In May, Meyer’s chief investment officer Rukaiyah Adams received the 2019 Stanford Graduate School of Business Tapestry Award, which honors the contributions of African American Stanford alumni who have woven inspirational leadership, intellectual excellence and service to others through their professional and personal life’s works.
Voices of Stanford GSB highlights Rukaiyah’s efforts in a recent feature:
“If we invest for 15- or 20-year horizons, the reality is that it will be today’s 20-year-olds who help us realize those investments and achieve our expectations over the long run,” said Rukaiyah Adams, chief investment officer at Meyer Memorial Trust. “And if their points of view are significantly different than generations before — if they delay homeownership or stop buying cars and decide to ride bikes instead — we have to think about their values and what matters most to them because those dramatic changes have become investment risks.”
In celebration of Black History Month, the Portland Trail Blazers honored six leaders in Oregon — including Linfield College president Dr. Miles Davis, Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, Oregon Health & Science University president Dr. Danny Jacobs, Oregon Supreme Court Justice Adrienne Nelson, Portland Police Bureau chief Danielle Outlaw and Meyer Memorial Trust president & CEO Michelle J. DePass — to recognize their groundbreaking leadership, each as the first African American to hold their executive-level position within their respective institutions.
Read the Skanner News’ reporting on the event that took place during the Feb. 5 🏀 basketball game between the #RipCity Trail Blazers and Miami Heat here.
Honorees Linfield College president Dr. Miles Davis, Meyer CEO Michelle J. DePass, Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, Portland Police Bureau chief Danielle Outlaw, Oregon Supreme Court Justice Adrienne Nelson and OHSU president Dr. Danny Jacobs.
The start of the year initiated a new chapter of life for me. I joined Meyer with 20 years in philanthropy, most recently serving as vice president of programs at the Brooklyn Community Foundation in New York.
Why did I come to Meyer? It was simple: I was drawn to Meyer’s top-to-bottom commitment to equity, both internally and externally, and the ability to guide this level of resources to invest in critical issues. Not only is equity guiding the grantmaking work but it is also guiding investment decisions as well, building to use all of our assets to advance our mission. Plus, I was pleased to see the hard work of living equity values internally has started here as well.
Meyer has one of the most diverse teams I’ve seen in philanthropy: an all-women, majority people of color executive team led by a visionary African-American woman; a diverse board, also led by an African-American woman; and a bold, diverse and thoughtful team. Among Meyer’s staff of 41, more than half identify as people of color or Indigenous, more than half have taken part in nine or more days of equity training and a third were raised in a home speaking a language other than English. My partner jokes that it took a move from NYC to Portland to find a foundation as diverse as Meyer, but it is indeed an amazing organization and I am excited to be a part of this thoughtful, talented and committed team.
I am thrilled to be here in Oregon. I moved with my spouse and two sons in January and have been welcomed with friendliness and warmth, and we respect and are falling in love with our new home state. For me, taking part in visits to Tribal councils and Native communities around the state has been a wonderful start to learning more about the land and communities here. And I am looking forward to getting out of the office to meet all the grantees and communities that we are in service to and partnering with.
My role isn’t a new one entirely at Meyer, but adding the word strategy to my title was an important shift for the organization. I’ll be working to foster organization wide collaboration and making sure we build a stronger learning culture inside Meyer, while also developing and implementing programmatic strategies that reinforce the foundation’s four portfolios and leverage underlying intersections among them. The goal is to implement best practices of the sector to help Meyer continue as a leader in the field, specifically to move from a culture of metrics and compliance to a culture centered on building connections with communities.
I look forward to working with you to tackle inequity and disparity and make our home of Oregon a place that is equitable and flourishing for all. I look forward to meeting with you soon.
Meyer staff and Asian Health & Service Center CEO Holden Leung, attended a two-day program team retreat to delve deeper into equity work and programmatic strategy.
Spring has finally arrived and so has our 2019 annual funding opportunity! Our team is excited to accept a new round of proposals through the Healthy Environment portfolio’s statewide program that align with our vision of nurturing a resilient natural environment, while supporting the well-being of Oregon’s diverse cultures and communities.
This year we anticipate awarding grants totaling $3.5 million. Applications are due by 5 p.m., on Wednesday, May 15. We encourage you to consider submitting a day early to give yourself a cushion in case anything needs a little extra time.
The biggest change to the Healthy Environment portfolio this year is that we’ve tightened up our Statewide Program goals. If you are a previous applicant or grantee, you may remember there’s been a fourth portfolio goal the past three years: Achieve the mutual goals of community well-being, economic vitality and environmental stewardship (triple bottom line).
This will no longer be a standalone goal. We changed this because applicants often struggled to decide between the triple bottom line goal and the other goals when preparing their applications. As we considered this change and our continuing value of work that delivers on social, economic and environmental impact, we took a close look at what grants we’ve made in support of the triple bottom line goal over the past three years. What we found is that all of these triple bottom line grants could fit under one of the other three goals.
So, we made the decision to revise our goals. We believe that keeping the three remaining goals of environmental justice, diverse movement and healthy natural systems with brighter lines between them will make the goal selection process for applicants much simpler. Despite making this change, we continue to value triple bottom line thinking and approaches and expect to continue funding work that aligns with this value.
We’ve begun to take a number of steps to simplify the grantmaking process. The biggest change toward simplification that we are rolling out this year is that our application is only one step. As a result, there are a couple of additional questions (but fewer in total than the combined questions in our first and second proposal applications used the past three years). We’ve also upped the word count limit from 1,500 to 2,000 to give you more room to explain your request and how you plan to carry out the work.
In addition, you may hear about a pilot “renewal grant process”, an idea we are testing with a handful of current Healthy Environment portfolio statewide program grantees. This is another strategy to simplify the process and create more space for grantees and our team to find new ways to partner beyond the transaction of a grant application.
What’s the same?
Pretty much everything else.
We will continue to partner with organizations that share our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and working toward a more reciprocal, restorative relationship with each other and the planet.
This means that strong proposals will demonstrate an approach that recognizes the need to change policies, relationships, roles and practices in institutions, structures and systems that govern how people relate to nature and make environmental management decisions. The most competitive proposals will include strategies that aim to address disparities in access to the benefits of a healthy environment and environmental protections in communities, particularly communities of color, indigenous communities and Tribes, low-income communities, and immigrants and refugees, in rural and urban areas.
You can find much more information about what does and doesn’t fit well with the Statewide Program, what we funded last year, and how to put together a successful application in the Healthy Environment portfolio section of our website and in Applicant Resources.
We also welcome your questions about your plans for a grant application or how to navigate GrantIS, our online application system. Please send your questions to us at questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org )or call us at 503-228-5512.
Thank you for your continued work for a healthy environment that benefits all of Oregon’s diverse cultures and communities.
As our portfolio name suggests, it is indeed a time of Housing Opportunities across the state. Sizeable new funding resources, innovative public-private partnerships and passage of statewide tenant protection legislation are evidence of the impressive energy and creativity responding to housing challenges across the state. In this moment of great potential, Meyer’s Housing Opportunities portfolio is pleased to open its doors for our 2019 Annual Funding Opportunity.
This is the fourth Annual Funding Opportunity cycle since restructuring our grantmaking program. We continue to refine and (we hope!) clarify the process. The list below highlights those elements that are the same this year, followed by those that have changed.
What’s the same in the Annual Funding Opportunity?
1. Our overarching housing goals are essentially the same:
• Preserve and increase the number of affordable housing rental units for priority populations
• Support the housing stability and success of priority populations
• Foster stronger, more equitable and more effective affordable housing systems and strategies
We’ve tweaked the goal language here to reflect a focus on priority populations — the people who experience the impacts of historical and current racist and discriminatory housing practices. These impacts are widely felt by people of color, Indigenous communities and Tribes, as well as people with disabilities and other marginalized communities. To achieve our vision that every Oregonian has a stable, safe and affordable place to call home, we strive to focus on those who face the disproportionate impacts of housing discrimination and instability. More on that below.
2. Grant-funded work should connect to and advance the outcomes we’ve identified under the three goal areas. In addition to the nine outcomes offered last year, we have added three more. This chart provides a snapshot of the funding goals, outcomes, funding ranges and grant types to help you assess the best fit. The grant types and ranges are the same as last year. Don’t forget to take a look at the shorter list of what doesn’t fit well within the portfolio.
3. Applicants must demonstrate a commitment to ongoing growth through the integration of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles into both their external programming or services and internal structures and operations. We seek organizations that share our values and are making progress toward DEI integration.
As part of those DEI values, Meyer believes people experiencing housing challenges are experts on their own situations and key stakeholders in housing solutions. We seek to support work centering the lived experience and expertise of people benefitting from programs and also building the capacity of impacted communities that have faced systemic housing disparities to define and implement their own solutions to housing needs. (This ties to a new outcome around Community Influence.) We are more likely to fund projects that demonstrate meaningful involvement by the people with lived experience in defining the issues and solutions proposed.
4.General operating support grants face a high bar. As noted in our funding guidelines, we have heightened expectations from organizations that are awarded unrestricted operating support. First and foremost, they should be housing organizations (do a majority of their work in affordable housing) and strongly advance the core funding goals in our Housing Opportunities portfolio. Additionally, they should play a unique and/or important role in the field and have wider impact for the sector (e.g., as an intermediary, seen as a field leader in Oregon or nationally); demonstrate leadership for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the context of the communities where they work; and have DEI strategies as a meaningful part of their work plan for the grant period. Reach out if you have questions about whether to apply for this funding type.
5. The Annual Funding Opportunity continues to be a competitive process, with limited funding. In the past two funding cycles, the Housing Opportunities portfolio has funded about half of the proposals we received. This means we’ve had to turn down many solid proposals. We also expect the 2019 Annual Funding Opportunity to have robust demand, due in part to the fact that the Housing Opportunities portfolio will not be offering other Requests for Proposals (RFPs) this year. Moreover, our funding amount for 2019 is smaller ($3.5 million, compared with $3.9 million last year).
What has changed in the Annual Funding Opportunity?
The application process will be open for four weeks instead of five. The application period opens Monday, April 15, this year and will stay open for a month, closing at 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, 2019.
In lieu of multiple information sessions around the state, the Housing Opportunities portfolio is offering an on-demand webinar on our website. Potential applicants are encouraged to watch the webinar and review the online resources. Those with specific questions can then email questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org) to sign up for a 20-minute phone consultation with a member of the housing team. We want to spend more time giving personalized and concentrated feedback to applicants and less time in big, general sessions or travel.
We’re trying a one-step application process this year. We heard from many of you that the initial application in our two-step application was much more intense than a typical “letter of inquiry.” This year, we’re going to try a one-step application that looks fairly similar to the questions asked last year. By combining the inquiry application and the full application, we hope for less duplication of content. By early July, we will notify applicants who are invited to move forward in our process. For selected organizations, due diligence will look pretty similar to our previous process with one exception: We will prioritize in-person site visits for newer organizations or complex projects. Applicants who have had recent site visits may only receive a follow up via phone conference.
Income of people served will be a factor but not the most prominent factor in our analysis. In the past three years, we have asked all housing projects if they intend to serve people living with low-incomes (at or below 60% AMI). This year, the emphasis is on serving the priority populations who have experienced historical and current housing discrimination. Applicants should understand historical and current racist and discriminatory housing practices that have created disparities and focus their work to eliminate those disparities.
Time and again, we have seen that having a “one size fits all” approach to solving housing instability tends to be less successful than projects that use strategies designed with community input, tailored to the needs of a specific group of people. Foremost, we want to know how your project is designed to serve the needs of priority populations. The language of our goals was revised to connect all of the outcomes to the priority populations. More information on the priority populations can be found in our webinar.
Additional resources
Want more information about what we look for? We’ve gathered a set of Applicant Resources, with everything from building a budget to understanding our definition of collaborations and learning more about diversity, equity and inclusion. You are encouraged to review those resources as you prepare your proposal.
Final thoughts
Your work inspires us every day. Your efforts to serve the person in front of you, while keeping an eye on the larger systems-level changes needed to address housing discrimination and disparities. You push for new tools and resources to bring housing stability to more Oregonians and then figure out how to align resources and efforts for maximum impact. We hope to be the thought-partners and funders that you need to bolster your efforts.
Is there a better way to create more affordable housing in Oregon? We intend to find out over the next few years, as four dynamic teams test, improve and iterate on very different innovative ideas.
Last year, Meyer laid down an unusual and ambitious invitation, which we called the “1 Million Months Challenge,” to encourage innovation around affordable housing design, finance and construction. The basic intent was to empower people who think mainstream affordable development isn’t concerned enough with cost, and those who claim there are less costly ways to help people attain housing that’s affordable, but also meets some basic threshold of quality, dignity and comfort (while still attending to long-term costs of operating and maintaining housing).
A Caveat - This is Harder than it Looks!
Full disclosure: After nearly five years of engaging with experts on these issues, we are not entirely certain there’s a path that can deliver dramatic cost reductions. Too often, people who criticize the (admittedly eye-wateringly high) cost of delivering new housing do so without much experience with the thicket of constraints and cross-cutting pressures that define a typical government-subsidized multifamily development. And too often, critics suggest cutting corners without thinking through the tradeoffs of throwing out (for instance) prevailing wage requirements or building to a high standard for energy-efficiency.
As we outlined in our 2015 report, the basic math involved in building high-quality buildings makes it essentially impossible to aim for rents affordable to people earning a modest wage (or far less), and that necessarily means that public funding will be an important part of most affordable development. Factor in a white-hot construction market, expensive land, the string of expectations that follow public dollars, and the risk mitigation requirements of a dozen or more funding partners, and affordable housing seems far from affordable.
Still, that’s not an excuse for complacency, and as the 2015-16 round of grantees pursuing innovative cost efficient strategies demonstrated, there are some important ways to trim costs at the margin in design and construction, as well as some finance and design strategies that haven’t been fully tested that deserve to be further developed.
The 1 Million Months Challenge
As we reflected on what we learned from the 2015-16 RFP focused on innovation, we wanted to open the doors even wider to innovative ideas and approaches and to focus more clearly on the end goal: creating as much access as possible to affordable housing for as little public subsidy as possible. This led us to last year’s 1 Million Months Challenge, a moonshot-style competition, focusing creativity and energy around a specific, lofty goal: Bring us your best ideas for guaranteeing 1 million months of affordability, using as little public subsidy as possible.
We framed the challenge this way to emphasize flexibility and focus on the big-picture outcome: This is less about developing "projects" than creating a viable new model or path that could potentially help our partners house large numbers of people for an extended period of time.
Proposals were invited under three broad categories: Rural Workforce, Extremely Low-Income/Hard to House (i.e. those with additional challenges to housing stability like mental illness, etc.), and an Open category serving any low-income population.
Meyer received 18 proposals from across Oregon, and after an extensive vetting process, awarded grants to four projects:
BRIDGE Housing Corporation: Creating Equitable Opportunity through Opportunity Zone Investments (Statewide/Open)
BRIDGE will explore utilizing the new Opportunity Zones to promote the creation of affordable housing in Oregon without relying on scarce and competitive federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits. The recent federal tax cut package created tax incentives for investing in economically distressed communities (“Opportunity Zones”) defined by the state. BRIDGE will partner with Novogradac & Associates (a national tax and real estate development consultant) to develop a model for creating housing with the help of new investors expected to be drawn to the Opportunity Zones. Many in the affordable housing world are wondering whether Opportunity Zones could be an effective tool for developing affordable housing, and BRIDGE is well-positioned to be an “early-mover” here and to share what they learn with the field.
Housing Development Center: Zero Energy Modular for Rural Workforce Homeownership (Statewide/Rural Workforce)
Housing Development Center (HDC) will partner with Vermont Energy Investment Corp. to bring VEIC’s interesting zero-energy modular housing model to scale in Oregon, combined with a land trust model to assure long-term affordability. HDC is a leading nonprofit consulting firm focused on affordable housing finance and development across the state and a partner with Meyer on several recent important projects. This proposal takes on several key unresolved issues in affordable housing in Oregon: how to scale up modular design and construction beyond its very small current market share, how to jump-start affordable housing production in rural Oregon, and how to leverage highly energy-efficient new construction for long-term affordability.
SquareOne Villages: Affordable Together: scaling a community-based approach to housing (Lane County/Open)
SquareOne Villages was a grantee in the first round of Cost Efficiency grants in 2015-16, developing and documenting best practices around creating new tiny home villages for extremely low-income people (typically those leaving homelessness) in Lane County. In its next phase of work, it will explore combining limited equity cooperative ownership with a community land trust structure to create a new affordable homeownership model. Since it began experimenting with very low-cost housing options, SquareOne has progressively stepped up its ability to improve the quality and design of tiny homes, and if this hybrid ownership structure is successful, it could benefit a range of similar efforts across the state.
In addition to those three projects, a fourth organization was awarded a grant under Meyer’s 2018 RFP to improve access to private market housing and was invited to join the 1 Million Months cohort because its work aligns well with the goals and intent of the 1MM RFP:
Hacienda CDC: Community-based affordable ADU rentals to increase the supply of private market units and stabilize low-income homeowners at risk of displacement. (Portland/Open)
Hacienda has been a leading partner in the Living Cully collaborative (along with Verde, NAYA and Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East), which has been engaged in robust neighborhood-focused work on affordable housing and community development since 2010.
This project will fund the design, planning and implementation of affordable accessory dwelling units to be rented to low-income tenants and people of color in Cully, Lents and Inner North/Northeast Portland. The project will not only create new affordable units, but also help insulate low-income homeowners from displacement pressures by supplying them with supplemental income from the rentals.
What Comes Next
The four grantees are just beginning their work now and are committed to sharing what they discover over the next two years. Meyer plans to provide a series of opportunities for stakeholders and other interested parties to engage with the cohort and learn from their work to build out replicable and scalable new approaches. Stay tuned for more!
Today, Meyer's Housing Opportunities portfolio released a new Request for Proposals to support housing advocacy efforts around the state.
We think of "advocacy" pretty broadly, including community organizing and mobilization, policy analysis and research, focused communications and education around housing issues, as well as targeted approaches to achieve specific policy goals. Proposals under this RFP can address local, regional and/or statewide issues but must have a strong connection to affordable housing.
This RFP will focus on two tracks: Campaign Leaders, for work that is focused on a clear policy or systems change goal and is led by a strong coalition of partners, and Advocacy Mobilizers, which may be more broad and less focused on one specific issue or for the early stages in mobilizing support for more affordable housing opportunities.
For either track, strong proposals will reflect a strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; a clear sense of the issues to be addressed and obstacles to be overcome; and some track record doing the kind of work proposed. We strongly encourage proposals that bring in voices and collaborators that may not have been part of affordable housing advocacy in the past.
Those awarded grants under this RFP will be invited to participate in one or more convenings and will have a chance to network with and learn from other grantees in the cohort.
An application under this RFP does not preclude organizations from submitting proposals for other Meyer funding opportunities and grantseekers may apply to this RFP regardless of any other active Meyer grants.
Two information sessions are scheduled to explain the RFP in detail and answer questions. Register to attend a session at 10 a.m. on Jan. 29 or 3 p.m. on Feb. 5. Register online here.
Proposals will be accepted online (via grantis.mmt.org) until Feb. 26, 2019. Funding decisions are expected in late spring, with grant payments going out shortly thereafter. Make sure you're signed up for our Housing newsletter to stay current on this and other funding opportunities!
Campaign Leaders:grants intended for focused and targeted efforts with a clear policy or systems change goal led by a strong coalition of partners with a credible plan to succeed. Maximum of $75,000 available per year, for a total of $150,000 over two years.
Advocacy Mobilizers:for organizing efforts that may be more broad-based and less focused on one issue, or in an earlier stage of mobilizing support for more affordable housing opportunities. Maximum of $40,000 available per year, for total of $80,000 over two years.
Final award decisions are expected in May 2019, with first-year payments released in June 2019.
Meyer staff will present an overview of the RFP and be available to answer questions at two information sessions:
Turns out, Fred Meyer was right. When he established what would become the Meyer Memorial Trust, Mr. Meyer offered this insight: "With thoughtful giving, even small sums may accomplish great purposes."
So it might not come as a surprise that just a few thousand dollars can sometimes make a huge difference for people facing unsafe housing conditions, shockingly high utility costs or even homelessness.
That's one takeaway from the Year One (interim) report recently delivered by an independent evaluator Meyer engaged to analyze the impact of grants we made in 2017 to nine organizations helping to make crucial repairs and other important upgrades to manufactured homes in rural Oregon.
Why Manufactured Housing?
Meyer has been actively engaged in issues around manufactured housing for about a decade. We've supported creative and impactful work to convert investor-owned parks to resident-owned cooperatives; funded efforts to pilot affordable replacement of older, substandard homes; and more than once wrestled with issues around repairing homes. We have been fortunate to work with a wide array of partners committed to improving conditions for people in manufactured homes, including CASA of Oregon, NeighborWorks Umpqua, St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County, Network for Oregon Affordable Housing, the state of Oregon, Energy Trust of Oregon, Craft3, and USDA Rural Development, among others.
All this work is driven by the realization that manufactured homes are a crucial slice of currently affordable housing in Oregon and often the only affordable homeownership option for many people, especially in rural Oregon. About 140,000 households across the state live in manufactured homes, and nearly half those homes are at least 40 years old. Not every older manufactured home is in dire shape, but many older homes are well past their best days (particularly those built before the federal code updates of 1976 raised the bar for the initial quality and durability of new homes). Residents sometimes are living with structural defects, health hazards, terrible energy efficiency and even major safety issues.
Ideally, many of these homes would be retired and replaced by new, energy-efficient homes, but not everyone is in a position to afford such an upgrade, even with new layered subsidies some of our partners are piloting.
This urgent and ongoing need motivated our Request for Proposals in late 2016 focused on crucial repairs (including energy- and accessibility-related upgrades). We directed this funding to programs serving rural Oregon, both because we felt much of the state's need was outside urban areas and because smaller communities typically lack the local resources that could fund these repairs.
Evaluating Impact
Looking beyond the two-year grants Meyer funded, we wanted to be able to show other funders (public and private) that continuing and expanding this work was impactful and a prudent use of scarce housing resources. To that end, we hired an independent evaluator (Chari Smith of Evaluation Into Action) to help us design and carry out a cross-site evaluation that could analyze and summarize what we learned from the nine projects we funded. We recently received the Year One report, which summarizes early results.
Highlights from the Year One Report
Evidence the evaluator collected from the program staff and from the people who were helped validated Meyer's sense that this work addresses important housing issues and made a material difference in the lives of people served. A total of 107 home repairs were completed by the nine grantees. Roughly half of those served completed and returned detailed surveys about their experience with the repairs done. Of these:
72 percent reported the repairs will help them continue to live in their home longer (by addressing potentially serious issues that could jeopardize their ability to stay there); 90 percent felt that the general comfort level of their home was improved.
70 percent felt their home was made safer by the repairs.
64 percent reported the repairs would help improve their health.
74 percent saw increased energy efficiency as a result of the repairs.
The improvements were targeted to people who had few other options for making these kinds of repairs. Nearly all the people helped live on an annual income of less than $30,000, two-thirds are seniors, and more than half the households have one or more members with a disability.
"For me, this process was lifesaving. Without your help, I can't imagine how things would be. I feel much safer and am so thankful you have programs like this for me."
"I was able to wash dishes, do my laundry, take a shower or bath. I can say that I never realized how much having hot water means in everyday living. … I live on a fixed income, and I could not have afforded to get a new hot water heater without this program."
Looking Ahead
The nine projects will wrap up their two years of Meyer funding in early 2019, and next fall we'll share the final report summarizing what we learned and what other funders might take away from this work. Some early thoughts on next steps we would highlight for our partners:
There is a real need for more data, specifically on the health impacts of improvements to homes with serious health and safety hazards. This is an area where health partners such as coordinated care organizations could target some research connecting longer-term results of repairs with health outcomes and could lead to a strong evidence-based argument for funding repairs like this. Preventing falls, addressing respiratory issues such as mold, and generally supporting the ability of people to age in place (often in tight-knit and nurturing communities) seems likely to be well worth the relatively modest cost.
Flexibility is an important consideration for other funders. All of the projects funded used some federal and/or state funding to help with these repairs, but those sources come with restrictions that can exclude homes (or particular issues) that urgently need attention. We heard loud and clear from our partners that the flexibility of Meyer funding was helpful in both leveraging other funds and filling gaps some programs can't.
Organizational capacity can be a big issue for those delivering these repairs. Stable, multi-year funding is really essential to allowing organizations to make the investments in personnel, training and other resources to consistently serve this niche, and we all should be alert for opportunities to scale up and increase this capacity. Every grantee spoke of long waiting lists and unmet needs they could address with more funding. Steady and reliable funding could also help with building a cadre of reliable contractors ready and able to do repairs, which was an issue in some parts of the state.
We look forward to sharing this work and continuing to partner with the determined and dedicated partners around the state committed to sustaining and improving this affordable housing option.
I'm excited to announce today that Meyer Memorial Trust has named Kaberi Banerjee Murthy to be our new Director of Program Strategy.
Kaberi, who most recently served as vice president of programs at the Brooklyn Community Foundation in New York, brings to Meyer more than 20 years of philanthropic experience in youth, immigration, social justice, education, arts, civic affairs, health and community development at local, regional and national levels.
Kaberi has extensive experience building strategic frameworks and elevating advocacy as the highest value use of philanthropic resources and reputation. She has shared power with community to build constituent led grantmaking and is committed to implementing best practices of the sector to reduce the burden on grantees. As Meyer's new Director of Program Strategy, she will be responsible for fostering organization-wide collaboration while developing and implementing programmatic strategies that reinforce Meyer’s four portfolios and help leverage underlying intersections among them.
"We are thrilled to announce Kaberi Banerjee Murthy as Meyer’s new Director of Program Strategy as we begin to sharpen our strategies and focused objectives,” said Michelle J. DePass, president and CEO of Meyer Memorial Trust. “As a proven change agent, Kaberi will help Meyer to better address the intersection of societal causes of inequity while harnessing expertise cultivated in communities across Oregon.”
At Brooklyn Community Foundation, a racial justice foundation with $75 million in assets, Kaberi led the strategy, vision and implementation of grantmaking, programs and advocacy. Under her leadership, she grew the portfolio to oversee eight giving areas and doubled its annual grantmaking.
Previously, she served as program director at Crown Family Philanthropies in Chicago, senior program officer for education at the Picower Foundation in New York, philanthropic advisor at Hemenway and Barnes in Boston and program officer at the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation in Chicago. She has also worked as a philanthropic consultant for the Ford Foundation’s GrantCraft and the Council on Foundations.
Kaberi earned a Bachelor of Arts, Magna Cum Laude, from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and she holds a Masters of Education, Administration in Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University.
“As someone who has been passionate about addressing issues of equity, effecting social change and centering the expertise of impacted communities, I’ve been impressed by Meyer’s embodied leadership, the humility of the staff and the organizational shift to focus on systems-level change. My background and skill set dovetail perfectly with Meyer’s mission to create a sustainable future for Oregon,” Kaberi said.
Most nonprofit organizations see foundations as only a source of grants. But foundations have another important, and lesser known, tool for helping organizations with a charitable purpose: Program-Related Investments (PRIs).
Defined in the U.S. tax code, PRIs are investments — including below market-rate loans, guarantees, linked deposits or equity investments — made primarily for an exempt or charitable purpose and not for investment return. They were initiated by the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation in the 1960s, as an alternative way to invest in social change while earning a modest return. Like grants, PRIs count as qualifying distributions toward the 5 percent payout a private foundation is required to make to maintain its tax-exempt status.
What role do PRIs play for nonprofits and for foundations? After spending some time to identify the characteristics that distinguish PRIs from other impact investment tools, I'll explore the reasons why PRIs continue to be a useful tool supporting social change.
The Investment Continuum
Potential for return is a key characteristic often used to distinguish the range of investments a foundation or social investor may make. At the low end of the return continuum are those investments that have no expected return — grants, in other words. In the middle are a range of PRI options earning below-market returns, and at the high end are more traditional investments earning market rates, such as public and private equity. All come under the heading of mission-related investments because they are made by mission-based organizations, such as foundations.
"Impact investments," another common term, tends to be used to describe a range of investment in companies, organizations and funds while seeking social or environmental impacts alongside financial return. Impact investors are generally seen as broader than foundations and may include wealthy individuals and institutional investors.
As the field of impact investing has evolved in recent years, the push for greater financial return has often overshadowed social and environmental returns. "Too many impact investors have predefined expectations of financial return that are both too high and too short term," wrote the authors of Marginalized Returns, a Fall 2017 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, called for a "shift from the false binary of grants with no financial-return expectations, on the one hand, and investments seeking net-15-percent-or-greater return, on the other." The solution? A call for philanthropists and donors to deploy more long-term funding in the form of program-related investments — in essence, refocusing on social impact with lower financial returns.
Meyer's PRI practice
Over the years, Meyer Memorial Trust has completed more than fifty PRIs, and almost all were below-market loans, sometimes coupled with a grant. We've completed both direct PRIs to specific nonprofits and projects and PRIs to intermediaries, such as Community Development FInancial Institutions, that will re-lend to customers. Some examples of PRI loans from Meyer's Award Database are:
Portland Housing Center - $400,000 (2015) - To increase outreach to underserved homebuyers and to invest in a revolving loan fund for downpayment assistance.
Cascadia Behavioral Health - $500,000 - To support a project with affordable housing and an integrated health clinic offering mental health, addiction services and primary care
Craft3 - $4,000,000 (2011) - To establish a loan fund for land trusts to acquire land and secure conservation easements.
In our PRI work, Meyer has used the same program staff to process PRIs and grants, and Meyer typically counts PRIs under its payout budget. By contrast, the market-rate investments are more typically made using foundation corpus funds and lead by investment staff.
Select foundations, including The Heron Foundation, have chosen to remove the division between the investing and the grantmaking sides of the business. In 2011, Heron went "all in" to deploy all of its capital — financial, human knowledge and social — on its mission. One team with wide-ranging skills of financial analysis, investing, research and community-building work in concert to make all investments.
Meyer's functions are not this integrated. We continue to explore intersections of program and investment, and we added a full-time Director of Mission Related Investing to our investment team in 2017. Through our investment team, we are exploring mission-related investments that are expected to earn a market-rate return. Some of these directly connect with and complement Meyer's programmatic priorities, and program staff are engaging in those nexus points.
As of the end of August, 2018, Meyer has $15.6 million invested in PRIs, as well as an active loan guarantee. Although we have paused in making new PRI investments through our recently restructured grant programs, we continue to have a hands-on approach with our 15 outstanding PRIs. Specifically, we have been increasing the duration, flexibility and impact of some of our investments in intermediaries, allowing us to continue to keep dollars circulating in support of mission-aligned organizations and work without impacting our payout. In addition, we are contributing dollars to a pooled philanthropic investment fund alongside other funders, providing opportunities for leverage and efficiencies for both recipients and funders.
Why take on a "Mean Grant"?
Because PRI loans are expected to be repaid, some in the nonprofit field have labeled them "mean grants." That name belies some challenging truths behind PRIs. First, they require a different relationship between the foundation and the PRI recipient. Financial analysis and underwriting can feel awkward when the organization is used to having a grant relationship with a foundation. The organization's board of directors may struggle to understand the different relationship that is being established in a PRI versus a grant and feel intimidated by the PRI documents. There is also pressure to perform, typically reflected in financial covenants.
Structurally, PRIs don't fit every capital need an organization may have. Some projects need a line of credit structure, allowing funds to be drawn down as needed. Many foundations, including Meyer, don't have the bandwidth to manage a letter of credit structure and instead have all the PRI paid out at once. Additionally, foundations tend to invest in shorter projects (1-5 or 7 years) and are not well structured to tie up assets for a 20- or 30-year mortgage in the way a traditional bank lender might. Foundations can also be notoriously slow in processing PRI and grant applications. In a quickly changing market where capital is needed quickly, PRIs are not a great fit.
Despite these challenges, PRIs can still be useful tools for many organizations working for social change. Most foundations make PRIs at higher amounts than grants, so they can play a meaningful part in project financing. As below-market investments, PRIs often have an attractive interest rate (1.5 percent- 3 percent). When coupled with more traditional commercial loans, PRIs can create a lower blended interest rate and significantly lower the costs of capital. Often, they also serve as critical bridge funding in early stages of a project, before an entity may meet the underwriting standards for commercial financing. PRIs can help an organization build a credit history or entice traditional lenders with a guarantee.
From the perspective of the foundation, PRIs also serve many purposes:
PRIs can complement grantmaking. If a project has a revenue stream that can be used for debt service, a PRI can make sense and be another tool for supporting social impact work.
By earning a below-market return, PRIs stretch the foundation's corpus to allow for more resources toward mission and social change. By our calculations, PRIs have allowed Meyer to grow the corpus by $25 million in the last few decades.
PRIs can buffer the foundation's market-rate investments. During the Great Recession of 2008-14, PRIs were, for some quarters, the second best performing asset class for Meyer Memorial Trust.
PRIs allow an easier way to invest in a broader range of entities, including for-profit corporations that advance its social goals. Meyer made its first PRI to a for-profit entity that developed a biomass system using waste wood to heat public buildings in Harney County.
When done in larger amounts, PRIs serve as an efficient way to meet a foundation's payout.
Despite some challenges posed by PRIs, they serve an important role by being a flexible, capacity-building tool for mission-related investments for social change. Many private and public foundations are wading into the PRI space, either by experimenting with a few solid PRI candidates or launching more robust programs. It's safe to say that PRIs will continue to be a critical tool for philanthropy and social impact well into the future.
Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare's Garlington Campus in NE Portland is home to the Garlington Health Center, an integrated health clinic offering primary care, mental health and addiction services; and Garlington Place, a 52-unit affordable housing complex.
