This article is part of State of Health, a series about how Michigan communities are rising to address health challenges. It is made possible with funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.

When a tornado hit the city of Gaylord in 2022, killing two people and destroying mobile homes, community organizations in surrounding Otsego County found strength in collaboration. As recovery from the tornado got underway, the Otsego County United Way, Otsego Community Foundation, and other agencies worked together to address human services needs. When that work was through, those organizations wanted to create some kind of lasting collaborative infrastructure to address unmet needs in the community.

"We sat down and said, 'What do we need?'" says Kimberly Akin, executive director of the Otsego County United Way. "We have great nonprofits in our county, but we're all having capacity issues, so there's a duplication of services, and we're working in silos. And our vulnerable individuals are kind of trying to navigate that by themselves, and they're already in a vulnerable position."

In 2023, the Otsego County United Way applied for and received a $90,700 grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund to establish the Services, Tools, Assistance, Resources, Talents (START) Collaborative. The collaborative aims to address unmet needs in the county through collaboration between nonprofits, schools, hospitals, government entities, and businesses. And unfortunately for the community, the collaborative had to respond to yet another natural disaster not long after its formation. An ice storm in April 2025 crippled Otsego and several surrounding counties, causing widespread, lengthy power outages.

But this time, the START Collaborative was ready to jump into action to help residents recover – and community members expect it will be around for the long term to respond to both emergency and ongoing needs.

"Thiis collaboration has really blossomed for us," Akin says. "We have great human service agencies in our county and we have a great, supportive county. But ... you think you live in a small town, and everybody knows what everybody does. You don't."

From a tornado to a community collaborative

Dana Bensinger, executive director of the Otsego Community Foundation, counts three disasters for the community in the past five years: the ice storm, the tornado, and the COVID-19 pandemic. She says that after the pandemic and the tornado, "it was really clear that we needed something." Describing the county as a "private foundation desert" with a "real funding gap," Bensinger says it was crucial to ensure that community organizations were complementing each other instead of doing the same things. 

"For a long time we knew that something was missing or we could do better," she says. "... We weren't going to be able to respond to our community in good times, because even when the skies are blue in the community, there's people that have challenges."

After obtaining grant funding, the new collaborative's first step was to hire a staff person to act as a liaison between community members in need and the organizations who might be able to meet those needs. Melissa McDonnell was hired as the collaborative's START Navigator. One of her first tasks was to organize a retreat, which brought together representatives of over 60 agencies for a strategy and visioning session in January 2024. Collaborative meetings have continued monthly or bi-monthly since then.
Melissa McDonnellA START Collaborative meeting on January 15, 2025.
"We really gained an understanding of what it means to have a county where our residents are thriving through physical and mental health, as well as better economic stability," McDonnell says. "So we created this multi-tiered vision of what that needs to be in order to get our residents to that point."

The collaborative established a steering committee comprised of nine community leaders, including nonprofit leaders, emergency responders, and government officials. It also created action teams focused on improving mental health resources, increasing workforce development, and improving the community's 211 system, and subcommittees focused on disaster recovery and frontline workers.
Melissa McDonnellThe START Collaborative's first annual frontline worker training on May 7, 2025.
Outside of tornado recovery work, and before the ice storm hit, McDonnell had her hands full responding to community members' everyday needs. She says finding services in the area is "extremely hard," so she helps clients connect to services ranging from emergency utility or rental funding to transportation assistance.

"I just help them and provide real, warm, strong handoffs to partner organizations," she says.

The collaborative flourished quickly. Its membership now includes over 100 people, and membership increased by 33% from 2023 to 2024.

"Bringing all those people to the table has really kind of identified the needs that we have in our community that are missing pieces, and provided a resource where people can share their information," Akin says.

Ice storm response

When the ice storm hit Otsego County earlier this year, the START collaborative was ready. McDonnell says that without the collaborative, response to the storm "would have been a mess." Akin agrees.

"Although the tornado was a lot more devastating damage to houses, with whole houses gone, it was a very direct path and a very limited amount of residents," she says. "This ice storm impacted every single person in our county. I mean, 95% of our county was out of power. There was no cell phone service. There was no internet. There were downed power lines."

The ice storm began on a Saturday. By Sunday, collaborative members were already meeting in a church that still had power and wifi. By Monday, the Otsego Community Foundation had made grants to the United Way, the Salvation Army, a local food pantry, and a local homeless shelter. The Salvation Army began distributing gas cards to help residents fuel generators. McDonnell obtained cots and blankets through the American Red Cross, leveraging a relationship she'd built previously through the collaborative. Akin estimates that 20 to 25 organizations collaborated on the short-term emergency response.

"We had already had that communication. We had a system in place," McDonnell says. "And I think if we did not, I wouldn't have been able to get those basic needs met as quickly."

The collaborative met daily at the church for about a week and a half.

"Every morning at 9:00, we'd sit around the table and say, 'What's happening? What's changed since yesterday? What are the most pressing needs?'" Bensinger says. "... We knew who was doing the work, where the gaps were. There was no duplication of service."

The collaborative has continued to support longer-term storm recovery needs, such as providing financial assistance to residents whose homes sustained damage that wasn't covered by insurance. The United Way has handled smaller requests of under $2,000, while the collaborative's Unmet Needs Committee and its component agencies have taken up cases over $2,000. 

"The amount of trust and knowledge of each other's roles has really increased," Bensinger says. "Again, this has gone on less than two years. So just getting together, trusting, growing together, and having some shared, measurable goals together, that is huge."

A sustainable collaborative

Having worked together through a major crisis, collaborative members are anticipating continuing to mount a robust response to community challenges. Akin says that, having experienced three disasters in five years, collaborative members "don't say 'if there's another disaster.' [They] say 'when.'"

"I feel like it's a disaster when a family can't eat for a week because they have to decide between paying their rent or feeding their children," she says. "So we have all kinds of disasters."

The next big project set to spin out of the collaborative's work is a website called Find It Otsego, supported by a separate Michigan Health Endowment Fund grant. Find It Otsego will serve as a central resource for community members in need to find and apply for various forms of assistance in the county. The website will also allow county service providers to access applicant information through the same system, making it easier for them to share information and direct clients to the best sources of help.

"Say someone comes in here and they've been in an abuse situation. They don't have a lot of money for gas. They're already vulnerable. We can't be sending them to six different agencies to try to figure this out," Akin says. "So it will allow our providers and all of our partners to collaborate on this client."

Although the grant that facilitated the START Collaborative's launch lasts for only two years, collaborative members have already ensured that their work will be sustainable beyond that time period. The Otsego Community Foundation recently made a three-year commitment to continue funding the collaborative, allowing McDonnell to become a full-time Otsego County United Way employee at the end of the original grant period.

"Our motto is always, 'If you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far, go together,'" Akin says. "So we're on this journey together."