Work With Us, a suite of Forum workshops and facilitation services we anticipated offering to nonprofits, corporations, educational institutions, and other groups. We hoped this new fee-for-service strategy would help sustain our work, by collaborating with partners who share our commitment to strengthening communities.

After our initial announcement, we received an invitation from Chugachmiut to submit a proposal for a project. Chugachmiut Education Director Paul McDonogh, who is a graduate of our Leadership Anchorage program, said he reached out because of the Forum’s emphasis on connection, cultural awareness, and building trust. I was excited when they selected us to design and facilitate an inaugural Tribal Education Committee meeting and an Education Summit for the Chugach region (link to other blog?). And during the committee meeting, when I heard Elders say they once again felt hope for the future, it gave me a renewed sense of possibility. I felt a burst of additional confidence in our team and our approach to gathering people, thinking, “maybe we are onto something here?”

After that project, more opportunities emerged. All in all, we received more than 30 inquiries to collaborate! Through Forum workshops like Storytelling to Build Community and Seeing Your Own Lens, in addition to tailored facilitation services, we were able to support an array of partners in advancing their goals.

With each collaboration, I learned more about important work being done across Alaska, and was inspired witnessing so many people committed to our communities. Like listening to a group of passionate volunteers create agreements for how they want to show up for one another, as they show up for Veterans. Watching Elders, youth, and other community members identify important conversations they want to have about language revitalization. Seeing educators share their stories of becoming teachers and connecting culture to classrooms. Hearing parents recall powerful experiences that shaped their advocacy for child care.

These conversations were vital to the strategic priorities, plans, and work of each organizational partner; but they are often what gets left out when a group gathers.

Launching Work With Us gave us the opportunity to further define our approach to gatherings for potential clients. I remember a conversation with our CEO Kameron Perez-Verdia and staff this spring, about the role we wanted to play in supporting organization retreats, board meetings and planning sessions. We reflected that our strength as an organization rooted in the humanities – the exploration of what it means to be human– can help teams connect on deeper levels and grow trust; and then the creative solutions emerge, and the possibilities for what we can do- together- expand.

Our team has also grown a lot through this experience. Three years ago, our staff leading different programs did not have many opportunities to collaborate. But through Work With Us, Chuck, Gabbie, Julie and I teamed up to host an afternoon of workshops for educators; Eiden and Julie combined their skills to support school counselors in the Northwest Arctic; and Taylor, Kari, and Chenita traveled to Dillingham to facilitate dialogues on language revitalization.

This cross-team collaboration has carried into our public workshops. I facilitated Hosting Impactful Gatherings this winter with Kameron, Taylor, and Shoshi for the first time, and it was so grounding to experience the strength of our individual contributions and shared approach. Each time we facilitate together, it feels like we are building internal resilience, which feels critical in this time of unpredictability and uncertainty.

As I look back on the past year, I’m proud of our entire staff, for thinking creatively when faced with a dire funding situation, believing in ourselves, and taking a risk. And this imagination of possibilities and trust in one another has yielded results: to date, we have collaborated with 13 partners across the state, allowing us to serve approximately 270 Alaskans from more than 40 communities. These projects are bringing our staff to Dillingham, Fairbanks, Juneau, Kodiak, Nome and other locations. They are also fostering relationships with many entities we have not engaged before, and creating opportunities to deepen relationships with long-time partners.

As we look toward the coming year, we are already planning projects with new and existing partners. We are hoping to raise funds to increase our staff capacity to host even more workshops, large-scale events (summits, conferences), and facilitation services.

If you are interested in partnering with the Forum on a workshop, please check out our offerings and get in touch soon!

“I strongly recommend the Alaska Humanities Forum to any group that wants people inspired, connected, and ready to lead with their stories” ~ AKHF partner