For 36 years, Meyer Memorial Trust has leased office space in buildings in downtown Portland, beginning at 1515 Market Square, where the Fred Meyer Charitable Trust first opened its doors in 1982. In 2004, Meyer moved to a space in the Pearl District, then an area filled mostly with industrial lots and warehouses.
The Skanner reports on the announcement that Meyer purchased 2045 N. Vancouver Avenue, with plans to build its new headquarters:
Anyeley Hallová, a partner at Project^, said the site was chosen partly for its proximity to transit and the availability of parking for partners driving in from elsewhere in the state. She also said (Meyer CEO Doug) Stamm and others stressed the importance of developing a site that wouldn’t displace anyone from their homes.
“The conversation we’ve had has been less about what is on site but with Meyer being there, how that can be a positive contributor to the neighborhood,” Hallová said.
Stamm said the organization has reached out to community partners representing organizations in the neighborhood – including Self Enhancement Inc., Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives and the Urban League – to talk about ways to develop the space so it benefits the neighborhood. For example, Stamm said officials floated the idea of having a “convening space” available for community meetings, but said the organization won’t do it if it takes business away from other facilities.
You can find more of The Skanner's coverage of Meyer's new headquarters here.
Meyer Memorial Trust announced its purchase of a 25,000-square-foot lot at the intersection of North Vancouver Avenue and North TIllamook Street in close-in North Portland.
Diversity, equity and inclusion can sometimes be philanthropic catchphrases.
So Marc Gunter, editor of the Nonprofit Chronicles, checked in on Meyer earlier this autumn to look into how our focus on equity has changed who we are and what we do:
A new survey of more than 1,500 nonprofits found that 90 percent of their chief executives, 90 percent of their board chairs, and 84 percent of their board members identify as white. Some 27 percent of boards identify as all white. The survey, published in a report called Leading with Intent by a group called BoardSource, found that boards are less diverse than they were in 2015, when the research group conducted a similar survey.
These is nonprofits, mind you, not foundations. But foundations, it appears, do little better. A recent Chronicle of Philanthropy analysis of the 20 wealthiest national foundations found that 72 percent of trustees are white. Non-Hispanic whites account for about 61 percent of the US population.
Does this matter? Absolutely, says Doug Stamm, the chief executive of the Meyer Memorial Trust, which lately has been engaged in what it calls an equity journey. It has put the issues of diversity and inclusion front and center for the Meyer trust and, increasingly, for the nonprofits that it supports.
Read more of Marc's report about Meyer here. And check out his journalism about nonprofit organizations and their impact at nonprofitchronicles.com.
Meyer has become a better place to work and a better funder because of what its people have learned about racism, oppression and its legacy. “It’s not an exaggeration,” said Meyer CEO Doug Stamm, “to say that we are an entirely different organization.”
New concepts can be difficult for philanthropy to embrace.
A dozen years ago, mission-related investing was in its infancy in the independent sector. Meyer's CEO, Doug Stamm, became an early leader in the practice — but first he needed to convince Meyer's board of trustees. Jan Jaffe, senior partner at The Giving Practice, chatted with Doug recently about what happened and shared their conversation on Philanthropy Northwest:
Doug: I was talking to Marie Deatherage, who was our communications director at the time. This was before social media was so strong, and we were a one-newspaper state. I told her that I was struggling to drive home the point that MRIs were key to Meyer’s mission. She designed a draft of the Sunday Oregonian with a front-page headline—“Dark Clouds Over Good Works of Meyer Memorial Trust”—and stories going down two columns about Meyer investing in tobacco companies while trying to address second-hand smoke health problems for kids. There were photos of the trustees along with the CIO. She put it in a finished-looking format—the Sunday newspaper without all the stuffing.
Jan: Wow. Fake news before its time. That was a creative move by Marie.
Doug: Yes, and only three years into my tenure this could have been a career-jeopardizing move for me. I tested it on my chairman at the time, John Emrick, by saying, “I have to share something with you. I know the editor of the newspaper. They didn’t want to shock us so they are giving us a pre-publishing draft. Here it is.” John is a well-known environmentalist. He put his head down. “This is not good at all!” I told him, “It’s bad…but it is not real.” I told him the story. Then he said, “This is great!” And I asked for his support to distribute 30 copies at the upcoming roundtable. I distributed it during my opening remarks, saying what we hoped wouldn’t happen, is happening on Sunday. Mouths opened and people were stunned.
Read more of Jan and Doug's conversation here. And stay tuned for their continuing conversation about reflective practices with a discussion on Meyer’s work to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion into our organization and our work.
A dozen years before "fake news" became a catchphrase, Meyer Memorial Trust imagined a worst-case headline should its investments continue to undermine its mission. This faux headline pushed trustees to greenlight Meyer's early mission-related investing.
For five years, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) has given nearly 800,000 hopeful young strivers brought to the United States as children the legal protections they need to work and study in this country, despite the immigration status of their parents.
Known as “Dreamers,” these young people have deep stakes in the U.S. Through DACA, they’ve achieved many of the milestones that frame the American dream: earning better wages to support their families, pursuing higher education, buying cars, and setting down roots in their communities through home ownership. They are students in our classrooms, teachers in our schools, soldiers in our armed forces, leaders in our cities and towns. They represent the best of us. Those who qualify for deferred action pose no threat to public safety or national security.
Nearly 8 in 10 voters support allowing DACA recipients to remain permanently in the country and just 14 percent believe they should be forced to leave.
In Oregon, the 11,300 young people registered under DACA have a powerful impact not only on immigrant communities but also on all Oregonians. According to an Oregon Center for Public Policy report, undocumented Oregonians pay roughly $81 million in taxes to help fund schools and other public services that strengthen the state’s economy, through property taxes, personal income taxes, and sales and excise taxes. If every undocumented immigrant left the state, Oregon would lose up to $3.4 billion and nearly 20,000 jobs. Ending DACA would cost Oregon more than $605.6 million annually in gross domestic product losses. Without DACA protections, deportation will tear more families apart and shatter the foundation of local economies.
The Trump administration’s decision to phase out DACA feels like a sucker punch. It will go down as a decision that is equal parts small, short-sighted and destructive. It threatens DACA Dreamers with expulsion from the only country most have ever known. And it reneges on the promise that registering as an undocumented immigrant would not be used against them.
They deserve better. We all do.
So here’s what you should know:
Earlier this year*, The Collins Foundation, MRG Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation and Meyer Memorial Trust partnered to create the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative, a collective effort to support the successful integration of immigrants and refugees into our communities. All four organizations share an unshakable belief in the value and importance refugees and immigrants bring to our state.
We remain committed to our grantee partners and to the immigrants they serve.
We are also urging grantmakers and philanthropists in our state and across the country to join us in funding essential services and supports to assist these immigrants and their families.
We support the bipartisan Dream Act of 2017 and urge our neighbors to take action to protect DREAMers. Without intervention, young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children could face deportation as early as March 6, 2018.
As Darren Walker, CEO at the Ford Foundation, wrote in a forthright blog after the DACA decision: “Soon, it may be too late for courage, too late to take the necessary steps to mend our society. We risk reaching a day when whatever ability we had to influence change or protect our democratic values will have been squandered.”
— The Collins Foundation, MRG Foundation and Meyer Memorial Trust
*In late 2017, Pride Foundation joined the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative.
Hundreds gathered at a Defend DACA Rally in Portland after the Trump administration announced it would end the program. Photo credit: JoeFrazierPhoto.com
Meyer's Board of Trustees, working with executive search firm The 360 Group, today released the job description for the Meyer CEO position, expected to be filled later this year.
The 360 Group, headquartered in San Francisco, specializes in creating diverse and effective teams that drive meaningful social impact and lasting value. With their assistance, we hope to identify diverse pools of exceptional candidates in philanthropy, the nonprofit sector and beyond. Going forward, they’ll manage the national search, advising and working with us until we find Meyer's next leader.
We ask that inquiries about the position and search for candidates go directly to The 360 Group.
In April, Doug Stamm announced his plan to step away after 15 years of leadership at Meyer, one of the largest private foundations in Oregon.
We are deeply appreciative of Doug's significant contributions to Meyer during his 15-year tenure.
Since 2002, Meyer has awarded nearly $295 million in grants to more than 1,880 organizations across every Oregon county and across the river in Clark County, Wash. Those Meyer grants have exerted, and continue to exert, a lasting impact on our region. Meyer’s commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion has transformed the makeup of our staff and board, and how we navigate philanthropy. Today, trustees and staff alike share a commitment to equity principles in our work.
Doug's legacy will be a strong foundation rooted in making this a more flourishing and equitable state.
As we move forward the search for his successor, in association with our talented and passionate staff and committed constituents and partners, we are confident that Meyer’s valuable mission and historical commitment to bettering the lives of Oregonians will attract a deeply talented and diverse candidate pool, affording us the opportunity to select a new CEO who can drive our work forward.
Have an incredible candidate for us to consider? Here's the job description. Please point them to mmt.org/CEOtransition for details on the search process.
The search will remain open until 5 p.m. Friday, September 15, 2017.
Meyer’s Equitable Education portfolio recently commissioned a literature review highlighting 11 dimensions of educational equity. The purpose was to provide up-to-date information on issues that emerged as important in the statewide equitable education survey conducted by Meyer in 2016. Each of the 11 “chapters” is a resource to deepen educators’ and community based organizations’ grounding in the research-based insights on educational equity. Attached here is a virtual copy of the first chapter.
Through portfolio blogs and newsletters, readers will have an opportunity to examine a range of issues, from core issues that are in the foreground of efforts to advance educational equity such as the importance of educators of color in the classroom and effective parent engagement, to less obvious issues such as the promise of ethnic studies courses and the building of positive racial identity. Each chapter is a “deep dive” into the literature by a range of community practitioners and academics. Each author brings a passion to the field, and we are grateful for their commitment to educational equity. They have canvassed the academic and “grey” literature and drawn from at least 20 important studies, emphasizing research-based articles that provide solid evidence of how the issue is connected to student success. There is variation across the chapters based on the resources available in the field; each chapter is a response to the field as a whole and has unique sections.
We believe this is an important resource for advocates, educators and potential and current Meyer grantees. Meyer’s Equitable Education portfolio aims to promote the success of all Oregon’s students; we hope this series is a resource for the task.
We are excited to introduce our new program officer to the Equitable Education portfolio, Bekah Sabzalian.
A blended background in public education and nonprofit program leadership, a deep commitment and passion for equity and community, and a highly analytical mindset are just some of the qualities that Bekah brings to her role within the education portfolio.
Before coming to Meyer, Bekah worked as a elementary and middle school teacher in Portland Public Schools. Prior that, at community-based nonprofit organizations for six years. Bekah is committed to focusing on youth, education and equity work, and also believes that education works best when connected with community work.
She is excited to start partnering with organizations again and becoming more active in community engagement. We are excited that she will be joining the Equitable Education team here at Meyer!
Oregon Opportunity Network, a membership organization for affordable housing and community development nonprofits and partners in Oregon, brings together more than 300 professionals to learn from each other and presenters at the industry support conference in Portland. Attendees value the networking, skill-building and innovative idea sharing that the conference sessions provide. Tracks include sessions on leadership, housing development, property management, homeownership and much more!
Scholarships are available. Apply directly to Oregon Opportunity Network by August 4, 2017, to be considered. Priority will be given to rural organizations, culturally specific organizations and those serving the most vulnerable populations.
A few months ago, former Meyer CEO, Doug Stamm, wrote about how Meyer would become more deliberate in our use of advocacy to make a greater impact in Oregon.
Doug promised to collaborate with other foundations, just as we ask nonprofits to work together toward a common purpose. He recognized a simple fact that by working together we can have greater impact on issues that can lead to systems change that we could not do if we went about it alone; working together we are better and have a stronger voice for change
Toward that goal, I’m pleased to share with you Meyer’s participation in a funders collaborative to address the impact of recent Federal policies on immigrant and refugee communities. These policies affect the admission and resettlement of refugees to Oregon, and focus on heightened immigration enforcement and broadened rules for compliance with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Immigrants and refugees make significant contributions to this state. According to an Oregon Center for Public Policy report out in April, undocumented Oregonians alone pay roughly $81 million in taxes to help fund schools and other public services that strengthen Oregon’s economy, through property taxes, personal income taxes, and sales and excise taxes.
The Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative, a partnership between The Collins Foundation, MRG Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation and Meyer*, aims to highlight the importance of refugees and immigrants to our state and our joint commitment to address the need for their successful integration into our communities. Economic mobility and social inclusion for newcomers and their children builds communities that are stronger economically and more inclusive socially and culturally.
What the funders collaborative will consider
The collaborative will consider requests for projects providing:
Legal information/advice, services and representation for immigrants and refugees;
Outreach and education about policies, program services and preparedness;
Information collection, policy tracking and analysis;
Basic human needs for immigrants and refugees; or
Outreach and advocacy (civic engagement, community organizing).
How the funders collaborative will work
The funding collaborative anticipates making decisions on proposals within four weeks of requests, with payments issued a couple of weeks later; time sensitive critical response grants of up to $4,000 will have a 48-72 hour turn-around and payment within a week. Applicants are encouraged to ask for what they need, requests — over $50,000 — would be considered large for this fund and likely be shared by more than a single funder, if awarded.
Grant awards will cover current activities up to 12 months.
*In late 2017, Pride Foundation joined the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative. Today applicants can contact any funder collaborative partner and will be forwarded to the following point person:
At The Collins Foundation Cynthia Addams, caddams [at] collinsfoundation.org (caddams[at]collinsfoundation[dot]org)
At MRG Foundation, Esther Kim, esther [at] mrgf.org
At Oregon Community Foundation, Roberto Franco, rfranco [at] oregoncf.org (rfranco[at]oregoncf[dot]org)
Pride Foundation, Katie Carter, katie [at] pridefoundation.org (katie[at]pridefoundation[dot]org)
And at Meyer, to me, Sally Yee, sally [at] mmt.org (sally[at]mmt[dot]org)
2017 is a milestone year at Meyer Memorial Trust: We are celebrating 35 years of working to make Oregon a better place, and the anniversary also marks my 15th year at the helm. So it seems timely to reflect a little on our history and to share my plans for the future.
Much at Meyer has changed: how we think about what we do, the types of work we focus on and fund, the range of strategies and tools we employ, and the way we look at our role in making Oregon more equitable for all its residents. But the fundamental values of our humble founder still shape our decision-making and our place in Northwest philanthropy. Fred G. Meyer is our North Star, a reminder to be responsive, innovative, transparent and customer service-oriented.
Today, we’re in a very good place. Three years after Meyer launched a major strategic redesign based on equity, with a renewed mission and refocused grant processes, we’ve narrowed our focus to have greater impact and become a better, more collaborative partner to our grantees and peer funders. We’ve rebuilt the foundation’s corpus after it fell by hundreds of millions of dollars during the Great Recession. Our staff has grown, and I work alongside a group of remarkably talented individuals and for a board of trustees filled with dedicated, thoughtful leaders.
This feels like the right moment to announce my decision to step aside in 2018. Next year a new leader will bring fresh momentum to Meyer’s enduring mission, and I couldn’t be more excited about that.
This isn’t about re-engineering Meyer. We’re not looking for a change agent. We’re looking for a proactive innovator to shepherd us further into equity, someone who leads from a position of strength and understands why stewardship trumps ownership every time. It’s about a planned and thoughtful transition that will best serve Meyer and Oregon.
A national search for a new CEO will begin this summer, with preference given to candidates rooted in the Pacific Northwest. We plan to retain a search firm with a solid record of identifying diverse pools of exceptional candidates. And Meyer pledges to pick its next leader from a diverse finalist pool — or start fresh.
Meyer staff will be invited to share their opinions with trustees, comment on desired CEO attributes, and take part in focus groups and interviews of finalists. The community will also play a part. Nonprofit leaders and stakeholders will have the opportunity to provide input on key attributes and characteristics for Meyer’s next CEO.
When he died at age 92 in 1978, after building a simple coffee delivery business into a regional full-service grocery and restaurant chain, Fred Meyer set aside stock valued at $63 million to establish this trust.
The value of those stocks had nearly doubled by the time the Fred Meyer Charitable Trust launched in Portland in 1982 as the largest private foundation in the Pacific Northwest. Our doors opened at a calamitous moment: A deep recession had toppled Oregon’s timber industry. Unemployment hovered at 12 percent, the worst since the Great Depression. Rural Oregon, especially, withered.
With money in the bank and no need to fundraise, private foundations are well-suited to weather bleak financial times. But their purpose isn’t merely to exist in perpetuity. When community needs grow, the way foundations respond matters. Over the years our board has worked to balance Mr. Meyer’s mandate to operate in perpetuity while stepping up funding during Oregon’s most challenging periods.
During our first 20 years, led by Executive Director Charles Rooks, most of Meyer’s grantmaking was responsive and for general purposes. Charles showed exemplary stewardship in so many ways, including one practical way: He was an early adopter and champion of capacity-building grants, which strengthen the stability and growth of organizations so they can better serve their communities and, in turn, strengthen the entire nonprofit sector.
During his tenure, Meyer awarded 3,817 grants, totalling $294.5 million, to 1,883 organizations across every county in Oregon, and in Clark County, Wash. Small and large, those early Meyer grants made a lasting impact.
When Charles retired in 2002, our assets were just over $475 million, you could count the number of staff on two hands, and Meyer was viewed as a well-established, somewhat traditional, regional foundation in a state struggling through yet another economic recession.
Meyer’s second generation trustees wanted a patient change agent, someone who, like them, would keep one eye on the present and the other on how we might adapt in real time to best serve a state in crisis.
I am proud of how Meyer has explored ways to make a greater impact in our community. We’ve constantly wrestled with how best to bridge the gulf between what Meyer paid out each year and the scale of the challenges we sought to address. What we were looking for was a better way to leverage our substantial human and capital assets to tackle deep-seated societal problems, including a more focused effort to align our investment portfolio with our mission.
The shifts began in earnest in 2004, when we began making program-related investments, eventually paying out roughly $40 million in low interest loans and guarantees and along the way validating the belief that we had tools at our disposal to augment our grantmaking for greater impact. Next, along with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Heron Foundation, we helped to launch the 2% for Mission campaign to encourage more mission-related investing by foundations. Our efforts led to the formation of Mission Investors Exchange and mission-related investing is now a standard in philanthropy. Meyer uses mission-related investing to tap our institutional assets to further both our mission and our financial goals.
The long bull stock market that had helped our corpus grow over 25 years to about $700 million crashed after the housing bubble popped in 2007. Requests for funding increased. Locally and nationwide, calls grew louder for foundations to step in and backfill government cutbacks. On the grant side of the house, we made it a practice to engage stakeholders in deeper conversations about how Meyer could be more responsive to their needs and our mutual desire for greater collective impact.
Beyond the immediate crisis, we looked past the symptoms to the conditions that made it hard for vulnerable communities to thrive and hedge against future downturns, determined to focus more directly on root causes. The housing market collapse highlighted the problem of affordable housing. So Meyer added strategic focus to our grantmaking through an initiative to preserve and increase access to affordable housing. In 2008, we launched the Willamette River Initiative to make measurable improvements along a river basin that is home to two-thirds of the state's population and three-quarters of its economic output.
Impact, it’s really been all about impact.
More recently, we studied the findings of the Oregon Values and Beliefs Project. For two decades, the project has polled Oregonians about important issues affecting our social and political lives. Turns out Oregonians care about the funding and quality of K-12 education more than any other issue, affirming the importance of the Chalkboard Project, which Meyer co-founded with five other Oregon foundations in a collaborative effort to lift K-12 student achievement.
In considering education, the Willamette River, housing and poverty, we found ourselves investigating gaps in the funding that underpins our state. Where those gaps are greatest, you’ll find the worst oppression and inequities.
Our staff and board began exploring the idea of equity and what it meant to be driven to make Oregon a “flourishing and equitable” place. Trainers help us learn together how deeply racial bias and systemic oppression are embedded in our institutions, our culture and our own subconscious and the effect they have on the world in which we live and work. We didn't invent equity; our passion is built atop the learnings, partnerships and efforts of others in the field doing the hard, often unrecognized work.
We’ve learned to recognize the legacy of racial inequity in this country’s institutions and how its cumulative impacts create the conditions funders traditionally work to overcome. We believe our mission of achieving a flourishing Oregon depends on achieving equity. That means breaking down barriers and leveling disparities. Some examples: dismantling conditions that leave kids of color to expect one outcome in Oregon’s education system while well-to-do white kids expect another, or increasing access to affordable housing for farmworkers and the formerly incarcerated so they, too, can achieve stability at home. Only change at the systemic level can surmount inequities.
You know the feeling of nudging a final puzzle piece into place, that sense of completion and rightness that comes with seeing the whole picture? That’s what delving into equity felt like for me. We are committed to addressing bias and inequity across Oregon. It is not an overstatement to say that delving into equity profoundly changed me and Meyer’s direction. It’s why we’ve become what we’ve become, no doubt about it.
Now we use our heft to back advocacy efforts that increase equity and inclusion of Oregonians who experience disparities because of race, ethnicity, income, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, location or other oppressions. Now we don’t just say we prioritize that work and nonprofit partners who share our interest; it’s woven into the fabric of Meyer.
We’ve built a national reputation as a regional foundation that has gone all-in for equity and inclusion and against inequality. We still have much to learn and are certainly far from getting it all right, but we are transparent about our commitment to equity and inclusion. We know that it defines who we are at Meyer and how we approach our work. We will continue to be vocal about our beliefs and aspirations to encourage others in the independent sector.
Our trustees agree. We are staying the course on our commitment to equity at Meyer. For the organizations and people we’ve met and engaged in our listening tours and surveys over the past few years, you can be sure there are no plans for significant changes in program directions or funding.
Meyer’s work on equity, diversity and inclusion has transformed the makeup of our staff and board. Today, Meyer is a foundation with 37 employees, three Momentum Fellows, a corpus of about $750 million and total grant awards topping $717 million. Half of my colleagues identify as people of color; more than two-thirds identify as women. Our board is similar: Two-thirds identify as people of color, and two-thirds identify as women. We are working on ways to deepen the diversity of our staff, beyond race and gender identity.
The Meyer team — trustees and staff alike — share a commitment to and application of equity principles in our work.
It has been said that successful servant leaders know when they have done all they can for the good of an organization. I feel confident that stepping away in 2018 will make room for a new leader who can guide Meyer further down its path.
I plan on staying onboard through a good part of 2018 to help Meyer’s next leader settle in smoothly. Then I’ll take a short break before pursuing opportunities to advance equity and inclusion in the independent sector.
I’m tremendously excited about the future at Meyer — and I hope you are, too.
