Matthew Desmond's book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has made him a celebrity of sorts among affordable housing wonks and anti-poverty activists. Writing in an engaging, approachable way about the struggles of low-income folks in Milwaukee, Wisc., Desmond shows how easy it is for vulnerable renters to get trapped in a downward spiral of housing instability, desperation and misfortune.
Even advocates immersed in housing and poverty issues will come away from Desmond's book with deeper insight and inspiration, and Meyer is pleased to support his visit to Oregon as part of Everybody Reads by:
Helping the Library Foundation to purchase additional copies of the book and with outreach to local groups, including high school classrooms;
Purchasing tickets to Desmond's Literary Arts lecture for recent Meyer grantees active in housing advocacy; and
Supporting an additional event for local policy makers to meet with Desmond, led by Community Alliance of Tenants, Welcome Home Coalition, Oregon Center for Public Policy and Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.
If you haven't read Evicted, check it out! Jenny Lee of Neighborhood Partnerships shared an excellent review of the book last year. Tickets to the March 9 event in Portland are still available.
Foundations have long devoted resources to address society's problems, but the fact is, of course, that despite our best efforts, those problems persist.
Every day our nonprofit partners doing on-the-ground work across the state change individual lives and transform communities. But they will tell you that they are fighting an uphill battle.
The answer is to change the system. But the human and financial resources that can be harnessed from the philanthropic sector is dwarfed by the potential in the public sector, especially on the state and federal levels. As if it needs to be said, policy makes a huge difference in all our lives.
We believe that these times provide an imperative for all funders to effectively use allowable advocacy strategies that push right up against that line. There is so much we can do.
We can use our voice
We speak out against specific policy issues we think are counter to our mission and in support of policies that are important to our mission. We have a role to play in educating our community about these issues through speeches, op-eds and articles (on this blog and elsewhere), email newsletters, social media and beyond.
Our staff and trustees speak about issues whenever possible. As examples: Trustee Charles Wilhoite used the occasion of being awarded the Portland Business Alliance’s William S. Naito Outstanding Service Award this year to talk about his experience on Meyer’s learning tour of communities in the Mid-Columbia region and about the plight of Native Americans to whom the federal government has not made good on promised housing. Former trustee George Puentes and trustee Toya Fick see the power in and advocate for an equitable public education system. Meyer trustee Judge Darleen Ortega often speaks truth to equity, racism and other barriers to access to justice.
In the summer of 2016, we co-wrote an op-ed in Street Roots with the Northwest Health Foundation and the Collins Foundation in support of protections for undocumented immigrants in our state.
Meyer has also created an internal Advocacy Committee that allows us to be nimble in responding to the rapidly changing world around us by issuing clear statements and making grant awards. Recently, Meyer joined with more than 170 philanthropic organizations across the country in signing the Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees’ joint statement on immigration policy.
In using our voices, our goal is not simply to speak loudly, but to better amplify the voices of those in our community when their voices are muted by inequitable systems.
We can sponsor research
We believe that good ideas backed by facts will take root and grow. If we want to influence the conversation around particular issues in our four portfolios, we can sponsor research that provides solid evidence about how education gets more equitable, how we create more housing opportunities, how we make our environment healthier, and how we build and bolster communities.
The Pew Charitable Trust has been the master of this methodology. Their strong work on the effects of redistricting, for example, has helped change the way people think about the topic. And the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has done important and influential work on health care.
Our work is focused in Oregon. Although we are seen as a progressive state that can be a policy laboratory for the country, we have a long way to go to level the playing field for all our residents.
Meyer funds research that can inform policies that align with our mission.
Last year, Meyer awarded a $250,000 grant to a partnership between Portland State University’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Neighbors for Clean Air and Lewis & Clark Law School’s Northwest Environmental Defense Center. The partnership, BREATHE Oregon, will provide clear scientific data, legal analysis and community outreach so residents and policymakers have the information they need to make decisions that improve air quality in Portland and throughout Oregon. Awards to the Coalition for a Livable Future supported the research and publication of the Regional Equity Atlas, a mapping tool designed to ensure that regional growth and development decisions are more equitably distributed across the region. And Meyer’s funding to the Women’s Foundation of Oregon supported research and community listening sessions around the state that resulted in the Count Her In report on the state of women and girls in Oregon.
As part of our Affordable Housing Initiative, Meyer convened a group of experts to define problems and potential solutions around cost efficiencies in affordable housing design, finance and construction in Oregon. The findings of the study culminated in a 2015 report that has been shared with state and local policymakers and used in the funding of five pilot programs to put the research to practical work.
Our Affordable Housing Initiative also gave a housing advocacy award to the Oregon Center for Public Policy to support research and analyze options to reform the state mortgage deduction, which will help inform the Legislature on tax reform.
These are just a few examples of how we are supporting research that informs policy.
We can use our convening power
It is vital for nonprofit organizations to find common ground and a common voice as they advocate for systems change. We can put on public events (with the media invited, of course) that can act as community education. We can set up programming such as conferences and convenings that pull together disparate stakeholders to discuss particular issues.
We can both do the convening ourselves and provide funds to facilitate these meetings. Meyer has funded State Voices to provide leadership and advocacy training for Oregon Voice’s 29 member groups.
We can help with technical assistance grants for important public and media relations or to hire government affairs consultants. For example, we have awarded grants to OPAL and Beyond Toxics to work with state government to build relationships across several rural Oregon communities to identify their environmental justice priorities.
As we unify our efforts, we create a powerful network that yields an even greater impact.
We can collaborate
Just as we want nonprofits to work together to common purpose, Meyer and other foundations must do the same. We have a louder voice together.
With the Chalkboard Project, we joined forces with the Collins Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation, the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, the Oregon Community Foundation, and the Wendt Family Foundation working toward elevating student achievement and eradicating achievement inequities. Although Oregon has a long way to go in these respects, the alliance has been a strong nonpartisan voice behind research and programs to improve the quality of teacher and school leaders, in part, because we have all moved forward together.
Along with Oregon Community Foundation and several other funders, we helped launch and fund the Oral Health Funders Collaborative, which addresses the serious and widespread impact of lack of access to oral health care among low-income children. We also joined an innovative, multi-funder cross-section collaboration with the Northwest Health Foundation, the OCF, Kaiser, and Care Oregon to explore the intersection of health and education and how best to address systemic barriers to improved school-age outcomes.
We can award grants
As a private foundation, Meyer is not allowed to lobby for or against specific legislation, ballot matters or candidates, nor can we earmark grants for the purposes of lobbying, but we can support nonprofits that lobby. We can make two types of grants to those organizations: general support and specific project grants. Done correctly, these grants are one of our most powerful mechanisms for advocacy.
We recently awarded a $40,000 grant to organizers for the Portland Harbor Community Coalition, a diverse alliance of community groups concerned about the social and environmental justice issues related to the federal effort to decontaminate the Portland Harbor Superfund Site in the Willamette River. We support their efforts to lobby for a strong, fair plan that entitles those most harmed by the river’s polluted history to an equally outsized benefit from the cleanup.
Over the past year alone, we have provided significant grant dollars to support the capacity and operations of advocacy organizations across all Meyer’s portfolios: Basic Rights, Partnership for Safety and Justice, Stand for Children, the Welcome Home Coalition, the Oregon Housing Alliance, and Children's Institute, to name just a few. Our Housing Opportunities portfolio’s Affordable Housing Initiative is currently calling for proposals specifically for housing advocacy work. Click here for more details.
We can also use funds to send a more direct message. In early February, we issued rapid response grants to the Oregon ACLU, Unite Oregon and other prominent organizations advocating on behalf of immigrants and refugees in this country. The timing was significant, and our message was clear.
We can support the demand for legal services, as many organizations and individuals come under legal challenges from the government. By providing operating support, nonprofits can offer legal research and services, just as ACLU lawyers stand ready to help provide a check on runaway executive and legislative powers. This month, we are awarding $50,000 to the Metropolitan Public Defender Services to protect the legal rights of immigrants and $15,000 to Crag Law Center to provide legal services to help maintain environmental protections.
We can do direct advocacy
We can also — within legal limits and our internal capacity constraints — take more direct action where we determine it will advance our mission and program portfolio priorities. For example, this month, I and staff of Meyer’s Affordable Housing Initiative were invited by the Legislature to come to Salem to testify in front of a committee about the need to prioritize the preservation and expansion of affordable housing.
In the past we have met with individual legislators to talk about those goals and to give them perspective on the work of Meyer grantees Network for Oregon Affordable Housing and the Oregon Housing Alliance to advance these goals. We presented research about the presence, need for and importance of affordable housing in their individual districts. By showing up, we gave our allies’ voices a powerful boost.
We must embrace risk and strive to break down barriers
Of course, Meyer is and must remain nonpartisan. When we take on an advocacy role about a policy, program or issue, we strive to unite parties and include varying perspectives and interests. Ideally, these issues or policies would demonstrate strong public support or offer a “mission critical” opportunity for Meyer to assume a leadership role.
When we act on behalf of a particular issue that might be controversial, we are guided only by our core mission and values. We know that some might have different perspectives about what we collectively have to say about a topic, and we look forward to engaging folks in the conversation. The challenges Oregon faces require bold action, and so we must act together to amplify our impact on behalf of all Oregonians. We encourage other foundations and individual donors to join by effectively channelling more contributions and their voices into the vital work of advocacy.
After nearly a year of planning and engagement, we are excited to announce the launch of Meyer’s newest portfolio, Equitable Education.
In early 2016, Meyer staff began engaging stakeholders across Oregon, including educators, education advocates, parents, community partners and former and current grantees. Much of what we heard came as no surprise: Oregonians are deeply passionate about education and the future of our state. However, despite the high value placed on education, Oregon’s public education system faces significant challenges that we believe present us with new opportunities for innovation, partnership and community participation.
A vision for Equitable Education in Oregon
Our vision for Equitable Education is that all students have an opportunity to access meaningful public education. We believe Equitable Education offers Oregon students an opportunity to realize their goals of increased academic achievement by removing the disparities at all levels of the education continuum: Students enter school ready to succeed, are reading at benchmark by third grade, are on track for graduation when they enter high school and graduate high school with a plan for postsecondary and career success.
In service to this vision, the Equitable Education portfolio will focus on three key goals.
Build a unified movement to advance equitable education
Create systems- and policy-level impact
Improve student achievement and college and career readiness
Building a unified movement to advance Equitable Education
The underpinnings of any success is the collective mobilization of committed and unified individuals toward a common cause. Quality public education in Oregon is our promise to current and future generations. Improving student achievement, postsecondary completion and career readiness must occur throughout the state, not just in resourced pockets or single communities. Oregon faces deeply entrenched and complex education issues and requires thoughtful, community-based collaborative approaches to ensure all students have access to an excellent education.
Under this goal, Meyer will support a broad-based movement for equitable education that mobilizes the power and potential of students, families, communities and organizations toward unified action, meaningful change and education opportunity for all.
Creating systems- and policy-level impact
Public education institutions, policies and leaders are not meeting the educational needs of all students in Oregon and do not reflect the diversity of needs or the rich array of cultures and traditions that communities bring to support families and children. To create the system change needed at all institutional levels, Meyer will partner with communities and organizations to build the capacity to affect change by supporting initiatives that demonstrate potential for positive policy- and systems-level impact in Oregon’s public education system.
Improving Student Achievement and College and Career Readiness
Meyer seeks to keep student needs at the center of the Equitable Education portfolio’s focus, partnering with communities, organizations and institutions that build, expand and innovate to support student success. This goal also supports cross-sector collaborations between businesses, industry and employers and education and community-based organizations to prepare students for meaningful careers.
Meyer will invest in and support strategies and partnerships that improve Oregon student achievement at key benchmarks by prioritizing initiatives that eliminate disparities and close gaps in education opportunities and outcomes.
Our priorities
In a flourishing Oregon, Equitable Education means that each student — regardless of race, ethnicity, family income, geography, disability or language — has the opportunity to succeed in school.
Investments in the Equitable Education portfolio will reflect a mix of rural and urban grantees that offer, through an equity lens, a vision and approach to analyzing current disparities and directly addressing how to eliminate those disparities so that all students in Oregon have the opportunity to obtain a meaningful public education.
Investments will be targeted toward priority populations, including:
Underserved communities of color
English Language Learners (ELL)
First-generation postsecondary students
People living in poverty
People with disabilities
In rural communities, the Equitable Education portfolio seeks to support projects designed to improve outcomes for priority student populations experiencing disparities in education opportunity and achievement.
In addition to targeting communities experiencing educational disparities, the Equitable Education portfolio will work to engage these communities, and the organizations and institutions that serve them, in convening, collaborating, decision-making and other portfolio-related activities.
Join us
The education opportunity gap in Oregon has persisted for too long. As the Equitable Education portfolio maintains Meyer’s 34-year tradition of aligning philanthropic investment with the capacity of local communities to address important issues, we are committed to removing barriers through partnership with communities and organizations committed to building meaningful public education for all students. We invite you to take a deeper look at our funding goals and strategies and consider joining us in this important work.
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.
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.
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.
