WA State FFY24-26 Three-Year Plan

Planning Process

This page will continue to be updated with guidance from Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) and the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) for those involved in the three-year planning process.

WA State Three-Year Plan

States are required to write one- or three-year plans to describe SNAP-Ed programming. These plans are submitted to and approved by FNS prior to the start of the plan and updated annually to provide more detail and adjustments when necessary. You can view the WA SNAP-ED FFY21-23 Three-Year Plan here.

Washington State is currently operating in the third federal fiscal year (FFY23) of our current three-year plan. In addition to overseeing current programming, the SNAP-Ed Leadership Team—which consists of DSHS, Implementing Agencies, and statewide initiatives—is leading development of the next three year plan (FFY24-26), taking into consideration existing programming, the needs assessment, and best practices for improving healthy eating and active living.

The SNAP-Ed Toolkit, which contains a collection of evidence-based interventions used in SNAP-Ed across the country, is a great starting place for finding best practices for improving healthy eating and active living.

Allowable Programming

SNAP-Ed is a federally-funded by the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, and all programming must follow the FFY23 SNAP-Ed Guidance (pdf). Your Implementing Agency can answer questions about complying with the Guidance.

Guiding Principles, Priorities, and Goals for FFY24-26

In order to create a more cohesive plan at the state level, the SNAP-Ed LT is in the process of developing guiding principles, priorities, and goals for providers to inform three-year planning. Check back here later for completed principles, priorities, and goals.

• Guiding Principles: While SNAP-Ed has federal-level guiding principles, the LT developed Washington state-specific values that will be the foundation of SNAP-Ed programming across three-year plans. All SNAP-Ed programming should be aligned with the Guiding Principles.
• Priorities: Left intentionally broad so providers can tailor interventions to local and regional needs, the priorities identify the core work that will be done as a state to achieve the identified goals. The majority of SNAP-Ed programming in WA should be aligned with the Priorities, but there may be work that falls outside their scope.
• Goals: States are required to develop goals for which they can measure the program’s impact. Progress on these goals is reported in each annual report. Informed by the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework, the WA SNAP-Ed LT will identified goals for FFY24-26, each with objectives that are: specific, measurable, appropriate, realistic, and time-bound (SMART). Because it can take a long time to impact healthy eating, active living, and PSE, you may notice that the broader goals do not change, but new benchmarks are set. To successfully evaluate SNAP-Ed, all programming should be measured by the objectives and goals. Providers proposing programming that cannot be tracked through the goals and objectives should consult with their Implementing Agency to ensure work is allowable under SNAP-Ed and appropriate plans to evaluate efforts are in place.

Timeline

The timeline below shows a rough outline of the process of writing the FFY24-26 plan.