Orcilia Zúñiga Forbes, Ph.D., was a remarkable woman who cared deeply about her family and community. A retired nurse and university administrator, she was a thoughtful, compassionate and principled board member of the Meyer Memorial Trust for 16 years.
Debbie Craig, Meyer Board Chair, mourned and praised her friend and longtime colleague.
“Oregon has lost a great citizen,” Debbie said. “Orcilia was a proud woman of color, a leader who challenged us to always think of the underserved. We know what a huge loss this is to Meyer and we realize there is a long list of organizations, universities and art museums that are experiencing the same incredible sorrow.”
Born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, the eldest of Lorenzo and Anita Zúñiga’s eight children, Orcilia learned to value education. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of New Mexico in 1960, and masters degrees in nursing and public policy — one from the Oregon Health and Sciences University in 1966, and one from the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health in 1972. She worked as a public school nurse, then became assistant director of health services at Portland State University before completing her doctorate in educational policy and management from the University of Oregon in 1992.
Orcilia spent a distinguished, four decade-long career in higher education administration. She served as Dean of Students and Vice President for Student Affairs at Portland State University before returning to her alma mater in 1989, to become Vice-President of Student Affairs and later, Vice President for Institutional Advancement at the University of New Mexico. She returned to Oregon in 1998 to serve as Vice-President of University Advancement at Oregon State University, retiring in 2004.
She also served on the boards of many community, health, cultural and civic organizations, including the Hispanic Chambers of Commerce in both Albuquerque and Portland, Providence Health and Services System, Foundations for A Better Oregon/Chalkboard Project, National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation and the Spanish Colonial Arts Society. In 1991, she received the MANA de Albuquerque’s Brindis a la Mujer Hispana Award, and the NAACP Martin Luther King Jr. Award. In 2009, University of New Mexico’s Alumni Association honored her with the Bernard S. Rodey Award for her contributions as an alumna. Her hard work and dedication were spotlighted in a show on Spanish-language KUNP Univision Portland and by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
“In a recent casual dinner conversation Orcilia shared with me how much she valued her relationships with the Meyer staff and trustees as well as our nonprofit partners across Oregon,” said Doug Stamm, CEO of Meyer Memorial Trust. “Orcilia’s friendship, leadership and tireless commitment to improving the lives of others has left a deep and positive imprint on those of us who had the good fortune to work alongside her, as well as many people across the state who have been impacted by the Trust and our grantees’ efforts.”
Orcilia, who was married to the late Richard Bryan Forbes, Ph.D., former department head of biology at Portland State University, is survived by a daughter Eryn and her husband Hal, and a son, Bryan, his wife Colleen and granddaughter Sabina.
A public celebration of Orcilia's wonderful, rich and accomplished life will be held Friday, October 23, 4:00 p.m. at Portland State University, Hoffman Hall. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Oregon State University Foundation, University of New Mexico Foundation or an environmental nonprofit.
This summer, we asked nonprofit leaders around Oregon to tell us what they needed from Meyer. More than 1,000 of you responded, helping shape our new priorities.
It has been a humbling experience. As Meyer's director of programs, I've been amazed by the candid feedback from so many of our nonprofit partners, fellow funders and many other stakeholders across Oregon. I am grateful for the time, insight and expertise so generously shared.
We read each of the 1,000 surveys submitted from people working in a wide range of fields – from arts groups and food banks and advocates working for equitable public policy to organizations cultivating culturally specific communities and land trusts and everything in between. We heard hundreds of voices that came to us from across Oregon: from community listening sessions in the Eastern high desert, from focus groups in the Gorge and southern coast, from expert interviews in the Willamette Valley, from learning panels in the Metro area. The diversity of perspectives offered to us have been nothing short of inspiring and enlightening.
We remain on track to announce the overarching frameworks for our new programs in December, with detailed information available in early 2016. In the meantime, we want to share a taste of what we heard through our housing, environment and resilient social sector partner engagement work.
Several broad themes were consistent across the portfolio areas.
There was a call for Meyer to remain innovative and bold in what we fund and in the leadership we provide. We heard it as a challenge, really, to step this up even higher.
There was also incredible energy and enthusiasm for Meyer’s push to make equity a foundational value in all of our new programs. At the same time, we heard many questions from folks unsure what we mean when we speak of equity. Is it exclusively about race? Are we also inclusive of other forms of oppression and marginalized populations? The answers are “no,” and “yes!” Here’s Meyer’s equity statement, which is our way of owning how “race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, disability, geography, age and other forms of bias and oppression are embedded within the institutions and systems in our community.” We are determined to embrace the role of working to dismantle barriers to equity, so that all Oregonians can experience safety, health and prosperity.
We heard real excitement about the potential of Meyer to exercise our capacity to convene around topics of critical importance to the field. We received some of the clearest encouragement for our plans to support systems change and advocacy, not only through funding nonprofits, but also through our leadership, influence and role as convener.
The desire for core support, capacity building, leadership development and multi-year funding came through loud and clear.
We were reminded about the contributions and needs of rural Oregon, as well the importance modest amounts of funding, collaboration and personal connections can hold in rural communities.
Finally, we heard worries that Meyer’s new portfolios may get siloed. Those voices reinforced how important it is for us to intentionally think across portfolios as we move forward in our program planning. We heard support for sharpening our focus, along with a caution not to become rigid and prescriptive. And we recognized a general call to continue to be responsive in ways that allow organizations to put forward their ideas and needs that align with the impact we want to have in our priority areas.
There was also feedback specific to each portfolio. Here’s a sampling of what we heard:
Portfolio specific insights
Building Community portfolio stakeholders wanted a clear definition of what a resilient social sector means and who it includes. People were concerned about whether the arts were included in Meyer’s vision of the social sector (yes, they are!). Interestingly, the portfolio name itself received mixed reviews, with two very different viewpoints on what it means to be resilient: some consider it to mean strong, nimble and adaptive, while others equate it with beleaguered. We definitely consider it the former! We’re considering renaming this portfolio to better reflect our aspirations. People were especially interested in funding and other supports for leadership development, financial management, advocacy, community and civic engagement and collaboration. And we received excellent feedback and ideas about how Meyer could help organizations further equity in both their programs and operations. Additional information is provided in this Building Community Design Process summary.
Among those providing input into our Housing Opportunities portfolio, affordable rental housing was clearly the highest priority, with general agreement that Meyer should prioritize households at or below 60 percent median family income. At the same time, we also heard a desire for the portfolio to encompass the continuum of housing needs across the state, from supporting people transitioning from homelessness into housing and from rental housing to homeownership. Gentrification and displacement and other housing disparities were noted as significant challenges. Innovations in linking supportive services with housing and developing creative financing for affordable housing development also stood out as important needs. Above all, we were reminded to put people front and center, and to keep in mind the ultimate goal of affordable housing: providing low-income Oregonians with stability and access to opportunity. You can find additional detail in this summary.
Stakeholders of the Healthy Environment portfolio were concerned about climate change, demographic shifts and the impact of disparities on those who experience the most environmental benefits and burdens in our communities. Rural communities’ complex economic ties to the environment, a healthy environment in urban areas and water issues across the state emerged as important concerns. We were strongly encouraged to design programming that reflects the inextricable ties between humans and nature. Themes of innovation were coupled with practicality and conservation. A hunger for building a diverse and inclusive environmental movement was apparent, and people are interested in how Meyer can help to cultivate tables where the diversity of Oregonians’ relationships to the environment are represented and contribute to policy decisions. This summary provides additional information about what we heard around the environment.
As Doug Stamm, Meyer's chief executive officer has mentioned, work to define our education portfolio is in its early stages. We anticipate this work will take place well into 2016.
Going forward
All of the feedback we received – about challenges and opportunities facing our communities, about how the Meyer Trust can best further our vision of a flourishing and equitable Oregon – have been invaluable to our thinking and planning. We hope you will find the summaries of stakeholder input for our resilient social sector, housing and environments portfolios to be informative and inspiring. We know we have, and are using this input, along with information about key trends influencing Oregon communities, nonprofits, philanthropy, and our own perspectives on our work, to shape our new programs.
It has been a busy past nine months at Meyer: since February, we have continued to fund proposals while engaging with partners across the state and planning for our future. As of November, we’re on track for what will be our largest grantmaking year in the history of Meyer Memorial Trust. While we’ve made some modest adjustments to our timeline, we anticipate launching new programs within the first few months of 2016. We look forward to sharing more about our future direction in the coming weeks, and greatly appreciate your continued interest in and ideas about how we can work together to create a more flourishing and equitable Oregon.
Dahnesh brings an impressive background that is an excellent fit with the vision for our portfolio (formerly called the Resilient Social Sector portfolio). Most recently, he worked with Education Northwest, where he provided capacity building and planning support to nonprofits and government organizations, both locally and nationally. His work included consulting with the Corporation for National and Community Service and nonprofit intermediaries participating in the Social Innovation Fund (a partnership of national funders and the federal government), as well as serving as a Plan Consultant for the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund's Flexible Leadership Award and its grantees in the Gay and Lesbian Rights and Immigrant Rights portfolios.
Previously, Dahnesh's roles included leading the organizational development consulting team at the Nonprofit Association of Oregon/TACS, serving as director of organizational services and capacity building with the National Community Development Institute in Oakland, Calif., and serving as Director of External Relations for the Tides Center in San Francisco. In all of those roles, Dahnesh supervised teams and led programmatic strategy development and implementation.
Dahnesh's experience with local and national philanthropy and nonprofits, team leadership and management, and his deep expertise with nonprofit organizational development and capacity building, provide an excellent foundation for building out and launching the Building Community portfolio.
As you may have heard, we emerged earlier this year from a soup-to-nuts strategic redesign of our programs, inner processes, staffing alignment and logo. Identity work guided by Portland-based Smith & Connors has helped ensure that a new website (to be unveiled in late November) draws directly from our mission and values to be more clear, more transparent and more responsive, and our new aspirational logo reflects Meyer's commitment to equity, openness, action and this state of Oregon we call home.
What's coming soon: an interim website where functionality and clarity guide design; new program details reflecting the input of stakeholders, grantees and partners; and several new hires, bringing the total number of new staffers and fellows at Meyer since April to ten.
But let’s go back in time a few decades. We started as the Fred Meyer Charitable Trust in 1982. Our logo was just our name, in a solid-looking serif font. In the mid-1990s, we changed our name to Meyer Memorial Trust, kept the font style and added a wine-colored background. Then a dozen years ago, we introduced a red and white logo with three triangles, shadows of the M’s in our name, and Futura typeface. We have sported that bold, modern, patchwork logo ever since. It has served us well but as Meyer grew and evolved, the logo began to feel two-dimensional, a little sharp-edged and kind of inscrutable. In short, our logo no longer captured or conveyed what Fred Meyer’s foundation had become.
With our program redesign, we thought the time was ripe for a fresh look. You may see a ribbon. Ticker tape. A wave. When I look at the logo, I see movement, upward mobility and hope. It makes me think of equity.
From its colors – a nod to Oregon's waterways and forests – to the swell of the M shape, our new look is deliberate, thoughtful and welcoming. That's who we aspire to be, and who you’ll meet when Meyer ends our working hiatus and reopens grantmaking under our redesigned programs: a foundation that is determined to move the needle on affordable housing, education and the environment, and within the state’s nonprofit sector. We aim to make Oregon flourishing and equitable for all of us.
Stay tuned for the soft rollout of highlights about our new programing before the year ends, and more details early next year. The full schematics of how to apply and where we are focusing funding will be announced by the end of the first quarter of 2016. Turns out real change takes time. We appreciate the input and feedback we've gotten so far – nearly 1,000 stakeholders from all corners of the state. We’ll be updating you on that process in December. And stay tuned for the next step outlining our grantmaking and related program strategies.
For the past year, we’ve been taking a very close look at our role in our community, examining what we do, how we do it, what we focus on, how we assess results and our impact on issues we believe are key to Oregon’s future.
Meyer Memorial Trust has a 33-year history in Oregon. As the largest private general funder in the state, we have watched needs here swell through economic shifts, downturns in key industries and changes in how government cares for the people. We’ve made 8,407 grants totaling nearly $658 million since Meyer was founded in 1982, or roughly 255 awards each year. That’s a great way to build connections to communities. We feel a deep commitment to the legacy of our founder, Fred G. Meyer, to take the foundation where it needs to go to be relevant in the moment. Eight years ago, we wondered: Could we focus more directly on the root causes of problems that burden communities? Meyer began incorporating focused initiative work into our grantmaking to do just that.
A few years ago, Meyer began exploring equity in earnest. We paid attention to what polling said Oregonians need and want. We investigated gaps in the funding that underpins our state. We believe, as our mission states, that a flourishing Oregon is an Oregon that respects the lives, cultures, histories and aspirations of the people who call it home. When we considered how Meyer Memorial Trust could have the greatest impact on the state of Oregon, we kept coming back to the idea of trying to close gaps that have been created because of inequities. In terms of critical areas where there are the greatest gaps across our entire state, they're around education, they're around affordable housing, they're around the environment and they're around maintaining a vibrant nonprofit sector.
It was the pursuit of equity that prompted us to ask ourselves more pointed questions: What if we make a priority of identifying and addressing systemic problems that are barriers to the outcomes we seek to achieve in those areas? How might we refocus what we do to make a greater impact?
The questions led us to some surprising answers, some tough decisions and even more questions. They reminded us of some central truths about Meyer. We are committed to keeping communities and our nonprofit partners front and center. We rely on them to help shape our grantmaking. And we are ever determined to be more responsive, more nimble and more deliberate.
Our recent reflection has us poised to bring our historic approaches together in a fresh way, to highlight the best of responsive grantmaking and initiative-based funding.
To that end, on March 15, we will take four specific steps:
— We will take a hiatus from some of our grantmaking activities through the spring and summer and into the fall of this year while we engage with our partners.
— We will suspend our Responsive Grants and Grassroots Grants programs, to reorganize our grantmaking into priority funding areas. During the program shift, we will be guided by the responsive ethos and grassroots values that have always guided our giving.
— We will end grantmaking for work done in Clark County, Wash.
Truth is, Meyer has been evolving for a long time. This recent process has been revealing and rewarding. It has reaffirmed to us how important it is to continually adapt to new opportunities and changing circumstances while partnering with the nonprofit community.
On reflection, we discovered elements about our current approaches, partnerships and structures that are working really well and that we want to do more of. So while additional strategic changes may follow, much that we do will remain the same: We’ve always had a thing about listening and learning from the field — that won’t change. Our continuing commitment to the values Fred Meyer instilled, and to his beloved state, won’t change. We’re based in Portland, but we remain Oregon-wide and sector-wide. We are as passionate about supporting community leadership on Portland’s Eastside as we are about supporting rural nonprofit groups in Eastern Oregon.
The majority of our funding already supports four fields — education, affordable housing, the environment and a vibrant nonprofit sector and the communities it serves. That will continue. We’ve come to think of those as our four priority funding areas. Those are areas where we leverage our strengths, our experience and our relationships in the field. We believe education, affordable housing, the environment and a vibrant nonprofit sector are critical to fostering a place where all people can reach their full potential.
We will continue to:
make grants in areas we’ve long supported: arts, culture and the humanities; conservation and the environment; health; human services; and public affairs and social benefit;
work to improve affordable housing, the Willamette River and the continuum of public education;
use our financial assets, staff knowledge and other tools to fortify the capacity of organizations and networks;
leverage outside resources — financial and human — to solve problems through co-funding and partnerships among nonprofits, philanthropy, the private sector and government;
participate in collaborations that advance our vision;
focus on leadership development;
take risks in support of adaptive and entrepreneurial approaches to problem solving;
explore what our role can and should be to support economic development;
support grantees in their policy advocacy work — and intentionally elevate the strategic use of Meyer's influence beyond funding in each of the priority areas;
and we will continue to engage with nonprofit organizations, those they serve, and other key partners and stakeholders to ensure a diversity of perspectives inform and are reflected in our work.
Refining what we do
Over the past year, we also came to believe that we could organize what we do better, that we could be even more deeply involved with and responsive to the field. We identified some important places internally where we can create stronger connections between our work and our community partners. There’s work to be done to build on what we learn and do well. And we can be more accountable for the systems improvements and changes that are important to our mission.
And that brings us back to equity. Equity has become a core value at Meyer.
We have said it before, and we’ll keep saying it: we believe our mission of achieving a flourishing Oregon depends on achieving equity. It’s an important, central idea at Meyer. We have become acutely aware of the forces that cause disparities in our society. Together, we have studied the history of how race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, disability, geography, age and other forms of bias and oppression are embedded within the institutions and systems in our community. We see them within the Meyer Memorial Trust and within ourselves. We remain a work in progress. While we will still fund organizations, investments and projects that may not have equity as a primary focus, we will expect our grantees to explore equity within the context of their organizations and we will challenge them to make progress on integrating equity in their work, partnerships, outreach, policies, staff and boards.
To advance equity in our everyday operations, we’ll take it into consideration at every layer of our operation: from internal decision-making to vendor selection, and from grantee consideration to peer discussions. We will apply an equity lens on the grants we make and on the nonprofits we partner with. And we will work to influence other organizations to advance equity through their own structures and activities.
Turning the equity lens on ourselves, we realized we could achieve greater impact and clarity by intentionally bundling community grants, initiatives, program related investments and other Trust assets within each of the existing funding fields. Going forward, our grantmaking will follow a framework that packages our funding into the four priority funding areas.
At present, 70 percent of the funds Meyer awards annually are made through our broad Responsive Grants and Grassroots Grants programs. Often, even grants made within the same field are isolated and hard to track. In the future, a majority of our funding will be deeply connected within the priority funding areas. Three immediate benefits: Meyer and our nonprofit partners will be more effective at making systems level change. Together, we will better understand what is working and what is not. And it will help us maximize what our funds can do.
Looking ahead
That’s where we are so far.
After we suspend our current grantmaking programs on March 15, we will pay out grants and consider grant requests that are already in our pipeline, and we will continue our work through the Affordable Housing and Willamette River initiatives and the Chalkboard Project.
We will work with stakeholders during our hiatus to redesign Meyer's grantmaking within the four priority funding areas. We anticipate launching new grant programs in the fall of 2015.
A final note on Clark County: our reach historically included Clark County because the Trust came to view it, in effect, as part of Portland. Over more than 30 years, Meyer awarded roughly $250,000 a year in grants and loans for programs there. As the county developed its own independent and robust philanthropic identity, Clark County’s place within the context of our vision of a flourishing and equitable Oregon was no longer clear.
When Meyer stops accepting grant applications from Clark County organizations for their work in Washington on March 15, we will be returning to Fred Meyer’s original vision and mission of enriching the lives of Oregonians. Going forward, we will consider grant applications from out-of-state organizations, including Clark County, for work directly benefiting Oregon and in collaboration with Oregon partners.
That’s it for now. The process is ongoing. We know that this is a next step in our evolution, and we are committed to listening, learning and honing what we do in the years to come.
To stay abreast of what is happening at Meyer, visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter for updates.
Last February, we announced that Meyer would sharpen our focus to make a more significant impact in areas where Oregon’s needs are greatest: education, the environment, affordable housing, and supporting leaders, organizations and networks addressing issues of equity. These are not new priorities for us but we refined our focus in recognition that these issues are highly complex, the problems are entrenched and the ways that they have been addressed have not always worked. Our new approach seeks to achieve more measurable impact. The top to bottom strategic redesign of our programs and inner processes was accompanied by a re-alignment of Meyer’s existing staff into new dedicated teams, new hires, a new website and a new look. Impact and clarity are our overriding goals.
We are still a few months from accepting grant applications through our four new program portfolios. But we wanted to share a bit about where we are in the process and what’s to come.
We expect to release grant application guidelines in March, including the full schematics of criteria, how to apply and where we will direct our funding. In April, we will begin accepting applications, staging the dates for each portfolio over the course of the month. The education portfolio, a new major focus area, will roll out later in 2016.
Over the past year, as we redefined what we do and how we do it, we’ve heard one question over and over: why is one of Oregon’s largest private foundation going through this transformation? The answer, in a word, is equity.
Our future direction
The majority of our funding already supports the four fields we will focus on, all of which we believe are critical factors in creating an Oregon where people can reach their full potential. That’s what equity is about.
The portfolios are:
Healthy Environment, tasked with nurturing a resilient natural environment, diverse cultures and thriving communities. This portfolio includes both support across the state and for our Willamette River Initiative. A key vision of this area is for environmental impacts and benefits to be shared equitably among and throughout communities. We will primarily support strategies that further environmental justice; bring together environmental stewardship, community well-being and economic vitality; foster a diverse and inclusive environmental movement; and support healthy natural systems. Policy/advocacy, movement building, innovation, capacity building and collaboration will be prominent. Visit the Healthy Environment portfolio page to learn more and meet the team.
Housing Opportunities, focused on opening doors to opportunity and strengthening communities through safe and affordable housing. This portfolio will include the Affordable Housing Initiative, which will continue as designed, as well as broader support for housing across the state. Strategies that support Oregonians with low incomes, primarily those living on incomes around 60% of the median, will be prioritized. The focus will primarily be on people living in affordable rental housing, with some support reaching people experiencing homeless to the extent services have a direct nexus to more permanent housing. Homeownership as it connects to housing stability and self-sufficiency will also be included. Beyond the AHI, support will be targeted to developing and preserving more units, supporting residents in reaching their potential, mitigating displacement and strengthening organizations that are addressing affordable housing needs. Capital grants will be available, with Program Related Investments targeted to intermediaries. Visit the Housing Opportunity portfolio page to learn more and meet the team.
Building Community, which supports leaders, organizations and networks addressing issues of equity and contribute to vibrant, inclusive communities. We have changed the name of this area, previously referred to as Resilient Social Sector, based on community feedback. This portfolio will prioritize strategies designed to change social conditions by dismantling inequities, increasing equitable opportunities for historically marginalized populations and working to build inclusive communities. The vast majority of funding will support work that directly addresses equity issues, including race, ethnicity, income, gender, sexual orientation and ability. We expect to support policy and systems change work, capacity building, expanding effective services, innovations, arts and cultures, civic engagement and leadership development through this portfolio. Visit the Building Community portfolio page to learn more and meet the team.
Equitable Education, aimed at ensuring meaningful public education for all. This portfolio will include The Chalkboard Project, as well as broader support for educational opportunities across the continuum – from early childhood through post-secondary and workforce training. We’ll place emphasis on strategies that improve Oregon student achievement and close gaps, particularly for low-income students, students of color and first generation college students. We expect to pay close attention to approaches and ideas that have the potential to make policy and systems-level impact. More specifics will be developed over the next year. Visit the Equitable Education portfolio page to learn more.
With all of this work, we will be looking in Oregon and in organizations for the greatest opportunities to support the field in furthering equity. We will continue to include multi-year funding, core support, capacity building and technical assistance to grassroots as well as established organizations. We will also pay attention to policy/advocacy, and supporting, networks, systems and innovation. We will extend our role beyond traditional grantmaker to amplify leadership and collaboration.
Why equity deserves Meyer’s attention
Equity is the central tenet of Meyer’s redoubled commitment to making measurable progress in Oregon in the areas of education, the environment, affordable housing and building community.
Organizations around the state have long attacked inequity at its roots, advocating for equity through social justice, affordable housing, LGBTQ equality, healthcare, immigrant rights, improved educational opportunities, inclusive environmental stewardship, and arts that build community. Meyer joins their efforts to make Oregon flourish by helping close gaps created by inequities.
We didn’t arrive here overnight. For the past several years, the staff and Trustees at Meyer have becomes students of how bias and oppression — via race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, ability and age — are embedded within the institutions and systems in our community. We see them within ourselves, within the Meyer Memorial Trust itself and more broadly within the field of philanthropy. We remain a work in progress. While we will still support some work that may not have equity as a primary focus, we will ask all our partners to explore equity within the context of their organizations and we challenge them to make progress on integrating equity in their work, partnerships, outreach, policies, staff and boards. It is work we embrace — and Meyer is a better foundation because of the changes.
As we learn more about the equity work being done across Oregon, we intend to use our leadership to expand its impact.
These are just a few of the changes observers will notice about the new Meyer.
What else is changing?
We are not only changing our programs, we’re changing how we work.
The field has encouraged us to do more than just fund — they’ve challenged Meyer to step more confidently into leadership roles around our priorities. So, in addition to direct grantmaking, Meyer will bring new vigor to our role as convener, capacity builder and advocate. And equally important, we will use our influence to support systems change and advocacy around topics of critical importance to the field. You will see this take form over the coming years.
In order to take on this challenge, we have also made changes to how we do our grantmaking.
Going forward, Meyer will issue calls for proposals under the four portfolios and make funding decisions a few times a year. We will no longer have open, rolling application periods. We’ll announce more details on this in March.
We will make funding decisions based on the strongest opportunities to further our goals, and will look for partners who share our priorities and are committed to understanding the impact and effectiveness of their work. In the past, 70 percent of Meyer’s awards each year were made through our now-shuttered Responsive Grants and Grassroots Grants programs. We responded to individual requests without holistic goals in mind or clear ways to measure the impact of our funding: even grants made within the same field were isolated and difficult to track. Beginning next year we will have impact in mind when we consider proposals.
What won’t change is our commitment to being responsive and engaged with our partners across the state. We anticipate immediate benefits for Meyer and Oregon nonprofits: together, we will be more effective at making systems level change. Together, we will be more nimble to respond to what is working and what is not. And together, we will maximize what our funds can do.
Meyer’s new teams
This summer and fall, we’ve been building strong portfolio teams. We are especially excited to have gathered four portfolio directors with the right mix of skills, expertise and relationships to guide Meyer on this journey. Meet Jill Fuglister, Theresa Deibele, Dahnesh Medora and Matt Morton.
Jill Fuglister is the director of Meyer’s Healthy Environment portfolio. Sixteen years in the environmental field have given Jill a broad base of expertise, from traditional conservation to sustainability to environmental justice. And Jill’s experience integrating and operationalizing equity into environmental work is unique in the field. We’re so pleased Jill, who was a program officer at Meyer for four years, will be leading our work at the nexus of Oregonians and our natural environment.
Theresa Deibele serves as director of Meyer’s Housing Opportunities portfolio. Theresa has deep roots in management, finance, community development and the law, but it is her relationships in the statewide housing nonprofit community, from housing authorities to large multifamily housing developers, and from housing advocates to organizations serving people experiencing homelessness, that give her special insights into the housing field. It’s a pleasure to have Theresa, also a former Meyer program officer, running point on housing.
Dahnesh Medora directs Meyer’s Building Community portfolio. Dahnesh's deep expertise and long experience with local and national philanthropy, team leadership and nonprofit organizational development and capacity building provides an excellent foundation for launching this portfolio tasked with supporting strong leaders, networks and organizations across Oregon. We are excited to have a veteran of organization strengthening and leadership development taking the lead over this vitally important portfolio.
Matt Morton (Squaxin Island Tribe) will join Meyer in January as director of Meyer’s Equitable Education portfolio. Matt, currently the executive director of the Native American Youth and Family Center, couples a proven history of nonprofit and public leadership with a deep understanding of equity and disparities across the education continuum — from early childhood to K-12 to post-secondary opportunities. We’re grateful that someone so highly respected in Oregon's nonprofit and public sectors will be sitting at education policy tables on Meyer’s behalf.
These and other hires happened during a whirlwind year at Meyer.
How about that hiatus?
We called the nine-month transition period from Responsive and Grassroots Grantmaker to portfolio-based foundation “a hiatus.” Hiatus implies taking a breather. This year offered little of that. We continued awarding grants while the development was going on. And our Willamette River Initiative and Affordable Housing Initiatives have remained in full swing through funding, convening and collaborating. Record amounts awarded in 2014 and 2015 totalled nearly $100 million. And as we implement this new plan over the coming year, we expect to continue to fund at these levels.
The organization grew from 27 to 32, and will reach close to 40 within the next year, including three Momentum Fellows from Philanthropy Northwest. Our staff is talented, curious, dedicated and eager to help Meyer continue to evolve. But we also said goodbye to valued members of the Meyer Trust family, including longtime Trustee Orcilia Zúñiga Forbes, who died in August. Look for a Board Member announcement in January.
While we wound down our grants programs and worked through hundreds of applications, we began outreach in our four focus areas. We learned so much from community listening sessions, focus groups, expert interviews and learning panels. What we heard helped shape our direction. We heard clear calls for Meyer to remain innovative and bold in both the leadership we provide and the issues and programs we fund. We especially appreciated the groundswell response to our surveys: we received close to 1,000 responses from Oregon advocates working for equitable public policy, organizations cultivating culturally specific communities, volunteers at arts groups and food banks, members of land trusts and so many other voices in between.
What we heard was humbling and inspiring. You told us you supported our shift and would be watching to make sure we lived up to our own new standards. While the specifics of our grant programs have evolved over the past 33 years, Meyer’s commitment to invest and work with communities, nonprofits, ideas and efforts remains — in fact, continues to grow stronger. We appreciate Oregon’s nonprofit community. Thank you for helping to guide our evolution.
Please stay tuned for the release of our application guidelines in March, followed in April by the opening of our application process. The best way to keep abreast of Meyer’s evolution? Sign up for our monthly Meyer Mail and visit mmt.org. You can also check out our FAQ page for answers to your questions, which we will update as new queries come in.
This week, Meyer welcomed two new trustees, Toya Fick and the Hon. Darleen Ortega, something that has only happened six times since the doors of the Meyer Memorial Trust opened 33 years ago.
We are excited to announce that Toya and Darleen will join George Puentes, Charles Wilhoite, Debbie Craig and John Emrick on Meyer's Board of Trustees.
Their appointments fill the vacancy created after the death in August of longtime trustee, Orcilia Zúñiga Forbes, and an additional vacancy created by an amendment to the Trust's bylaws that allows for more than five members.
Both new trustees bring passions for education, equity and civic life.
Toya, born and raised in central Louisiana, is the executive director for Stand for Children, Oregon. She was the first in her family to attend college, graduating from the University of Chicago with a degree in political science before launching a career as a teacher, first in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with Teach For America, and later at a charter school in Washington, D.C. She also served as a policy advisor to former Senator Hillary Clinton, authoring three education bills, and then worked on education policy with the Alliance for Excellent Education.
When Toya first arrived in Portland in 2010, she served as associate director of Oregon Health & Science University's local and federal relations. In June 2014, she was tapped to lead Stand Oregon. She juggles work with family: Toya lives in Northeast Portland with her husband and two young children while remaining deeply involved in civic life. She has served on the boards of City Club of Portland, Oregon Food Bank and the Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission.
Darleen was born in Southern California and raised in Banks, Oregon, a rural community 20 miles west of Portland. Class valedictorian at Banks High School, she earned a B.A. degree with summa cum laude honors from George Fox University and juris doctorate with magna cum laude honors from the University of Michigan Law School. In 2003, Darleen was elected as the first woman of color to serve on the Oregon Court of Appeals, where she is now one of the most senior members, having authored more than 415 opinions.
Darleen also serves on the board of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where she chairs the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She co-founded OneGeorgeFox, an alumni organization that advocates for LGBTQ students at her alma mater. She has served on the board of Northwest Health Foundation, where she chaired the Equity Committee. And in 2013, Darleen was awarded the Oregon Women Leaders Award from Portland State University.
In his will defining the Trust, Fred Meyer created wide parameters to guide his trustees: "Realizing as I do the uncertainties of the future, I want my trustees to be able to exercise broad discretion in shaping and carrying out charitable programs which can be tailored to fit changing conditions and problems."
Please join us in welcoming Toya and Darleen to the Meyer Memorial Trust team!
It's a pleasure to share the good news that Matt Morton has joined Meyer as Director of our new Equitable Education portfolio.
As we began the search for someone to direct our new Equitable Education Portfolio, we knew we were looking for someone with a proven history of leadership, someone who holds a deep understanding of equity and disparities across the education continuum, someone who could effectively sit at education policy tables and someone who has earned the respect of Oregon's nonprofit and public sectors. Matt Morton (Squaxin Island Tribe) hit the mark across the board!
Many of you know Matt through his leadership in the community, including his roles with several Meyer grantee organizations. Most recently, he served as Executive Director of the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), which enriches the lives of youth and families through education, community involvement and culturally specific programming. Among NAYA’s many services are early childhood programming (including Head Start), K-12 academic and social supports, an early college academy and college and career services. Previously, Matt served as the Deputy Director for the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), an organization addressing issues of child abuse and neglect through training, research, public policy and grassroots community development. Meyer has long histories of supporting both of these organizations, and we have been impressed with Matt's vision and zest for change over our years of working with him.
Matt's career has centered on education. Elected to the Portland Public Schools Board in 2011, he recently completed a four-year term. He serves on the board of directors for All Hands Raised, a Meyer grantee that is a nonprofit-public-private partnership dedicated to ensuring equity and excellence in education for all children in six school districts in Multnomah County. Matt is also co-chair of both the Education Justice Committee of the Coalition of Communities of Color (another Meyer grantee) and the Eliminating Disparities in Child & Youth Success Collaborative of the Coalition and All Hands Raised.
As philanthropy has begun to shift the conversation from equality towards equity, we've seen (and experienced at Meyer) the challenges of accurately conveying the complex goals of equity in a way that is simple and easily understandable.
Equality is focused on giving all people the same things. By providing the same input, equality expects similar outputs. While equality can work well in binary situations, the concept has proven to be unsuccessful in more complex settings.
Take Meyer’s office plants, for example. All of our plants receive the same amount of sunlight, water and attention. But most remain stagnant and a couple have actually begun to wilt. When I think about botanical diversity, these outcomes are more than just plausible, they’re expected. The solution to our wilting problem isn’t new plants, its plant equity.
Which seems pretty simple right? You don’t give a diverse group of plants the same thing, you give each plant the proper care and resources it needs in order to reach its full potential. If we treated our plants equitably, they’d all have the chance to thrive.
People are more complicated than plants. To reach their full potential, people need systemic barriers that stand in their way to be removed.
Even in the foundation world, where people like myself are actively engaged in equity work, it can be a difficult concept to articulate. Graphics like this commonly shared one have been immensely helpful at moving the conversation forward, by providing an image that can be easily interpreted by a broad audience.
In this recent blog post on LinkedIn, Aasha M. Abdill does a marvelous job of addressing that baseball game graphic, and its insidious, implicit bias. Her critique is one reason we sponsored Equity Illustrated, to help develop a better visual tool to help lead us to greater clarity and consensus around equity and how it differs from equality. Often, the simplest images can help convey the most complex idea.
Just last year this simple animated video, inspired by this article, compared sexual consent with drinking tea. As complex as consent can be, after watching the short video, consent becomes as straightforward as drinking a cup of tea.
We’re hoping for similar results illustrating equity so that all Oregonians can understand this critical concept.
So, can you help us illustrate why equity is just as simple as tea? Ten days remain in our contest. Pick your medium and grab your supplies and enter by midnight, Thursday, March 31st.
When Meyer’s current five-year Affordable Housing Initiative launched in 2014, it felt audacious. We worked with the field to craft a refreshed framework of strategies, aimed towards innovation, systems change and the leveraging of resources.
With two dedicated and experienced program officers leading the initiative, we set out to change how Meyer advanced its affordable housing work. And the equity focus that is now central to Meyer’s work was, in several key ways, first tested through AHI’s work over the last two years.
Now it’s time to take stock of our progress to date. Kristina Smock Consulting recently completed an assessment of the first full year of AHI’s refreshed grantmaking. Evaluation highlights include:
The Preservation and Rural Housing strategies continue to achieve significant impact in preserving affordable housing across the state (p. 9-11 and p. 12-15, respectively);
The Sustaining Portfolios strategy, in partnership with technical assistance provider, Housing Development Center, produced a trove of data about the state of ten housing portfolios, including 157 properties (p. 16-18);
The Cost Efficiencies strategy convened an expert group to identify cost drivers and opportunities for reducing the cost of developing affordable housing (p. 19-22);
While Oregon wrestles with a historically low vacancy rate, the Private Market strategy helped strengthen understandings of HB-2639 Housing Choice Voucher reform law, illuminated the challenges faced by low-income and underserved populations, and strengthened relationships (p. 23-27); AHI also learned promising strategies that may flourish in a market with normal vacancy rates;
Grants made under the Advocacy strategy contributed to momentum around key local housing priorities, strengthened and diversified state-level engagement, supported 2015 legislative wins and set the stage for a robust 2016 legislative agenda (p. 31-36);
All of the Requests For Proposals were framed with an equity lens and three-quarters of the AHI grants were awarded to projects and organizations that fulfilled at least one of the four AHI equity objectives (p. 39-47);
Meyer’s intention around reaching all regions of the state was largely achieved, with a significant amount of grants outside the urban Willamette Valley (p. 43);
Goals to reach projects or organizations that served a majority people of color showed mixed success; of all the year one projects funded, 31% had projects that served a majority of people of color and 37% were for organizations that serve a majority of people of color (p. 44);
Meyer faces challenges in implementing data collection and gathering outcomes on equity indicators (p. 40-41) and we have ample room for improvement; and
Meyer continues to refine our AHI strategies, based on data and feedback from the field. We worked to add the Sustaining Portfolios strategy (p. 16) and modified the advocacy strategy after year one to be both wider in scope, with deeper investments over 1-2 years (p. 36).
The AHI Year One Evaluation is a sign Meyer remains committed to learning, in all forms. We built a convening structure into the AHI that facilitates sharing between grantees, field practitioners and Meyer. We continue to convene multi-sector workgroups on tough issues and will spread the findings of those groups. In the coming year, our AHI program officers will share blog posts about each of the strategies, highlighting both challenges and successes. And we know that dedicated time for learning and reflection, coupled with annual evaluations from an outside consultant, are critical to successful execution of the Initiative.
It’s clear that Meyer can’t do this work alone; we rely every day on housing developers, providers, advocates, community members and funders to carry out the vision that every Oregonian has a decent, safe and affordable place to call home.
We welcome your feedback on this Year One Evaluation of the AHI, and look forward to learning together in the coming years.
