FrontLine Executive Director New Year's Address

Susan Neth, FrontLine Service Executive Director

Dear FrontLiners,

As we move through these early months of 2025, I’m filled with the unique sense of potential and purpose that comes with the resetting of our calendar year. I am thrilled to be ringing in another year at such a special agency yet this marker of passing time is also bittersweet. My retirement approaches and I have but a few more seasons at the helm of our agency. And with the recent threat of a freeze to our federal funding, I have the deep sense that we are again facing uncertain times.

Our agency relies on federal funding to support a multitude of programs serving individuals and families in great need: those who are homeless, those who are challenged with a behavioral health crisis, and those whose lives have been devastated by violence in their own homes and our community. We have made concerted efforts to diversify our funding model, in fact identifying less reliance on governmental funding as a goal in our last two Strategic Plans. While we have made progress, our reliance on federal dollars remains significant. When a threat to these dollars became present, we immediately immersed ourselves in data and analysis to determine how to keep our agency doors open to those most in need in our community. We prioritized regular and open communication with our staff, and reached out to other non-profits and advocacy organizations, while monitoring our funding in real time. We planned scenarios which would enable us to continue to abide by our most core value: to stand with those we serve. We remain committed to ‘walking’ with those who are most vulnerable in our community, always.

It is important that you know how much we value our supporters like you. The progress we have made to diversifying our funding could not be made without your contributions. In that way you are critical to the role that we play in our community – you too are a FrontLiner. I invite you all to reflect on how you have contributed to our mission of service and stewardship, leaving no one behind, and to give yourselves a round of applause for your commitment to this community. And beyond that, I invite you all to envision how your contributions will continue to help us serve those who are most vulnerable for the years to come. Humbly, and with utmost gratitude, I say to you – Thank you for being a FrontLiner!

Warmly,

Susan Neth