One way to gauge commitment to a community-driven restoration initiative: Host a conference in the middle of a snow and ice storm, and see how many people show up.

Despite Mother Nature’s curveball, the Willamette River Initiative’s 4th biennial Within Our Reach conference last week drew a sold-out crowd of nearly 220 people to Oregon State University. Together, the group of scientists, conservation nonprofit staff, government agency representatives, landowners and academics assessed the achievements they’ve made nearly eight years into Meyer’s 10-year commitment to fund efforts to improve the health of the Willamette River.

This community’s successes are many. Over four thousand streamside acres restored. Miles of floodplain reconnected to the river. New science to increase our collective understanding of river health and restoration opportunities. New partnerships to find solutions to regional and basin-wide concerns.

But a key question remains: How to continue and build on the momentum created after Meyer’s current 10-year funding commitment ends?

Although Team Willamette has made dramatic progress toward a healthier Willamette River watershed, there is much left to do. Ten years in the life of a river — especially one as large and complex as the Willamette — is not enough time to finish the job.

In a speech during the conference’s second morning, Allison Hensey, director of the Willamette River Initiative, shared that Meyer is committed to supporting a strong transition beyond its 10-year initiative to enable the community to continue and increase alignment and impact. One possible approach is co-creation of an organization to support the development of a shared vision and goals, fundraising, storytelling, data collection and monitoring.

At the conference, attendees discussed Willamette River challenges most in need of a collective approach and the kind of support needed to successfully address those challenges. They also began exploring the concept of a Willamette River Network to live well beyond the sunset of Meyer's decade-long initiative, and how such a network could add value to their work.

Tackling the challenges of the future will take a sustained commitment to an effort even bigger, more connected and more ambitious than the Willamette River Initiative. A strong, well-organized network could provide the support system for such an effort.

Meyer will convene a planning process early next year to support co-creation of a network concept with the Willamette River community. We’ll share more as plans continue to unfold. Meanwhile, we thank this incredible community of Willamette River advocates for their commitment to the watershed we call home.

 

Meyer Memorial Trust announced today the selection of Janet Hamada and Mitch Hornecker to its board of trustees.

The new trustees join Meyer’s six-member board as enthusiastic advocates of the Trust’s mission to work with and invest in organizations, communities, ideas and efforts that contribute to a flourishing and equitable Oregon.

“Mitch brings a host of business, community and volunteer experiences to the role, along with strong civic ties, having co-founded a nonprofit organization serving homeless youth. Janet’s deep direct nonprofit service experience in rural Oregon is matched by her passion for civil rights and social action and her expertise in all four Meyer portfolio focus areas: housing, environment, education and building community.

Both have demonstrated leadership that has impacted the lives of people around the state, and both are committed to their own individual explorations of equity,” said Doug Stamm, Meyer’s chief executive officer. “We are extraordinarily excited to welcome them to the Meyer board.”

To make room for the newcomers, two long-serving board members will step down at the end of this year: John Emrick, who joined Meyer’s board of trustees in 1997, and George Puentes, who joined the board in 2007. Both plan to retire after many years of civic work. The other trustees are Debbie Craig, Toya Fick, Darleen Ortega and Charles Wilhoite, chair of the board.

Janet, a native of Chicago’s South Side neighborhood, brings to Meyer a long history of work in the nonprofit sector, particularly in the areas of administration, refugee resettlement, employment, community organizing, economic development, health promotion and services for youth. Her current professional and community activities include serving as executive director of The Next Door, Inc., a social service organization that strengthens children and families and improves communities in seven counties in the mid-Columbia region.

Janet is president of the board of directors of the Oregon Alliance of Children’s Programs and is a member of the boards of directors of the Hood River Rotary Foundation and Four Rivers Early Learning Hub. In addition, she serves on the Building Bridges: Columbia Gorge Education and Workforce Collaborative and as a community advisory council member for Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital.

Janet has childhood memories of peaceful summers in the Hood River Valley visiting her grandparents and uncle. A fluent Spanish speaker, she brings a strong commitment to Oregon and a thoughtful and measured style to the board.

Janet is married to Steven Glatter. They have two daughters, one in middle and one in elementary school. An animal lover, Janet opens her home to shelter dogs, two of which they adopted, along with two formerly stray cats.

Mitch, born and raised in Medford, recently stepped away from the day-to-day operations of Howard S. Wright Construction, where he served eight years in several capacities beginning with president of the holding company and ending as executive vice president and chief legal officer. Prior to joining Howard S. Wright, Mitch practiced law for more than 20 years with Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, where he was engaged in a diversified business practice and chaired the health care and business practices and acted as the company’s primary outside counsel for 10 years. Now he runs a consulting firm, sharing his business and legal acumen with others.

Mitch brings a host of community and volunteer experience to the board, including serving as the current chair emeritus of the Portland Business Alliance’s board of directors. But it is his demonstrated passion and leadership for helping Portland’s homeless and at-risk youth that pushed Mitch to Meyer. He co-founded New Avenues for Youth, which works to prevent youth homelessness and to provide young people experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness with the resources and skills they need to flourish.

Mitch is married to Elisa Martinez deCastro Hornecker. They have three kids, all in college.

The Willamette River Initiative's bi-annual conference, Within Our Reach, brings together more than 200 people with a stake in the river to discuss restoration efforts in the Willamette basin.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times reports on the conference, where discussion looked ahead to the end of the initiative's work, set for 2019:

Since 2008, the Meyer Memorial Trust has been pumping about $1.5 million a year into the Willamette River Initiative, an ambitious program of environmental restoration projects along the river’s mainstem and throughout the web of tributary streams that feed it.

That money has been used to leverage additional funding sources, creating a powerful multiplier effect that has fueled a massive pulse of work aimed at protecting native fish and wildlife species, restoring floodplain connections and channel complexity, and improving the overall health of the Willamette River system.

But the initiative was never intended to continue indefinitely, and now it’s nearing the end of its 10-year lifespan. In March 2019, the program’s original funding stream is scheduled to dry up.

Wanna learn more about the conference? Read the whole story at the gazettetimes.com.

There’s not a lot of certainty in investing, so we keep our mission and values front of mind to help us make the tough calls. After all, it is our investments that drive our impact, from the investments we make in capital markets to the investments we make in the people running our business to the investments we make in our community through grant-making. The links are clear.

Given this philosophy, we promote investment principles that have proven successful, even though they challenge convention. And we continuously revisit and refine our approach. A few key assumptions guide us:

• Our long-term investment horizon is an advantage and a responsibility, one that we take seriously.

• The full realization of our mission takes a broad effort that includes business and investment partners.

• Some of our decisions directly reflect our mission, while others may be more focused on financial performance (see note below), but in all cases, we use our best judgment and aim for transparency to acknowledge the underlying tensions between our financial returns and our mission, values and beliefs.

• Risk and return cannot be captured solely through traditional quantitative measures.

A more comprehensive version of our investment principles can be found here.

Governance

Our investment process is overseen by Meyer’s six-member board of trustees. Together with staff and consultants, they set asset allocation and risk levels annually, informed by the macroeconomic environment, regional opportunities and grant-making needs. In Meyer’s private asset portfolio, we provide feedback to managers when we have concerns about alignment with our values. In our public asset portfolio, we are committed to being transparent about what we invest in; we vote proxies in accordance with socially responsible principles.

Strong oversight enables sound investment

Every other year, we invite our investment managers to a roundtable meeting to share ideas and visions for the future. Much like our investment philosophy, our investment approach embraces nontraditional skills and diverse points of view.

We post each year's tax filing, which can be found here.

View Meyer's total assets here.

A note about Meyer’s public asset investing:

There is a tension in managing a large, diversified portfolio that serves to fund Meyer's philanthropic work. Our portfolio and our philanthropic work are, effectively, two hands working at somewhat different purposes.

That is especially clear where our financial investments are made in industries or practices that our grantmaking aims to remedy. For instance, we invest in funds that profit from distressed lending; yet, on the program side, we directly support affordable housing organizations working to make a more equitable world for people who are disproportionately vulnerable to predatory lending.

We recognize the dissonance between our fiduciary responsibility to grow our corpus through profitable financial investments and the vital program work we support — and the questions that dissonance raises: How can we help bring down structural and institutional barriers and promote equity, even as we profit from those barriers? How can we be part of the cause and solution at the same time? Where we learn of direct conflict between our investments and our program work, we call out these points of tension with our managers to encourage them to better align their efforts and our investments with our values.

We are committed to voicing this dissonance to our managers to better align with our mission.

These aren't abstract, rhetorical questions for a foundation that takes seriously the charge to be a regional and national leader in the sector. We don't have satisfactory answers, and we may never have them. But we are learning as we go. Our investment philosophy continues to evolve.

The Portland Business Journal's Suzanne Stevens interviewed Doug Stamm in June 2016, for a closer look at Meyer's redesign and equity journey.

The Q+A begins with news that Meyer invested in a fund that invests in minority-led startups:

Meyer Memorial Trust made headlines last week when it announced a $2 million investment in the Elevate Capital Fund. Launched in 2015, the fund will invest in startups led by minorities. That objective aligns squarely with Meyer’s mission to “invest in organizations, communities, ideas and efforts that contribute to a flourishing and equitable Oregon.” That mission prompted the 34-year-old foundation to take a hard look at its own organization beginning in 2014. We checked in with Meyer CEO Doug Stamm to get a better understanding of Meyer’s commitment to equity.

The Portland Business Journal is behind a paywall, but it's never a bad thing to support local news, is it? To explore the full story, click here.

Earlier this year, Meyer Memorial Trust surveyed Oregonians to share their experiences with and concerns about public education in this state. The response was overwhelming. Over 900 people shared enthusiastic, innovative visions for education and sobering stories about its challenges. Their feedback will help to shape Meyer’s new Equitable Education portfolio.

From educators to nonprofit leaders, from parents to lawmakers, their insights reflect a deeply committed, thoughtful community.

We found a similarly invested community during five listening sessions this summer, in Hermiston, Medford, Redmond, Salem and Portland. Our hosts were gracious and kind, sparking incisive, compelling dialogues about the state of education in Oregon.

Our primary takeaway from the discussions: Oregonians want their voices to be heard on education. They reminded us that too many communities, particularly those that are underserved and experience the greatest disparities, have been absent from statewide conversations on education. People we surveyed asked Meyer to play a unique role in partnering with community organizations to activate, amplify and elevate these voices into unified action toward meaningful and equitable education.

Respondents pressed Meyer to center our efforts on those communities that experience the greatest disparities in both access and opportunity. Reducing equity-related barriers in school and district policies, practices and culture emerged as most in need of improvement.

A vision for a statewide, youth-centered education system also emerged. We heard real passion for students to be able to successfully navigate through school, with full access to tools and supports they need. And there was consensus on the notion that students deserved to leave the education system with positive self-identities intact, ready to flourish and contribute to Oregon’s future.

Getting there will take work.

Participants highlighted a lack of wraparound services to support vulnerable students and families. Although schools are often seen as natural community centers, the absence of supporting services — from housing to mental health and from culturally specific enrichment to education transition — was widely seen as a missed opportunity to minimize barriers and increase overall well-being.

People told us they hope Meyer’s investments in equitable education result in youths building stronger connections to educators and finding relevance in their education experience. And they made clear their expectations of improved outcomes, such as smaller achievement gaps and increased graduation rates.

For many Oregonians, college preparation and access are crucial. For others, readiness to enter the workforce, via apprenticeship or certification programs, is essential to securing a family-wage job. We heard that both paths are necessary for Oregon to flourish, and both require innovative approaches focused on equity and inclusion.

We listened to understand. And what we learned made us thankful to serve a state so deeply committed to its future.

Meyer is grateful for the time and thoughtful insights we heard from survey and listening session participants. I’ve shared just a small portion of what we discovered: Every challenge and opportunity offered up has become another step toward our new, shared vision for equitable education in Oregon. As we work toward launching our Equitable Education portfolio in early 2017, we plan to keep listening and fine-tuning our collective vision.

I hope you’ll find the final survey and listening session report for the Equitable Education portfolio to be informative and thought-provoking.

— Matt

We are excited to unveil our new look, a site with a sleeker design, simplified content and easier-to-find features. Meyer’s new site more effectively highlights what’s most important to us and our community. Our site’s functionality is also significantly improved, resulting in easier searches and a mobile-friendly design, so you can browse stories about our grantees on the go.

The new mmt.org highlights what’s most important to our partners, vistors and staff, through a more refined user experience designed to help make partnering with us easier and to share information and learning more effectively.

Here are just some of the features we’d like to highlight:

• How easy it is to use across desktop computer, smartphone and tablets, which is a big deal as Meyer’s social media metrics show that although 98 percent of our visitors used desktop computers to come to our first version of mmt.org in 2010, 20 percent of visitors had shifted to mobile devices to access our website by 2016. We expect the number of tablet and smartphone users will only increase now that our site is more mobile friendly.

• Front pages that show when Meyer is on-season — that is, open for grant requests or RFPs — and off-season, with no open grant opportunities or RFPs. The idea is to make it easier to know when Meyer is inviting requests to partner.

• A brand-new News page, with search and filter functions to easily find Meyer Voices, Award Announcements, Meyer in the News and Grantee Stories

• A simple way to find out what Meyer staff are saying by visiting the team pages

• An intuitive timeline tool to make learning about Meyer’s history an interactive experience. Stay tuned as we apply the timeline to our initiatives and investments, to make catching up on those stories easier and more enjoyable! (launching soon!)

• A cardstack feature that allows visitors to learn more and easily share content related to blog posts and grantee stories (launching soon!)

• Gorgeous photography by Oregon photographers Fred Joe, Leah Nash and Meyer’s own Darion Jones, showcasing the work of our dedicated grantees and the faces of individuals determined to make Oregon a more equitable place.

• An elegant calendar tool to keep visitors up to date on opportunities for grants from our four portfolios

Meyer worked with two local partners to design and build the new site, Smith & Connors for the visual design, user experience and front end development, and Metal Toad for the backend Drupal 8 integration. In future blog posts, we’ll write more about the process of building our new site, and our system engineer, Grant Kruger, will share the recipe of the website’s features.

For now, we hope you enjoy the experience, and we invite you to share feedback about the new site with us.

Meyer's software engineer Grant Kruger, and social media specialist Darion Jones add the finishing touches to Meyer's new website.

This week is a momentous time here at Meyer. Gerry Pratt – the last remaining trustee who was named in Fred G. Meyer's will establishing a charitable trust from his personal estate – is stepping down from his role as trustee.

Gerry's departure means a thread that connected directly to the man behind the Meyer Memorial Trust is broken. For the first time in Meyer's 31 years, no one on staff or among remaining trustees knew Fred Meyer.

Because he knew Fred Meyer so well, because he spent so much time with him in business and on a personal level, Gerry was able to invoke the spirit of Fred Meyer in our board room on many occasions. Gerry was the one that staff members and other trustees depended on to answer the question, "What would Fred Meyer do?"

Gerry's personal style leads him to request that no event or attention be directed his way as he takes his leave and assumes trustee emeritus status. But we can't in good conscience let this transition pass without acknowledging his indelible mark on Meyer Memorial Trust. All things considered, I would argue that Gerry Pratt has been the single most influential trustee over the life of the Trust.

An accomplished writer, Gerry once described the role of philanthropy this way:

“There is very little the Trust can do to shape society, but it can sometimes point the way by lighting up neglected corners of need. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of making only safe grants, but that really negates the purpose of a foundation. What we do is like a flashlight in a dark room. We can help find the light switch. We are successful when we do that, not by adding light to an already bright room.”

Gerry helped Meyer shine a light on many neglected corners of need in Oregon and Clark County, Washington. We are very grateful for his 31 years of dedicated service and we know that Fred Meyer would be proud of Gerry's enormous contribution.

— Doug

This week we did something that has only happened five times since the doors of the Meyer Memorial Trust opened 31 years ago. We selected a new trustee.

We are thrilled to announce that Charles Wilhoite joins George Puentes, Orcilia Zúñiga Forbes, Debbie Craig and John Emrick on our Board of Trustees. Charles replaces Gerry Pratt, who retired as an active trustee at the end of March. (He continues to serve our foundation as trustee emeritus.)

Charles, a CPA with several special certifications, has lived in Portland since 1980 and is managing director at Willamette Management Associates, a firm specializing in financial consulting, economic analysis and business valuation services. In addition, he heads up the firm's national tax-exempt entity and health care services practice.

In addition to his financial acumen, Charles' broad and deep community service made him an attractive candidate for trustee. We were particularly impressed with his demonstrated commitment to and leadership within Oregon. He presently serves on a number of nonprofit boards of directors, including chair of Oregon Health and Science University, chair emeritus of the Portland Business Alliance, treasurer of the Urban League of Portland and chair of Oregon's Children's Foundation that operates the statewide SMART program. He is also a board member of a number of other community, state and national organizations. He plans to transition off boards of organizations that are potential applicants to Meyer Memorial Trust.

Fred Meyer, whose will established the Meyer Memorial Trust from his estate, wrote that "the usefulness and strength of a board of trustees should depend, above all, on a variety of points of view it can fairly represent."

Charles' rural upbringing, growing up in Navajo Nation, will bring a valuable perspective to our board. We actively seek out trustees who can bring new experiences and viewpoints to help us contribute to a flourishing and equitable Oregon.

Charles was named one of the Fifty Most Influential Portlanders by Portland Monthly in January 2012: "Admirers cite his money skills, fundraising connections, and passion for health and education, among other issues. (Some also hint that within this public-spirited persona lurks a wicked sense of humor.)"

We also discovered Charles has a history of collaborative, effective and creative problem solving and consensus building, something that will serve him well as a trustee.

Trustees of Meyer Memorial Trust have fiduciary responsibilities over all legal, fiscal investing, grantmaking and policy-making aspects for the trust. In addition to deciding which grant proposals get funding, they actively oversee investment of our corpus, presently at $722 million. Meyer paid out more than $35 million to tax-exempt organizations in Oregon and Clark County, Washington, in the most recent fiscal year, which ended March 31, 2013.

Our foundation's bylaws were recently amended by the trustees to establish an initial seven-year term, with the potential to serve an additional five years. Previously, trustee appointments were for life.

Please join us in welcoming Charles to the Meyer Memorial Trust team!

— Doug

Meyer Memorial Trust has named seasoned investor Rukaiyah Adams as its new Chief Investment Officer.

Adams, the director of investment management at The Standard, succeeds Wayne Pierson, who contributed significantly to the development of Meyer’s $800 million corpus during his 32-year tenure as Chief Financial & Investment Officer, dating back to the Foundation’s inception in 1982.

Pierson is retiring this month. Adams takes on her new role at Meyer effective July 23, 2014.

She will lead an investment team that includes the support of Sayer Jones, Director of Finance and Mission Related Investing.

“We are enthused to have such a highly-qualified investment professional as Rukaiyah join the Trust,” said Doug Stamm, Chief Executive Officer of the Meyer Memorial Trust. “With strong roots in Oregon, Rukaiyah is passionate about her new role and the opportunity to partner with the Meyer team in our effort to create a more flourishing and equitable Oregon. Rukaiyah brings deep investment expertise and an eye towards innovation that we expect will expand Meyer's resources and impact."

Northeast Portland raised, Adams is a graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota, where she was named both a Ford Foundation Scholar and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. At Stanford University Law School, Adams served as editor of the Law and Policy Review and co-president of the Law Student Association. She worked as a corporate lawyer for seven years in the Bay area before returning to Stanford for her MBA.

Adams comes to philanthropy from the world of private investments. At The Standard, a Portland-based financial services group, Adams led a team that managed $7 billion of direct investments. During her tenure there, she was appointed by Gov. Kitzhaber to the Oregon Investment Council, an oversight board responsible for the management of the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund and other state funds. A supporter of economic empowerment, women's health and the arts, Adams has volunteered her services to a number of community based organizations and initiatives. She currently serves on the board of directors of Portland Center Stage.

She also served on the finance committee of the local chapter of Planned Parenthood and was among thousands of lawyers assigned to polling places in Ohio and Florida during the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns.

“I look forward to beginning my tenure as a student of philanthropy,” Adams said. “Hopefully, the combination of the knowledge gained from decades of good work by the people at Meyer together with my experience using assets for positive outcomes will generate something innovative and wonderful."