From Fuzzy Goals to Clear Action: 8 SWIM Client Stories From 2025
When you’re stuck in a dense layer of fog, it’s easy to feel panicked. You want to rush away from your hazy surroundings, chasing blue skies and a warm sun. As our team reflected on our clients’ big wins this year, we were struck by how our clients were willing to sit in the fog. They sat with their questions, their ambitious goals, and their unclear next steps, and brought us into their world. We’re proud of the ways we helped organizations move from foggy ideas to clear action.
From food insecurity to philanthropy, from housing to higher education, we've seen our partners do incredible work in their communities this past year. We’re starting 2026 thankful for the incredible clients we get to work with, coast to coast, to activate change.
Here is a glimpse into the ways SWIM got to help clear the fog for 8 wonderful, community-transforming organizations in 2025.
1. Western Wisconsin Housing Co-op
Our work with the Western Wisconsin Housing Co-op resulted in a beautiful, affordable home on the market this winter!
Starter home prices increased by 55% across the United States from July 2019 to July 2024, and the Starter Home Project is a shared effort to reintroduce a smaller footprint home that is affordable for everyday, hardworking neighbors who are ready for homeownership.
Western Wisconsin Housing Co-op partnered with the St. Croix Valley Habitat For Humanity, economic development entities, builders, and lenders — along with SWIM — for this attainable housing collaboration.
The first home in the Starter Home Project is now on the market in Western Wisconsin. This home is designed to bring more affordable housing into our neighborhoods. It's a single family home with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, stainless steel appliances, central air, and a detached garage — all for $275,000.
Everyday, hardworking neighbors will now have the chance to buy this income-restricted home and finally have a place to call their own, and more homes are coming soon. Thanks to the affordable housing toolkit we helped create, other communities can bring projects like this to their neighborhoods, too.
2. St. Louis Area Foodbank
For this Missouri- and Illinois-based food bank, we engaged 217 neighbors during our operational planning efforts. We’re proud that St. Louis will have accurate data, historical context, and neighbor stories with which to make decisions as an organization to best serve the 26 counties in their service area. We also engaged 20 Afghan refugees in focus groups to make sure immigrant voices are being heard and their communities are being served.
A big challenge this year for our food bank clients was meeting the new Feeding America standards. We helped St. Louis go above and beyond the standards, making plans to address disparities in access across their service area.
We’re proud to help them further their mission of making sure everyone in St. Louis has access to a healthy meal, “no matter where they live or how much money they make.”
3. Food Bank for the Heartland
Eliminating hunger in the Heartland is a big goal, but we were proud to partner with Food Bank for the Heartland to take big steps toward that vision this year. We co-created a plan with 30 partners to identify shared opportunities that could go farther and faster through closer coordination to better support neighbors navigating food insecurity.
The partners included:
Food access
Public health
Human services
Education
Community development
We also created multiple regional plans focused on addressing the particular needs of rural Nebraskans. We’re looking forward to seeing how the collaboration between community partners feeds more neighbors in 2026.
4. Ahead of the Curve: Food Bank Cohort
Our food bank AI cohort, “Ahead of the Curve,” was a space for food bank leaders to experiment with AI, try new things, and strengthen their organizations. We gathered Feeding America food bank leaders from across the country to discuss how to ethically leverage AI to increase operational capacity and further their mission.
Through this cohort, we enabled leaders to feel more comfortable with the idea of AI and more competent using it themselves. Leaders selected their first organizational priority for implementing AI. Crucially, they also developed an AI ethics and governance policy to guide this mission-aligned work. What once felt fuzzy to food bank leaders is now more clear.
To help others glean from the insights of this incredible group, we developed a free resource: 60+ AI Use Cases for Food Banks.
5. Try Pie
We’ve loved partnering with Try Pie Bakery this past year and seeing them take meaningful steps toward their ambitious goals as they enacted their strategic plan from SWIM. Try Pie empowers teen girls with leadership and life skills through employment at a bakery in Waterloo, Iowa. We’re here to celebrate every step they take along the way.
This year, through a matching campaign, we helped them get new donors to further their life-changing mission. We also set Try Pie up with tools to track their work and a dashboard to view their progress.
6. Quad Cities Community Foundation
We’re so happy to have had a part in strengthening the Affiliate program for the Quad Cities Community Foundation this year. QCCF is a hub for donors in the Quad Cities region of Illinois and Iowa and has awarded $96 million in grants.
We were excited for the chance to work with the Affiliates and support philanthropy in rural areas. After working with SWIM, they each have a greater understanding of their impact in the community along with an action plan for the next year.
On the QCCF team’s end, we made a strategic plan with them to help leaders align on how they can enhance their support model for Affiliates. We also provided tools to help them, such as a planning calendar and tracker for their six communities, so they can continue this important work.
All this serves to better advance their goal of “transforming the region through the generosity of donors.”
7. Harry Chapin Food Bank
When a grocery store closes and neighbors without reliable transport are left in a food desert, a resource like Harry Chapin Food Bank is there to make sure food gets on every table.
To make the Florida-based food bank’s next steps as clear as possible to find neighbors in need, we performed our Service Area Assessment. We identified areas with the highest levels of food insecurity, assessed geographic and racial/ethnic disparities, and pinpointed counties where food distribution is disproportionately low.
We identified Immokalee as a priority community and highlighted opportunities to improve food access and transportation. The Service Area assessment surfaced data about the neighbors most impacted by the temporary closure of the community’s primary grocery store. The food bank is now partnering with Feeding America to better understand the scope of the access gap, and we are so proud that we got to help.
8. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
In our work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation this year, we asked: What's in the way of trust in health care? In the CF world, a lot is potentially in the way, and we made moves to help.
For context, there’s a new drug that allows some people with CF to see a doctor every 6-9 months instead of every 3 months. This drug is a victory. One question we explored, though, is how this shift alters the interpersonal aspect of patient care. What was a predictable timeline to see their doctor has now stretched out further, with fewer touchpoints in a year to have access to providers. What might happen to trust when there are less frequent visits?
We call these “wobbly moments,” and our term was included in the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis in a study Stacy co-authored with two leading CF doctors. The study will help identify actionable ways to increase trust, and we’re hopeful that it will help families strengthen partnerships with clinicians and make daily care more sustainable.
On to Clearer Skies in 2026
This is just a slice of the many partner stories we hold. We know there is more change to come as we march on into this new year. To all of our clients, we’re honored to be a part of your mission. Thank you for trusting SWIM to guide you through the fog.