All Meyer staff and trustees were invited to participate in Meyer’s 2016 Columbia Gorge Region Learning Tour. The invitation described the tour as an opportunity for us to collectively question and understand what a “flourishing and equitable Oregon” means for the Columbia River Gorge region.

These tours have taken place on a roughly biennial schedule, with a visit in 2012 to Umatilla County and in 2014 to Coos and Curry counties. Each provided an opportunity to get a flavor of a community's unique history and culture and to understand better how both have shaped and defined the region. As a Momentum Fellow, my personal interest in participating this past year was also to understand Meyer’s role in supporting gorge communities in their efforts to ensure a place where all citizens can thrive.

Life is about perspective. I see the world through a lens that is different from how a majority of folks would describe it. My eyeglasses are watermarked: One lens is institutional racism;  the other lens is oppression.

Going on this tour reinforced my beliefs and broadened my perspective. I was so touched by what I heard and saw that I felt a need to share how I came to appreciate even more the work done by Meyer. Every stop offered me a glimpse into why Meyer’s mission around equity is crucial to the vision of a “flourishing and equitable Oregon.”

Although I focus primarily on what I learned about farmworker and Native American tribal housing issues, the other stories I heard were equally impactful.
 

Looking Anew

Looking through the viewfinder of my Nikon, I captured the majestic beauty of the Columbia River Gorge. I also saw something disturbing and complex in each image. Beyond the windsurfing, wineries and tourist attractions lives the gorge’s checkered past. If you dare look closely, you can see it.

I saw it, and heard it too, from those whose history tells a story not often heard. I listened to stories of Native American tribes, Japanese settlers, and the Mexican bracero program.

I listened to Randy Kiyokawa, owner of Kiyokawa Orchards and of Japanese descent, and to Paul Lumley, tribal member of the Yakama Nation and past executive director for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission (CRITFC). Their stories, and what I saw, made me look anew on the institutional racism and oppression that many of the people who call the gorge home have faced, how it has impacted their life in the past and today, and where we're headed.
 

Day One: Kiyokawa Orchards and the Challenges of Farming in the Gorge

On the first day, Randy Kiyokawa greeted us, and as we moved through his store I could see that Kiyokawa Orchards had done well over the years and contributed to the local economy. Randy shared his family’s story about how his father and mother were sent to Japanese internment camps during World War II, depicting a clear portrayal of the institutional racism experienced by Japanese Americans. Next, he invited us to pick apples off the trees. But my mind wasn’t on apples. I was thinking about the plight of farmworkers walking  past our group, and I wondered if anything about housing would come up. I didn’t have to wait long.

Today, conversations on housing issues are ubiquitous and unavoidable. The challenge for farmers like Randy is figuring out how to provide affordable housing for their workers (predominantly Mexican migrants) that won’t break the farmer’s bank, nor leave workers paying exorbitant rent that breaks their banks. As Randy can attest, lack of affordable housing is one of the region's biggest barriers to retaining employees. This is exacerbated by rapid growth and land use laws that protect farm and forest lands, while creating myriad challenges for those who want to develop housing in the region. Many Hood River orchards build housing on their farms and offer it free to their workers, but building  it is prohibitively costly. Still, a farmer who can’t afford to build housing might not be in business for long. The alternative for farmworkers is to find housing in Hood River or a surrounding city, which comes with its own set of challenges.

Housing in Hood River is EXPENSIVE! The median home price in Hood River is around $400,000, compared with the statewide median of $319,000. For those who aren’t interested in homeownership, finding a home or apartment to rent is also problematic. Lack of affordable housing in the gorge has escalated to a wicked problem that requires a collective approach toward a solution. Randy is looking forward to community leaders collaborating with each other and with funders like Meyer to address and seek solutions.

Day Two: Skamania County and Tribal Housing

The next day, we crossed the Columbia River into Skamania County. As a child I spent significant time on Native American reservations in Montana, Wyoming and Canada. Thus, I was eager to visit the tribal fishing villages mentioned on the tour agenda. Looking through the big bus windows, I saw Underwood. Instead of a tribal village with permanent homes and community structures, it looked liked a haphazard, dilapidated trailer park. Debris littered the site, including weathered indoor furniture and a menagerie of fishing nets, boats, rusty tire rims and boat trailers. The image contradicted everything I had experienced as a child.

Paul, a Yakama Nation tribal member who was our tour guide, explained that CRITFC’s mission was “to ensure a unified voice in the overall management of the fishery resources and, as managers, to protect reserved treaty rights through the exercise of the inherent sovereign powers of the tribes.” The fishing villages fell under their purview.

As we pulled off the road at the base of the Bonneville Dam, I stared into the distance, thinking about what I had just heard and saw. I thought about how oppression and privilege played out in this scenario. Paul informed us that the entire town of North Bonneville (with a white resident population of nearly 500 people) was completely relocated through congressional intervention so that Bonneville Dam could be expanded in the late 1970’s. On the other hand, I could see that the Native American residents, a fraction of the white residents, were left to their own devices to recreate and cobble together a community. I looked eastward at the spectacular view of the dam, pausing to absorb its awesomeness. The irony wasn’t lost. Minutes away from the engineering masterpiece that has generated incredible wealth for the region is an encampment, land given to tribes as a replacement for the homes and villages wiped out in order to build the dam. This land embodies a history of oppression and is a reminder of an irredeemable loss for many tribal members of the Yakama Nation, Warm Springs, Nez Perce and Umatilla tribes.

Paul addressed this matter from a place of honesty and personal insight and with a keen perspective of the past and present, particularly around treaty rights and housing. He said families living on the sites didn’t live in homes and are not allowed to build permanent housing on the sites. In addition, sites had no access to city services such as garbage or electricity, creating myriad problems for these families. The last stop was what he described as CRITFC's biggest challenge: Lone Pine. What initially disturbed me about Lone Pine was the street signs at the intersection of Bret Clodfelter Way and Indian Road. It was the use of a pejorative term in naming a street leading to the Native American encampment that was unsettling. It gave me perspective on how institutional racism can be subtle, and in this case cloaked as a street sign. Then I saw Lone Pine.

Lone Pine, is one of the sites that have been approved for families to live on and have no electricity or running water, except to the public restroom. Paul shared that the restroom facility had four shower and four toilet stalls without doors. Because there is no other source of running water on the site, residents also wash their dishes and laundry in the unsanitary restroom, which raises CRITFC’s concern around public health issues. “This is a health hazard for the residents” states Paul as we stop directly in front of the restroom. There’s also no permanent housing. The entire experience left me bewildered and sad and thinking about how oppression played into this scenario. I left wondering about tribal members living in each of the 31 fishing villages and their housing crisis. Today, only 15 permanent homes have been built as part of the Army Corps of Engineers’ effort to make good on their promise to replace the homes and infrastructure. A recent concerted effort of tribes, CRITFC, Congress and the Army Corps is looking to address the still ever present tribal housing needs.

Day Three: Talking About the Future

On the last day, a panel of local housing providers shared their insights on the housing issues gorge communities face. Each panel member expressed the difficulty of providing affordable housing. Joel Madsen, executive director of both Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation and Mid-Columbia Housing Authority, and Paul Blackburn, mayor of Hood River, discussed the challenge community leaders have in sustaining a commitment to the long vision. For over a decade, Hood River city councilors and county commissioners have been stalwarts in working to make affordable housing a reality. Starting with a strategy and fighting battles beyond what they envisioned and longer than they wished, they have stayed on task.

A United Effort    

What I learned shook me to my core, and I’m thankful it did! I want to acknowledge that many of the people, organizations and communities we visited are thriving and doing unbelievable work. I saw tremendous strength and resilience in people I met and was inspired by the many working together to present a united effort in tackling problems each faced. I think I speak for Meyer when I say we continue to see value in the work each of you are doing.

Ever wonder why Oregon has so many accelerators, incubators, tech challenges and venture conferences?  Or, do you just wonder what all those things are? Yeah, so did we, since we invest in many of these things. 

So, to try and figure out what seemed to be unhindered, organic growth of seemingly unconnected business activities, Meyer brought together a diverse set of dedicated economic development professionals from around Oregon to attempt to put our ideas down on paper. The big idea: to actually visualize it.

Working with a communications consultant, we worked to create a simple yet dynamic map of how capital is allocated in the state. The final report is our attempt to illustrate how this work is connected, and to better understand how access to capital plays out in our region. Now investors can understand how each investment fits together into the bigger picture of what we are doing to invest in our people and our ideas. The long-term goal of this work is for all capital providers to be more informed when making investments in Oregon.

Check out the roadmap or explore the chart. And, please, let us know what you think in the comment section below.

— Sayer

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