What gets listed
Adopted September 7, 2026
This is the rule we apply when deciding whether an organization belongs in Ask Spokane. It exists so the answer is the same for everyone who asks, including organizations that ask to be added.
The test
An organization is listed if a person in Spokane County who needs help can get that help from it at no cost or at a cost that public programs will cover, and the organization is accountable to someone other than itself for delivering it.
Both parts matter. “Free or publicly paid” keeps the directory a guide to help, not a marketplace. “Accountable” means a nonprofit board, a government agency, a state license, or a public contract stands behind the listing, so we are not vouching for a business on our own.
Listed
- Government agencies and public programs. City, county, state, tribal, and federal offices that serve residents directly.
- Nonprofit organizations that provide a service to people in need: food banks, shelters, legal aid, clinics, counseling, job training, cultural centers, faith communities that run a program open to the public.
- Licensed care providers that accept public payment. Childcare licensed by DCYF that takes the state subsidy. Adult family homes, assisted living, nursing homes, adult day programs, home health, and hospice licensed by DSHS or the Department of Health that accept Medicaid or Medicare. Treatment providers certified by the Health Care Authority. These are often private businesses. They are listed because the state licenses them, a public program pays for them, and a person searching for care has no other way to find them all in one place. They carry a “Licensed care” label and the card says to ask about cost.
- Hotlines and statewide services that serve Spokane County residents.
Not listed
- Private-pay-only businesses, however useful: a counseling practice that takes no insurance, a private-pay memory care community, a landlord, a moving company, a tax preparer who charges.
- Businesses that sell to people in need rather than help them: payday lenders, rent-to-own stores, bail bonds, for-profit schools with no public funding, immigration consultants who are not attorneys or accredited representatives.
- Individual practitioners outside a listed clinic or agency.
- Organizations with no direct service. Foundations that only make grants, associations, advocacy groups with no intake, and congregations with no public program.
- Anything we cannot verify: no address, phone, or website we can confirm, or a license that is suspended, revoked, or expired.
How an organization gets added
Write to vivek@plainwords.io with the organization's name, address, phone, website, what it provides, who is eligible, what it costs, and the license or nonprofit status that applies. We verify against the state registry or license lookup and against Google before listing. A listing is never sold, sponsored, or ranked for payment, and nothing on the site is an advertisement.
How an organization is removed
We remove a listing when it closes, when its license lapses, when three separate problem reports go unanswered, or when it asks to be removed. A monthly verification pass flags closures; a person confirms before anything is deleted.
Why the line is drawn here
Ask Spokane exists for the moment someone needs help and does not know where to go. A directory that includes every business with a service to sell stops being useful at that moment. A directory that excludes licensed care because it is run for profit leaves an 80-year-old looking for an adult family home with nothing. The rule above is the narrowest one that serves both people.