Community Service Spotlight
by Dr. Zeenia Junkeer
Mount Baker Foundation (MBF) began its journey as a private foundation in 2017 when the Mount Baker Kidney Center was acquired by Davita, a for-profit dialysis center, after almost 40 years of providing high-quality outpatient dialysis services in Whatcom County. This transition created a private foundation with a vision of individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities becoming stronger, healthier, and more compassionate, generation after generation.
Seven years later, in year two of our current strategic plan, the Mount Baker Foundation remains committed to its founding mission and vision, and has further leaned into its values, which include centering those most impacted by health inequities in all that it does. Our focus remains on resource reallocation, which includes grantmaking — getting financial resources out to community organizations to continue to build, support, engage with, and learn from and alongside the community members they serve.
Our grantmaking allows us to work upstream, to try and impact the conditions in which our priority communities live, work, play, and stay, and to create long-term systems’ change to fulfill our commitment to future generations. We are honored to partner with many emerging and long-standing organizations that are working alongside their communities to ensure access to resources, culturally specific programming, and/or to create spaces for individuals and communities to thrive together.
Participatory Grantmaking Committee
We are excited to initiate our Participatory Grantmaking Committee in 2026. This committee plays a powerful role in shaping how dollars move in our community. Members are directly responsible for helping steward $750,000 into local organizations through a community-led grantmaking process. Decisions are made by people rooted in the diversity of Whatcom County, and we see this work as one way to shift power and ensure funding reflects the true needs of our community.
Please email Maria@mtbakerfoundation.org if you are interested in participating.
This year, we are caring for and tending to our budding civic health, capacity building, and movement building work — we know when communities feel empowered to engage, and their voices shape the ways their communities are seen, served, and treated, we all thrive. MBF believes in empowered emerging leaders and community organizations with the skills, resources, and capacity building needed to build vibrant, healthy communities where everyone can live thriving, dignified lives. We saw opportunities to ensure civic health, capacity building, and movement building were rooted in a racially just, historically accurate set of values that acknowledge the need to decolonize and queer our current ways of knowing.
Lived Experiences
Our work will be guided by, informed alongside, and in relationship with folks who are experts based on their lived experiences. We seek to develop critical consciousness and action-oriented, transparent, values-aligned spaces for civic engagement. Our key initiatives focus on leadership and skills development through comprehensive, place-based, and culturally relevant curricula that will be applied to a future leadership program. These programs will be designed to meet the organizations and leaders where they are at by providing them with the tools, resources, and leadership training needed to recognize their strengths, celebrate differences, and drive meaningful, lasting impact.
With an eye towards the future, we believe in ensuring our systems and structures put in place to meet the needs of individuals are anti-ableist and anti-racist, and we believe that those closest to the issues are also those who hold the brilliance and expertise needed to identify solutions. We work upstream when possible to impact the social determinants of health — things outside of what can be offered or treated in a medical clinic, but that have huge implications on the health of individuals.
Social determinants of health include, but are not limited to, access to health care, quality education, access to childcare, reproductive care access, transportation, culturally responsive resources, the impacts of racism, and the lasting impacts of colonialism on our communities.
Direct assistance and community engagement are other ways we distribute resources. We also offer an assistance fund program, which is open to anyone who has financial hardships and is under the care of a nephrologist. Reach out to support@mountbakerfoundation for more information about the specific kidney health work of the Mount Baker Foundation. This program has grown immensely, from $30,000 in a year to $30,000 just in the last month.
Chronic Kidney Disease, End-Stage Renal Disease
The need is greater than ever, and we are committed to serving people in Whatcom County with chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease. If you are having financial hardships and are under the care of a nephrologist, we may be able to help!
Mount Baker Foundation has also engaged and continues to engage community members in two additional ways, one of which is a peer space for people in Whatcom County who are living with kidney disease or those who have navigated the transplant journey. This group (Kidney Konnections) is a peer space, and members enjoy connections, meals, and resource sharing.
Our Kidney Health Awareness Group includes people who have received or donated kidneys and allies who engage in activities to raise awareness about kidney health and living kidney donation. Reach out to support@mtbakerfoundation.org for more information about either kidney health community engagement opportunity.
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Dr. Zeenia Junkeer (she/her) is the executive director of Mount Baker Foundation. Zeenia was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and raised in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Junkeer has spent 20 years working locally and globally to support community-led initiatives that build the capacity of individuals and communities to build power and self-determination. Her work centers on community-based strategies for health equity, led by community members most impacted, and in the service of shifting imbalances of power.
