The History of UCRCD: Building the Partnerships Behind Community Conservation
In August 1993, the Upper Columbia Resource Conservation & Development Council became part of a national effort to put local people at the center of conservation and community development. Today, it serves Ferry, Lincoln, Pend Oreille, Spokane, Stevens, and Whitman counties, bringing a shared organizational home to work that can cross county lines and connect different community needs.
More than three decades later, UCRCD's story can be followed through the relationships behind its projects. A program helping veterans explore agriculture developed into an independent nonprofit. Connections formed through that program helped shape a local food partnership. A former industrial property became a setting for a market and a developing educational initiative. A coalition concerned about the Spokane River established an endowment for its future.
These projects have different beginnings. Understanding how they connect helps explain why UCRCD exists, and why its contribution often begins well before there is a public program to visit or a finished project to celebrate.
A national idea, organized locally
The Resource Conservation and Development program began in 1962. Its approach brought conservation and economic opportunity into the same conversation. Local councils could identify needs in their own regions, assemble partners, and seek the technical assistance and funding needed to act.
The federal program, administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, supported locally led nonprofit councils. That distinction mattered. A council could respond to the people and conditions of its own region instead of applying one program to every community.
UCRCD joined that tradition in 1993. Its six-county service area gave it a regional perspective, while its purpose connected land and water management with community development and education. A project could therefore address several needs together: conserving a resource, supporting a livelihood, and helping people learn the skills to care for the place where they lived.
In 2011, the funding environment changed substantially. Dedicated federal RC&D program appropriations ended, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service stopped administering the program that April. Councils could still pursue assistance from other agencies, foundations, and private organizations. UCRCD continued operating beyond that change, maintaining a locally led role without the former federal program support.
The work between an idea and a lasting program
UCRCD's published mission gives it several ways to help: fiscal sponsorship, project planning, and implementation. Its conservation priorities extend from agricultural land and forest health to water quality, food security, small-business opportunity, and education.
Fiscal sponsorship is one arrangement UCRCD uses. In a sponsored program, UCRCD receives the designated contributions, issues receipts, and retains responsibility for how the funds are used. A co-developed initiative or a separately administered fund calls for a different arrangement.
The difference becomes clearer in the history of Vets on the Farm.
Vets on the Farm: helping a program grow into independence
Vets on the Farm was developed to help veterans explore a new direction through agriculture and conservation. Its purpose connects the transition to civilian life with education, employment opportunities, and relationships with other veterans and people working in those fields.
UCRCD sponsored Vets on the Farm from the beginning as a joint project with Spokane Conservation District. That sponsorship supplied an organizational framework as the program developed. The work combined a community need with a conservation purpose: veterans could investigate farming and related careers while building connections to the land and to a new professional community.
By July 2026, Vets on the Farm had obtained its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. It could pursue grants and receive donations directly, with UCRCD remaining available to sponsor or partner where appropriate.
That transition is an important part of UCRCD's history. A supported initiative can become an organization with its own responsibilities and direction. The relationship changes as the program gains the capacity to carry more of its work independently.
It also creates connections that extend beyond the original project. Four Roots traces its relationship with Spokane Conservation District partly to its owner's internship with Vets on the Farm. That connection became part of the story behind Scale House Market.
The Quarry gives partnerships a shared setting
Spokane Conservation District, a separate organization and an important UCRCD partner, purchased the Quarry property in Spokane Valley in 2017. The 50-acre site had been used for mining and asphalt production. SCD worked with community members and experts on a campus master plan that brought conservation, technology, and community uses together.
By 2019, a renovated building housed district offices and a nature-based preschool. Later development added spaces for collaboration and local food.
The property's reuse gives these projects a setting where people can encounter several aspects of conservation in one place. The land itself has a history of industrial use and redevelopment. Food, learning, and stewardship can become part of how the community uses it next.
The partners have distinct responsibilities. SCD owns the campus and brings conservation expertise. Four Roots operates Scale House Market. UCRCD assembled and administers the funding behind the market. Keeping those roles clear shows how a project can draw on several organizations without becoming the work of just one.
From food-access work to a year-round market
Four Roots' connection with SCD also grew through pandemic-era food-access work. Alongside the Vets on the Farm connection, that experience helped lead to a shared interest in a stronger local food system and a year-round marketplace.
Scale House Market puts that interest into practice through an indoor mercantile, a seasonal outdoor market, and a learning kitchen. Producers need places to reach customers; people need access to food and opportunities to learn how to prepare it. The market brings those needs together at the Quarry.
For UCRCD, the project connects several parts of its mission: food security, small-business support, community development, and education. Its funding and administrative role supports the work carried out by Four Roots and the participating businesses. The Friends of the Market campaign adds a way for community members to support that work, with UCRCD serving as fiscal sponsor.
New ways to support education and river stewardship
Connected to Place brings another set of relationships to the Quarry. Miles Bergsma of Spokane Storytime approached UCRCD after exploring nonprofit partnerships across the region. Requests from teachers had raised a question for him: how could the interest in his local storytelling become an educational resource that would outlast individual classroom visits?
UCRCD, Spokane Storytime, and Spokane Conservation District are co-developing the answer. The planned Quarry pilot links place-based learning with interpretive stops and short digital stories, including QR-linked vertical videos. Its wider ambition is to build educational resources that can be maintained and used repeatedly as new students and visitors encounter a place.
This is a joint development effort rather than a fiscal sponsorship of Spokane Storytime. By September 2026, the planning conversations were addressing the responsibilities needed to make it repeatable: curriculum, volunteer coordination, staffing, maintenance, and a financial model combining program income with fundraising. That work shows why the partnership matters to the original idea. A resource intended for successive classes needs support beyond producing the first set of videos. The initiative remains in development.
The Spokane River Fund takes a different approach to continuity. UCRCD established the nonprofit endowment at Innovia Foundation in August 2026, working with Trout Unlimited and the Washington State Conservation Commission. Its purpose encompasses the health, restoration, and stewardship of the Spokane River and its tributaries, including education.
An endowment creates a long-term financial structure for that purpose. Innovia holds and administers the fund, while the partnership brings together people and organizations concerned with the watershed. Its establishment adds another way to sustain conservation work beyond the life of a single event or campaign.
A regional mission carried forward
UCRCD's history now includes a program that grew into an independent nonprofit, a market built through food and conservation partnerships, an educational initiative developing from community requests, and an endowment dedicated to a river and its tributaries.
Each needed a different combination of people, resources, and organizational support. Together, they show how the locally led idea behind RC&D continues to take shape in northeastern Washington: identify a need, bring the right partners together, and build the structure that allows useful work to continue.
