Years of uncertainty about whether the 2020 U.S. Census would include a question about citizenship ended in June when the Supreme Court blocked its inclusion.
Three Western governors — Gov. Kate Brown (OR), Gov. Gavin Newsom (CA) and Gov. Jay Inslee (WA) — applauded the court’s decision in a New York Times op-ed about the importance of the Census and the devastating impact of undercounting the nation’s population.
“... just because the citizenship question will not be included doesn’t mean an end to the confusion or anxiety. We will not sit idly by, and we are committed to reassuring our communities that they can feel secure in taking part in the census and that their participation matters.
A miscount would have huge consequences. It would significantly erode the political power of communities of color and reduce funding to vulnerable communities for things like health care services, education programs and bridges and roads.
Our economies could also suffer. Businesses use census data to make $4 trillion in annual private investment decisions. And the information helps them decide where to build, invest in other businesses and what to sell to whom. Utility companies use it to influence where they add infrastructure and invest in new technology.
Everyone must be counted.”
Many challenges remain to achieving an accurate count in 2020 — budget cuts, minimal advance testing, rollout of the nation’s first digital census, continuing fear and mistrust in communities. The 2020 count will require stronger statewide efforts than ever before.
Read the Governors’ full New York Times Op-Ed piece here.
Photo source: A woman protesting the citizenship question outside the Supreme Court in April.CreditCreditAurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images (NYTimes)
Equity and fair access to opportunity are core values for Meyer Memorial Trust.
It’s rare that Meyer uses its voice to call out federal policy, but we felt called to comment on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s proposed rule about mixed-status families. The more we heard from partners about HUD’s plans to evict thousands of families, seniors and children into homelessness, the more we knew we had to speak up and use our platform to support Oregonians on this important issue.
On May 10, 2019, HUD proposed a rule change that would no longer allow “mixed-status” families — households with both documented and undocumented members — to qualify for federal housing assistance based on their immigration status. This proposed rule would force families out of public housing and Section 8 programs, effectively spurring homelessness, forced family breakups and/or loss of housing assistance. The proposed rule would give current residents nearly no time to react or prepare. There are some great in-depth explainers here, here and here about the proposed rule and its effects.
This is even worse than it looks. It would have a devastating impact on not just the families directly affected by this rule but also our local communities across Oregon. Not only would the proposed HUD rule revoke housing assistance to families who are entitled to federal housing assistance but it would also without a doubt increase homelessness in Oregon. It also would impose new reporting and documentation guidelines on legal residents and U.S. citizens that feed a climate of fear, distrust and division.
It’s time for more people to say “enough.” Enough using families and children as props for a political gain. Enough terrorizing some of our most vulnerable neighbors with intimidation, fear-mongering and inciting hatred from other groups. The proposed rule change is racist. It’s not a strategy to address immigration or housing. It seeks to target the Latinx community, and HUD itself has admitted that there would be no benefit to families on housing wait lists and the rule could lead to reduced quality in housing. If it takes effect, it would jeopardize the housing stability of American citizens and legal residents of the U.S., as well as undocumented residents (who are already prohibited from receiving federal housing assistance). It is estimated that nearly 700 Oregon households, including 1,700 children, would be directly impacted by this proposed rule. This would create a significant burden on communities and local governments across Oregon that do not have the resources to respond to an increased wave of homelessness and emergency support needs.
Meyer stands with all Oregonians to make Oregon the best it can be for everyone who calls it home. And Meyer intentionally stands with communities of color. We strive to use our position of power and privilege to call out policies and programs that threaten the livelihood of our neighbors and communities.
Every day our nonprofit partners doing on-the-ground work across the state change individual lives and transform communities. This proposed HUD rule is a direct assault on those efforts and on Meyer’s vision of a flourishing and equitable Oregon.
— Michelle J. DePass, President and CEO
Read Meyer's public comment on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s proposed rule about mixed-status families here or below:
I am writing on behalf of Meyer Memorial Trust in response to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) proposed rule to express our strong opposition to the changes regarding "verification of eligible status,” published in the Federal Register on May 10, 2019 (RIN 2501-AD89; HUD Docket No. FR-6124-P-01). We urge the rule be withdrawn in its entirety and HUD’s long-standing regulations remain in effect.
Meyer Memorial Trust is a private foundation in Portland, Ore., whose mission is to work with and invest in organizations, communities, ideas and efforts that contribute to a flourishing and equitable Oregon. We see the proposed rule as a direct affront to our core values — and to the values that define America. Foundations have long devoted resources to address society's problems, including funding programs to help address and alleviate the homeless and housing crisis.
This is likely the first time Meyer Memorial Trust has commented on a pending federal housing rule. We are moved to do so by HUD’s willingness to use families and children as props in a political drama that will destabilize communities across the United States and directly increase homelessness and trauma among Oregon’s 4.2 million residents. We are deeply alarmed at this effort to divide Americans, to sow fear and distrust and anger, and to stigmatize our most vulnerable neighbors.
The proposed rule will hurt tens of thousands of immigrant families, including many citizen children.
There is no legitimate policy purpose behind the proposed rule. HUD itself has admitted that there would be no benefit to families on housing waiting lists and it could lead to reduced quality in housing. If it takes effect, it would jeopardize the housing stability of American citizens and legal residents of the U.S., as well as undocumented residents (who are already prohibited from receiving federal housing assistance). It is estimated that 100,000 households, including 55,000 children, would be directly impacted by this proposed rule. This would create a significant burden on communities and local governments across Oregon that do not have the resources to respond to an increased wave of homelessness and emergency support needs.
The proposed rule would bar children who are U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents from maintaining and seeking federally subsidized housing. The proposed rule would severely and immediately impact thousands of people, many of them children, in Oregon. We know all too well the human, social and financial cost of homelessness; we are appalled to see the federal government propose policies that would make this crisis worse. And the message behind the proposed rule is already contributing to a climate deeply at odds with the work Meyer aims to support. We know from our partners working with Latinx communities across Oregon that the federal government’s demonization of undocumented workers, families and children is having a chilling effect — preventing people from accessing services and benefits to which they are eligible, feeding a reluctance to have any contact with government, and feeding a climate of fear and distrust. The proposed regulations are in direct conflict with their underlying statute and ignore amendments that Congress made to Section 214.
HUD has not adequately addressed the administrative burdens created by the proposed rule.
Housing providers and landlords would be significantly burdened by the rule. The rule’s impact would not be limited to immigrants and their families. Under the proposed requirements for documentation, tens of thousands of public housing agencies and private property owners and managers would need to collect documents “proving” the citizenship of over 9 million assisted residents receiving HUD assistance who have already attested citizenship, under penalty of perjury. They would also have to collect documents on future applicants for assistance. Housing providers would also need to collect status documentation from 120,000 elderly immigrants. Additionally, the proposed rule calls for public housing authorities to establish their own policies and criteria to determine whether a family should receive continued or temporary deferral of assistance. These requirements would place a significant cost burden on housing authorities and other subsidized housing providers that are completely unaccounted for in the rule. Housing authorities, charged with administering the public housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs, have spoken out against the proposed rule.
For the past five years, Meyer has worked to foster relationships between housing service agencies, public housing authorities and private landlords. Nonprofits and landlord groups have made significant progress to work together and streamline better public housing authority processes across Oregon, making housing placement smoother and faster, benefiting all parties involved. Most Oregon landlords own and self-manage fewer than 20 units. The proposed rule would create an undue burden on hundreds of Oregon landlords and small public housing authorities, strain existing positive relationships and complicate housing placement of all low-income families eligible for public assistance.
Meyer Memorial Trust strives to use our position of power and privilege to call out policies and programs that threaten our neighbors and communities. This proposed HUD rule is a direct assault on our core values and on our vision of a flourishing and equitable Oregon.
We urge HUD to immediately withdraw its current proposal and dedicate its efforts to advancing policies that strengthen — rather than undermine — the ability of immigrants to support themselves and their families. If we want our communities to thrive, everyone in those communities must be able to stay together and get the care, services and support they need to remain healthy and productive. We urge the secretary and the administration to join us working on positive solutions to the issues affecting us.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit comments on the proposed rulemaking. Please do not hesitate to contact me at michellej [at] mmt.org (michellej[at]mmt[dot]org) if further information is needed.
The Opportunity Zone program — a federal strategy that provides preferential tax treatment to investors, allowing them to sell a good that has increased in value, such as stock or real estate, but delay paying taxes on capital gains if they immediately reinvest in a building or business that is located in a recognized site — has selected the Rockwood neighborhood as a new opportunity zone in Oregon.
Rockwood, between the borders of Portland and Gresham, has historically been a disinvested neighborhood in the Portland area. Zoning the region as an opportunity zone will make it a tempting investment opportunity for private investors and real estate developers.
The Oregonian reports on the selection of Rockwood as an opportunity zone:
Rockwood, just inside Gresham’s borders, stretches from roughly 162nd to 202nd avenues, along East Burnside Street and the MAX Blue Line. A high percentage of residents live below the poverty line, and many are members of racial or ethnic minorities. It’s long suffered under a reputation for high crime, though its crime rate is similar to other neighborhoods considering its population.
“There are a lot of complex reasons why a neighborhood like Rockwood gets overlooked, but the systems have really failed our neighbors, and getting unstuck has been a really complicated problem,” said Brad Ketch, founder of the nonprofit Rockwood Community Development Corp.
The Rockwood Rising site, owned by the city of Gresham, was the site of a Fred Meyer that closed in 2003. The city plans a major redevelopment it hopes will spur more development in the neighborhood. | Photo credit Elliot Njus at the Oregonian
On May 8, public school teachers across Oregon planned a walkout to advocate for more state funding. Districts responded by cancelling school for the day, adjusting calendars and, in the case of Portland Public Schools, demonstrating support for increased public education funding: “Our educators and students deserve better. It is long overdue that we prioritize schools in Oregon,” said Guadalupe Guerrero, Portland Public Schools superintendent.
As Oregon teachers continue to advocate for deeper investments in schools statewide, Meyer supports their efforts by investing in a system that not only guarantees teacher voice, but also sees it as a trusted, integral part of how schools operate and how students learn. As we elevate the voices of all teachers, Meyer is deeply committed to centering those who have been our communities’ most marginalized: teachers of color.
Meyer’s Focus
A key outcome for Meyer’s Equitable Education portfolio is diversifying Oregon’s public education workforce. Data show that racially diverse teachers have a significant positive impact on the achievement of priority students, specifically students of color, but we and others would argue all students benefit. The Oregon Legislature is seeing this need, too; the Joint Committee on Student Success is currently reviewing House Bill 2742, which directs the Department of Education to distribute grants for the purpose of developing and diversifying Oregon’s educator workforce, from pre-kindergarten through grade 12.
Meyer believes incorporating teacher voice is crucial to our state’s education puzzle. Legislation, district policies, grants and scholarships alone will not move the dial on our biggest challenges: We must build mechanisms designed for inclusion, created to recognize expertise where it exists and engendered to promote agency in determining the most effective solutions. Led by these principals, Meyer has sought opportunities to participate in education discussions centered on this topic. We discovered that those who are the most critical to defining challenges and creating solutions are often missing from the conversation entirely.
For Meyer to make informed decisions on investments that further our outcome of diversifying Oregon’s public education workforce, we needed to engage those closest to the subject. To do so, we connected with our statewide networks and gathered together teachers of color from across Oregon who are known equity champions in their schools and districts. This diverse group of 23 teachers of color discussed what brought them to teaching, what keeps them teaching and what daily challenges push them to consider leaving the profession. Most importantly, we discussed their recommendations for how public education in Oregon can attract, sustain and retain teachers of color.
The information below was collected during our gathering. It has informed Meyer’s present work and will serve as a guide for future investments.
Group Profile
Meyer’s Teachers of Color Gathering was facilitated by Zalika Gardner, a teacher of color who taught for more than 15 years and now serves as education director for KairosPDX — a school she co-founded in North Portland in 2012. The 23 participants were from different racial and ethnic groups and identified as Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Latinx, Native American, South Asian and multiracial (identifying with two or more races). The educators’ experience teaching varied from less than five years to more than 20 years and one administrator with five years of experience. The teachers came from cities and school districts across Oregon: Portland, Hood River, Clackamas, Medford, Gresham, Eugene and Seaside. Most teachers had earned their teaching credentials in Oregon. The few who earned their credentials out of state earned them in California or New York. One participant was a credentialed teacher in Mexico but was not able to teach in Oregon without earning a master’s degree in education in the United States.
Many participants commented that they had never been in a space with such a diverse group of teachers, primarily folks of color. Those who had experienced a similar space said that it did not happen in Oregon. Within the first few hours of the gathering many teachers began to express that eight hours would not be enough time to grapple with the topics of the day. It was clear that the event itself was serving a crucial need for networking and relationship building among educators of color within Oregon.
What We Heard
Teachers of color are mission-driven. The core message from participants was their love for their students and communities compelled them into the teaching profession and that passion for their students and communities keeps them teaching and persevering through common challenges.
Throughout the gathering, four themes emerged as central to transforming Oregon’s public schools and education system into an institution that attracts and retains teachers of color:
Teacher preparation programs must do a better job of educating emerging, pre-service teachers in culturally affirming pedagogy. At the same time, programs must create honest and nurturing spaces for pre-service teachers of color to share experiences and build support networks with other teachers and mentors of color that will sustain them as they enter the teaching workforce and face biases on a daily basis. Key programs cited as exemplary: Sapsipkwala program, Portland Teachers Program, and the Bilingual Teacher Pathway program at Portland State University.
Excellent, culturally matched mentors matter. In almost every activity, the necessity and influence of effective mentorship surfaced as a central reason participants remained in teaching. Participants insisted that placing emerging teachers with content-specific and grade-level specific mentors who are honest, culturally empowering master teachers is critical to achieving and retaining a diversified teaching workforce.
Teachers of color need an organization that shares the values and concerns of diverse teachers. This idea emerged as a “collective” or hub that offers resources for professional coaching, mental health support, legal support, lobbying and advocacy services. Teachers of color don’t always feel represented by their unions; leadership is predominantly white and trails behind national educator organizations on issues of equity. Because the majority of Oregon’s teaching workforce is white, the union serves the agenda of the majority of its constituents. Some participants felt they were vulnerable to being marginalized, tokenized and forced to stay quiet when union decisions and actions put them directly at odds with the organization charged with representing them.
The higher you move up in education leadership in Oregon, the whiter the population becomes. Currently there are 197 superintendents across Oregon and just seven of them are leaders of color: Guadalupe Guerrero (PPS), Paul Coakley (Centennial), Danna Diaz (Reynolds), Katrise Perera (Gresham/Barlow), Gustavo Balderas (Eugene), Koreen N. Barreras-Brown (Colton) and George Mendoza (La Grande); less than 4% of district leaders. Oregon’s teachers of color rarely have leadership that understands what teaching or leading in a school building feels like as a person of color. The cohort of teachers identified more responsive, culturally affirming training for emerging school building administrators and thorough ongoing professional development and equity training for those already leading buildings. Teachers believed that school building leaders set the framework for cultural norms in the building. Thus, this is a crucial role, one that has an immense effect on whether or not a teacher of color remains a teacher. It’s important that these leaders know how to lead, affirm and develop a diverse teacher workforce.
Conclusion
Meyer’s Teachers of Color Gathering uncovered clear alignment in why participants chose the teaching profession: their love for their communities. Teachers also shared the central issue that challenges them to stay: biased co-teachers, building administrators and others openly dismissing, belittling, disparaging and underestimating teachers, children and families of color.
If we truly seek to create an educator workforce that reflects Oregon’s increasingly diverse student population, we must not only examine how we prepare and train teachers of color, but also radically reshape the expectations for pre-service white teachers and administrators. A training system that exposes and examines biases isn’t one class or a few discussions but a central area of mastery essential to becoming a teacher or administrator in the state of Oregon.
Next Steps
Meyer remains committed to elevating the voices of teachers and administrators of color. We will continue to work with this core group of educators to determine meaningful investments toward our outcome of sustaining and increasing Oregon’s education workforce diversity. Heeding the feedback we received from the first gathering, we will hold another gathering in winter 2019, bringing back this core group of educators and adding more, including administrators of color who are leading for equity. We also plan to connect pre-service teachers of color with this incredible collection of educators to promote networking and relationship building for these burgeoning teachers.
This is the second blog in a series recapping “At The Intersection of Philanthropy and Tech,” a breakout session I presented last July during ACT-W Portland — an annual conference for women in tech hosted by our city's local chapter of ChickTech — that centered on what the philanthropic and tech sectors can learn from each other and where I think they will succeed by working together. The first blog detailed what the tech sector is doing well. In this one, I’ll outline what philanthropy has to offer tech. The most obvious thing that the philanthropic sector can teach the tech sector is how to deploy financial assets, our raison d’être. The philanthropic sector has made great strides in the areas of financial investments, social change and planning for long-term impact, and it is our charge as philanthropists to share these insights.
The philanthropic sector, or as it’s sometimes called “organized philanthropy,” came into its own half a century ago as a side effect of Congress’ decision to regulate charitable giving and track the flow of money.1 Since that time, the sector has come to encompass grantmaking institutions, including private, independent, family, corporate and community foundations; public charities, corporate giving programs, tribal governments, government funders, and operating foundations; infrastructure organizations, including regional associations, issue-based and affinity-based national groups, and international associations; and consultancies and companies providing everything from DEI training to legal advising to grants management software. Billions of dollars move through this sector every year, and it takes expertise to continuously improve on established practices.
Oregon’s tech sector has grown steadily in the last decade, plateauing last year at about 11 percent of Oregon’s jobs.2 Many high-tech corporations headquartered in Oregon have been involved in grantmaking for some time, including Intel, Nike, Adidas, Columbia Sportswear and (recently) New Relic. Many others are supporting nonprofits but haven’t established a formal vehicle for this work. In my opinion it is both desirable and necessary that they do, especially around issues that are directly caused by the movement of a technically skilled workforce into the state. For example, affordable housing is a major issue in our state, and part of the problem is that we have such a hot job sector, especially among high-paying tech jobs, that the housing supply cannot keep up with the demand. As Oregon’s lower-income population is displaced, the tech industry has an opportunity to step up as funders to invest in developing a homegrown workforce and to mitigate their own impact on the people being pushed out.
The technical aspects of grantmaking vary depending on the type of grantmaking entity, and a company’s leaders would need to consider whether an independent foundation, corporate foundation or corporate giving program best suits their vision. These are all questions no one should have to solve alone. Fortunately, the philanthropic sector is primed to educate tech companies on how to give money away, from legal and compliance issues to evaluation and reporting best practices to collaboration with other funders. The other part of “how to give money away” is the relationship piece. Being in relationships with nonprofits over a period of time means foundations like Meyer have access to real expertise in the form of constituent voice.
There are many causes that sound good to the untrained ear, but nonprofit professionals and their customers — who are engaged in social change all day every day — know what is effective and what isn’t. To that end, I believe that tech companies that want to create social change through giving will need to cultivate relationships within the social sector. There are numerous entry points, especially in the Portland area. One example is the CTE-STEM Funder Round Table, a group that meets quarterly to discuss shared interests in funding career-technical and STEM education. I believe that when they come to the table, they will find themselves more than welcomed by our philanthropic community.
Story Time
Full disclosure: One of the reasons I wanted to speak at ACT-W and share my thoughts on this topic is that I was annoyed with Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos. In 2017, Bezos announced on Twitter that he wanted to do something big with his money and asked for suggestions. My suggestion to him then (which was not unique) was to get connected to a regional or issue-based association of grantmakers. At the time, I worked for one such organization and knew that it was a basic but crucial first step to anyone wanting to establish a formal giving program. Ignoring all the feedback he solicited, Bezos decided the best use of his money was not to help with any real problems the world currently has but to solve imaginary problems (and possibly enrich himself further while doing it). The intense criticism that followed led to Amazon announcing in October 2018 that it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour and join the fight for 15. In a statement reported by the Washington Post, Bezos said “We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do and decided we want to lead.”
He didn’t decide to “lead” on this issue because it was the right thing to do; just just eight days before the announcement, Amazon was handing out 25-cent “damage control” raises. He certainly didn’t commit to rebuilding Puerto Rico or reuniting families detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or any of the great things that a pile of money like his could do. However, this story demonstrates the importance of sincere, intentional and strategic philanthropy that listens to constituent voice and focuses on the social return on investment of all that it does.
If you want to change the world, it’s not enough to throw money around. Your entire body of work — from start to finish — can be treated as an investment in the kind of world you hope to create. Meyer’s own investment team has been at the forefront of creating investment strategies and vehicles that place our assets in service to our mission. This isn’t easy work and it doesn’t happen overnight, but that should not deter anyone from doing it. Anyone can decide to lead, even before the critiques start coming. Tech companies have additional opportunities to create positive social ROI as well, in their core market offerings.
There are no bug fixes in social change philanthropy
There is such a thing as negative social ROI. Michelle Alexander detailed the implicit racism that is baked into “e-carceration” software in “The Newest Jim Crow.” Tech Workers Coalition works to stop the use of the tech labor force to support injustices such as the creation of software for ICE’s unconstitutional activities. Even the fact that the majority of apps that get funded and developed reflect the needs and desires of their mostly white creators is a form of negative social ROI. Some of these negative returns can’t be fixed. The court system is slower by design than artificial intelligence, but if AI puts more people of color in jail and their only recourse is a slow system we are taking years away from a human life that can never be replaced.
Philanthropy is often criticized for being too slow, but I believe slow can be good — especially if the goal is to make time to fully consider the implications of what we create. The last thing any tech company should do is rush into a grantmaking program with no clear idea of their goals, the environment they’re operating in or the people who inhabit it. As much as the philanthropic sector can learn from tech about being less risk-averse, it can also teach.
Some of the insights will be learning from philanthropy’s mistakes. The history of our sector is problematic, but we continue to work steadily toward social justice.
Come and learn with us.
— Rhiannon
Notes
The Foundation Center was established in 1956 to document charitable gifts in response to the pressures of McCarthyism and fears that foundations were somehow funding communism. Before this, there were foundations, but they each functioned as if in a vacuum. Click here for a more complete synopsis. Return to top ↩
In the road of Meyer’s housing work, we are seeing a “Merge Ahead” sign. Our Affordable Housing Initiative, a five-year plan to explore innovation, support systems change and leverage resources to meet the housing needs of Oregonians is coming to its official end. That isn’t to say that our work will stop. Rather, it will be blended in with the Housing Opportunities portfolio and not labelled as a separate initiative.
In the foundation world, an initiative is a focused effort to support change. It implies that the foundation is taking the initiative to set aside specific goals and strategies for a particular effort. At the time the Meyer’s Affordable Housing Initiative was established, the foundation was a traditional responsive grantmaker. Applicants could submit proposals on the topic of their choice, which allowed grantseekers to have maximum flexibility but made it difficult to move a body of work toward a specific end.
The Affordable Housing Initiative was one of Meyer’s first two initiative experiments, the other being the Willamette River Initiative. From the time they launched in 2008, both became incubators for new ways of working as a foundation. Through the Affordable Housing Initiative we:
Engaged with our partners in deeper collaborative work, starting with an advisory committee that helped identify the eight targeted strategies of the Affordable Housing Initiative;
Sought grant proposals that advanced our specific strategies, using new funding mechanisms like Requests for Proposals (we’ve completed 15 RFPs, awarding more than 125 grants) and Meyer-directed grants;
Launched an early prototype of an equity lens, specifically prioritizing under-resourced communities, including communities of color, culturally specific organizations and underserved rural communities. For the first time, our applications asked for disaggregated data on who was being served by a project, as well as the board and staff makeup of an organization;
Hired program officers Elisa Harrigan and Michael Parkhurst for their specific experience and leadership in the affordable housing sector;
Used smaller grants to support the technical assistance needs of our partners, along with field-building grants to support broad conferences and other learning opportunities;
Developed stronger ties with the investments side of the house at Meyer. This has allowed us to better connect our work and support some innovative work by the investment team.
In these ways, the Affordable Housing Initiative ran as a parallel path to Meyer’s core grantmaking work. Successes and stumbles learned from this incubator helped inform the restructure of Meyer’s programs in 2015, when we created four portfolios to help move us toward a flourishing and equitable Oregon. Forming the Housing Opportunities portfolio provided us the space to add more dedicated housing staff and roll out a more responsive funding opportunity to complement the targeted strategies we had been doing through the AHI.
When the parallel roads merge this month, you are not likely to see much difference. We’ll have the same staff, the same use of RFPs to advance specific strategies as well as an annual funding opportunity and the same attention to policy- and systems-level change. We’ll have a clear focus to center people experiencing housing discrimination and work to reduce the disproportionate impacts of racist and discriminatory housing policy on Indigenous communities, people of color, people with disabilities and other priority populations.
Through five intense years of the Affordable Housing Initiative, Meyer’s housing staff have reflected on our work and corrected our course based on market fluctuations, policy changes and a sharpened equity mission. Later this year, we’ll complete a more holistic assessment of the impact of the AHI on our partners and the larger housing landscape in Oregon. If you are interested in participating in a focus group for the evaluation, let us know on this form.
The Affordable Housing Initiative helped Meyer deepen and transform its work, and we are confident its lessons will continue to influence our work and the wider housing field in Oregon.
Kimberly A.C. Wilson, Meyer’s director of communications, recently sat down with Building Community portfolio director Dahnesh Medora and program associate Erin Dysart to talk about changes in the portfolio this year, including accepting applications by invitation.
Kimberly Wilson:
Before we talk about the shifts within the Building Community portfolio, let’s spend some time capturing the evolution of the portfolio. Since Meyer redesigned its programs, there are often questions about the purpose or vision for this portfolio. Can you share some of that background?
Dahnesh Medora:
As I understand it, the vision was always broad. As Meyer moved away from a responsive grantmaking model, the Building Community portofolio was meant to serve as a space where a range of groups could see their work and access support generally. The initial outline for the portfolio had an emphasis on capacity building, with an added focus on civic engagement and the arts. Those were the three buckets that were most distinctly carved out.
What Building Community didn’t have, in contrast to the other portfolios, was a more topical focus that tied these things together. The closest thing we had was a focus on equity, which essentially meant that the Building Community portfolio mirrored the overarching focus of Meyer as a whole. In practice that meant Building Community was the “widest door” to apply for Meyer funding, and so we’ve consistently seen a high level of interest from the field.
Kimberly Wilson:
This has been Meyer’s largest portfolio in regard to the range of topic areas covered and when it comes to application volume through the Annual Funding Opportunity. Can you say a bit more about what that has looked like?
Erin Dysart:
Sure, over the three annual funding cycles, Building Community received about 1,000 applications, well over half of what Meyer received across all four portfolios. We funded just over 200. So about 80 percent of applications were declined each year. In terms of dollars, upward of $127 million was requested and about $22 million was granted. It has been a very competitive process.
Dahnesh Medora:
Yes, the door has been wide, but the funding hasn’t been quite as much. Let’s come back to that 80 percent in a minute. I do want to touch on the breadth of topics you asked about. When we reviewed a pool of applications, we found folks who were working on recidivism, arts organizations that were focused on youth development and groups that were in the traditional public policy and advocacy space, including collaboratives. We’d see organizations offering direct services for basic needs and family supports for early childhood ...
Erin Dysart:
… organizations working in or on health care, media, legal services, cultural preservation, out-of-school programming, community facilities, food systems, employment support … the list goes on.
Kimberly Wilson:
So it sounds like this portfolio, at least in its earliest days, carried forward some remnants of Meyer’s previous responsive grantmaking model.
Dahnesh Medora:
I think there’s some truth to that. We put this broad container out into the world, so although we did adjust and tighten a bit each year, we continued to receive a high volume of applications covering a vast range of issues.
For a variety of reasons, I don’t think it’s ideal that we turn down 80 percent of applicants. That means a lot of people put time and energy into an application, they base their planning around this work and our process can take between six to nine months before they even find out if they’ve been accepted as a grantee. I don’t know that there is an ideal acceptance rate necessarily — I think Meyer’s other portfolios tend to be closer to 50 percent — but I’d like to get to a place where Building Community can provide clearer guidance in advance that supports folks in making self selections and ultimately leads to a smaller number of declinations.
Funding will likely always be competitive to some degree, but we know we can make some improvements. That’s one of our goals in reformulating what we’re doing, to make the process less arduous for applicants generally. This also means that our staff will be able to focus and be more strategic with their use of time. If we’re not culling through those large numbers, we’re able to devote more time and attention to individual applications and make the case for why they should be funded to our trustees. That’s exciting to me, being more strategic.
Erin Dysart:
Me, too. And that relates to something I hear consistently from our portfolio colleagues as well, that we’d all like to be out in the field more and be able to work in more relational and less transactional ways.
Kimberly Wilson:
You mentioned adjusting and tightening each year, I think referring to the Annual Funding Opportunity. How has that played out?
Erin Dysart:
We have been working incrementally on narrowing the portfolio. We’ve made adjustments to our funding goals and intended outcomes each year, in collaboration with our trustees, for example naming systems change as a goal. So we’ve experimented with some of those sorts of modifications.
Of course, some narrowing has also happened as we’ve made hard choices about what gets funded and what doesn’t. Again, the door to apply has been wide, but the funding has always been more narrow. Part of what has emerged and guided us and grown stronger in doing so over the course of these three years are what we’re now calling our anchor criteria, three qualities that we look for in partner organizations.
Those are, one, an active commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion both in external programming or services and, importantly, in internal operations and leadership. We’re looking for indications that go beyond some initial training. Two: centering, listening to and remaining accountable to the service community. We sometimes call this raising up constituent voice. Finally, three, and this is a big one for us, we’re looking for organizations that ensure that their work fits within broader efforts to address systems that perpetuate economic, political and other disparities.
Dahnesh Medora:
You might notice that these are “issue agnostic” characteristics or rather that these are about how an organization works rather than what issue they might be focusing on. In some ways the “how” has always been a bit easier for us to pin down.
One other thing to mention, and this is connected to our anchor criteria to some degree, is that we’ve grown more clear about the need to prioritize racial equity. That’s not at the exclusion of thinking about other issues of oppression, of course.
Erin Dysart:
Moving forward, we’re going to be more clear that we are looking first and foremost at work that is designed to support communities of color and Indigenous people and Tribes, and then particularly where they may experience overlapping oppressions related to gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status ...
Dahnesh Medora:
… or other oppressions that might be specific to a community.
Kimberly Wilson:
Can you share what’s ahead for the Building Community portfolio in the 2019-20 funding cycle?
Dahnesh Medora:
Some things are different, but I want to be clear that the foundational pieces remain the same. Our vision, for example. We want to create a just, complex, multicultural society where everyone can thrive. That’s been a consistent aim, and that will remain the same.
In support of that, we’re going to provide funding in the amount of roughly $2.5 million for groups that have a strong track record of work around systems change. These are organizations that will be invited to apply, so we won’t have a broad open funding call. That is the biggest difference that folks in the field are going to notice.
Erin Dysart:
Again, our anchor criteria are key: The organizations invited to apply for this funding are working explicitly on systems change, as Dahnesh said, and are also strong on our other two anchor criteria, constituent voice and DEI.
Dahnesh Medora:
We will also put out a dedicated request for proposals this spring that will focus about a million dollars of funding on organizations that are primarily in the direct service space that have an interest in focusing on systems change. Grantees of this RFP will also participate in a cohort or a community learning process that will be supported by subject matter experts in the field.
Kimberly Wilson:
So this is for direct service providers who are really thinking about root causes?
Erin Dysart:
Exactly, organizations that want to create a condition where their service isn’t needed. We work with some organizations who have figured this out beautifully. They have a vision of what it would take to ultimately work themselves out of a job. And they’re working on it! The cohort programming isn’t fully worked out yet, but we may end up reaching out to some of the groups we know that are already strong on this to see if there is an appropriate (resourced) way for them to share some of their experience with other organizations looking to build this muscle.
Dahnesh Medora:
So this is an area — direct services to systems change — where we’re going deeper, in a sense, both for the purpose of supporting the field but also to support our own learning. Our own learning is a piece of what we’re hoping to do this next year through engagement with organizations that are in the field.
Kimberly Wilson:
Are there other ways you’re pursuing that learning during this interim year, other elements of work not tied specifically to the two funding streams you’ve talked about? Are you in fact thinking of this as an interim year?
Dahnesh Medora:
We are thinking of this year as unique, yes. And I’d say that all of the learning we are pursuing is in some way tied to systems change, that’s the big theme. The idea of systems change has become more and more central to Meyer’s work, but it has been defined somewhat loosely. In Building Community, we’re thinking about how we can make that more tangible. What does systems change really look like? How can we best support it? Where are the levers and opportunities in Oregon that we might be well suited to move?
Erin Dysart:
We’re also talking more about how policy change and systems change overlap but aren’t the same. Policy change is part of systems change but isn’t the entirety of it by any stretch.
Dahnesh Medora:
That’s a good way of putting it. And in that sense, the policy and advocacy component of our work has been there all the way through, and I think we’re now making more of a distinction between the two, between policy and advocacy and broader systems change efforts.
In the future, we’ll make an effort to try to convene our grantees a little more than we have in the past. You might think of it as formal convenings or meetings, but there’s also a great benefit in just deepening relationships with individual organizations and those are one-on-one conversations. Our hope is that we create enough space for our staff this year to actually go out and engage with groups one on one.
Erin Dysart:
And that could go beyond grantees, too. We know there may be groups doing great work in Oregon that connects well with what we’re trying to achieve but that we haven’t partnered with or even met yet for one reason or another.
Dahnesh Medora:
We also have Building Community staff members who represent Meyer on some important funder collaboratives — Sally Yee on the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative and Erin on the Census Equity Funders Committee of Oregon — so that is work that is also ongoing on a parallel track that can inform how the portfolio evolves.
We’ll also try to keep our tools sharp by attending conferences, working with other funders, intermediaries and peer organizations that dig in on a particular issue or have an approach that we think might lend itself well to the other efforts we see in the sector. That’s definitely a piece of the field engagement. We’re going to focus some exploration on issues related to immigration, democracy and wealth creation, themes that have emerged from our first three years that feel like they might have potential to help us sharpen our approach. We are open and ready.
Erin Dysart:
This all really ties back to when Meyer’s trustees chose to shift to strategic rather than responsive grantmaking. That’s about naming the impact you want to see in the world and focusing resources on the strongest opportunities to make it happen. So when we talk about narrowing, reformulating or possibly identifying topical focus areas, these are all essentially different ways of saying that we’re trying to get more specific about the highest impact strategies that are going to help us actually shift power and achieve the transformational change we want to see in the world––and that communities have been working toward for decades!
Dahnesh Medora:
And I think Meyer is at an inflection point more generally. As a whole organization, we are trying to understand: Where can we have the greatest impact? Our board and staff are constantly asking that question, and I think a healthy organization has to do so on an ongoing basis. To not just ask it once.
Kimberly Wilson:
So what comes next after this year? And how can people in the field connect with you or stay tuned into what you’re working on this year?
Dahnesh Medora:
We don’t know exactly what the year after next will look like. I know that’s not a terribly satisfying answer, but that is the genuine truth of where we are. Again, we do have core elements of the portfolio that won’t change, but the pieces that may feel most urgent to folks in the field, such as specifics of what funding opportunities will look like, we just can’t say yet. But we will stay in communication with the field about this as we have more information available. We’ll share updates online via our portfolio-specific newsletter and Meyer’s website. If folks want to know more or have specific questions, we encourage them to reach out to us directly.
Erin Dysart:
Right now, as we’re announcing these changes, we’re also encouraging folks to reach out via questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org) so we can compile questions and share a FAQ with the field if we find themes that would be helpful to share out. Additionally, we’ll host an online Q&A session with the field at 10 a.m., Wednesday, April 24. (Register here)
Dahnesh Medora, Building Community portfolio director, joined Meyer in November 2015 in the late stages of planning for a major programming restructure. The portfolio was still taking shape at the time and was then referred to as the Resilient Social Sector portfolio. (Its name was later changed to Building Community based on field feedback.)
Erin Dysart, Building Community program associate, joined the team in March 2016 when Meyer’s strategic grantmaking structure publicly launched and its first Annual Funding Opportunity opened.
Building Community program associate Erin Dysart conversing with community members at Meyer's 2018 Annual Funding Opportunity information session at Immigrant and Refugee Organization (IRCO).
In honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 90th birthday, 13 leaders in philanthropy share thoughts on how they and their organizations are advancing King's vision of racial and economic justice.
"Yesterday's injustice remains today's inequality," wrote Meyer President & CEO Michelle J. Depass. "The racial wealth and income gap endures, wider, even, than it was in 1968, when King was killed. Built, as it is, on the great fortunes of America, U.S. philanthropy holds a key role in closing that racial wealth and income gap.
Since refocusing its work to address inequities in Oregon, Meyer Memorial Trust has been working to dismantle structural and systemic inequities at the root of disparities in education, housing, the environment and communities, both rural and urban."
As most folks packed up their belongings and headed home after the Philanthropy Northwest annual conference, I boarded a bus with several other PNW members and staff and headed to Jerome, Idaho to visit the Minidoka National Historic Site and view what’s left of the former incarceration camp that held my family, along with 13,000 other people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
As you step onto the ashy soil of the high desert plain, it’s hard not to notice how little of the camp is left and the expansive scale that it once occupied. Originally 33,000 acres, the camp became the seventh largest city in Idaho at the time. I try to imagine what life would’ve been like behind these barbed wires and underneath the ever-present gaze from the guard tower. I think about how terrified my grandmother must have been, younger than I am now with two young children and pregnant with a third, having just lost everything and now forced to live in a shabby barrack with several other families and no idea about what will happen next. Everything unknown.
I grew up with stories of my family just trying to maintain as much a sense of community as possible, and I can feel that when walking along the baseball field or stepping into the fire stations at Minidoka. Scanning photos of the makeshift holiday celebrations and the community gardens, knowing how my family had to completely rebuild their lives after leaving the camps, the resiliency of the Japanese American community is not lost on me. I feel the strength of my relatives under the face of oppression in the core of my being and in my motivation for supporting communities of color in this work.
My grandmother was vocal about sharing her experience at Minidoka so that it would never happen again. As a yonsei, fourth generation Japanese American, I also know that the trauma of this experience lasts for generations. As I continue to grow within the field of philanthropy, I carry my family’s strength and experience with me and I move towards the ways that philanthropy can play an active role in fighting the oppression of communities of color by centering them in our work, following their lead, elevating their voices and supporting their work. Because “never again” is right now.
A stone monument near the entrance of Minidoka Relocation Center, reminding visitors of “what can happen when other factors supersede the constitutional rights guaranteed to all citizens and aliens living in this country.”
In early November, four public education leaders from Oregon — including Meyer's Equitable Education portfolio director Matt Morton, The Chalkboard Project executive director Whitney Grubbs, KairosPDX executive director Kali Thorne Ladd and Future School Lab founder Vanessa Wilkins — journeyed to Finland in search of solutions to improve schools and outcomes for students within the state.
While abroad, they participated in both Helsinki Education Week and the HundrED Innovation Summit. A new op-ed in The Oregonian highlights learnings from their journey:
Through this experience, we served as teachers as well as students. As a largely homogenous country, Finland admits challenges in meeting the needs of its rapidly growing immigrant population. We proudly shared stories about Oregon’s rich diversity, our focus on data to identify and understand disparities and the deep collaborations between public, private and civic sectors. We highlighted “bright spots,” such as KairosPDX’s model for culturally responsive teaching for African American children, Chalkboard Project’s work to support and elevate teachers, and the Meyer Memorial Trust’s transformation to more equitable and strategic grantmaking.
