As we traveled throughout the state this past year sharing information about Meyer’s new structure and funding opportunities, we heard you clearly: Meyer’s equity focus left some questions unanswered for rural communities. Leaders, community members and organizations want to know how Meyer is thinking about rural needs, concerns and strengths.

Meyer values rural communities. They are a crucial part of our Oregon community and identity. The rural entrepreneurial spirit has elevated Oregon’s diverse landscapes and waterways and opened doors for more people to explore them. Rural residents who depend on and care about their surrounding natural environment have innovated for decades to transition from natural resource-based economies and have persevered to recover from the last financial crisis. The resiliency and ingenuity of rural communities are strengthened daily through inherently collaborative approaches to work and life.

Although the strengths and character of rural communities help mitigate some of the impact, they can’t entirely eliminate existing and growing inequities. We know that Oregon’s rural communities generally experience higher poverty rates than urban areas. Oregon rural household incomes are comparable to the national average, yet home prices are nearly 60 percent higher in rural Oregon than the national average in rural communities. Higher unemployment rates and lower wages contribute to youth migration to urban areas, leaving a growing aging population to bear the cost of essential services. Historically under-resourced rural communities are left to deal with reduced or eliminated education, health care, emergency, social and economic services.

With economic challenges taking center stage, additional barriers faced by some community members are often unheard and thus unintentionally reinforced. People with deep roots in rural communities who self-identify as LGBT, women, people of color, indigenous, immigrants, and people with disabilities are left out of conversations that impact their daily lives. Local governments and organizations are challenged to engage representative voices at decision-making tables but often have minimal experience and resources to undergo change processes that deliver different outcomes. Opportunities to build strength across differences are missed, and community divisions can be exploited by external groups with no local ties. Compounded inequities contribute to loss of confidence in government, further decreasing civic engagement and participation in democratic processes.

We are on this journey together. As Meyer continues to deepen its approach in service of a flourishing and equitable Oregon, our commitment to rural communities is unwavering. We will continue to think inclusively and remain flexible and responsive to meet Oregon’s needs. We will promote advocacy to lift communities across Oregon that are most impacted by inequities rooted in bias and systemic oppression.

Inequities impacting rural communities mirror those elsewhere in the state, but we know they are uniquely experienced because of distinct circumstances such as population size, geographic isolation, poverty levels and compromised infrastructures. It is these distinctive circumstances that guide how Meyer thinks about rural communities to ensure support reaches historically under-resourced communities in highest need.

We invite you to read the factors we consider when thinking of rural communities included in our Applicant Resources along with other resources we use to think inclusively, equitably and at the intersection of identities. Knowing applicants are also interested in learning more about their communities’ demographics and how to best serve them, we have included links to tools applicants can use to collect demographic data in our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Resources page.

On this journey, we count on staying in conversation as we explore new ways of thinking about rural communities and the growing diverse communities that live in them.

Rural leaders are the experts in what equity looks like in their communities. Please join us for a virtual information session on Rural Equity on April 6, 2017. Local leaders will share their stories of advancing equity in environmental work in rural Oregon with potential applicants. Registration for virtual information sessions is open and can be accessed here.

Looking forward to more conversation as we make our way around the state.

— Nancy

At Meyer, we ask our grantees to engage with communities most impacted by disparities. And we value the wisdom our grantees develop about the work they do and the people they serve.

When we launched our new portfolio-based funding model last year, we knew we would want to shine a light on that collective wisdom. Drumroll ... Introducing Meyer’s Nonprofit Sector Learning Collaboratives and our first cohort of Leadership Development and Capacity Builder grantees!

Last November, we called for proposals to facilitate the development of leaders and organizations providing capacity building services to other organizations. I’m overjoyed to announce those grantees. The breadth of the organizations we’re funding through these two funding streams is exciting because the grantees represent all our portfolio priorities in education, housing, the environment and community building. And we were pleased that the percentage of Meyer applicants from rural communities, 30 percent, was the same percent of rural-based grants that we awarded.

Meyer had originally allocated $2.3 million for the Leadership Development and Capacity Builder grants in 2017. But because of the strength of the applications and opportunities to partner with organizations that really aligned with the funding goals, we’re awarding a total of about $2.9 million over two years.

Leadership Development: $1.5 million awarded through 22 grants

Why?

Socially based inequities are complex. Leadership development provides Oregonians with more connections, skills and resources to address areas of inequity that matter most to them. That’s the short game. The longer game is to build the power of people in communities that have not been represented in the traditional halls of power.

Many service organizations work with general populations. But organizations that are culturally specific are often made up of people from their target service community and provide services that are culturally and linguistically appropriate. That can lead to better outcomes for communities that are facing the greatest disparities. And leadership development capitalizes on the collective wisdom in communities while reducing reliance on a single leader who may come and go. The idea here is to spread out the leadership knowledge and leadership skills.

Meyer received 50 proposals for leadership development, totalling $3.1 million. Forty-five percent of the grantees serve the Portland area and 12 serve culturally specific populations.

Grantees for leadership development include Communities United for People/Enlace, a statewide-organization serving women, especially women of color impacted by violence, criminalization, climate change and immigration issues; Momentum Alliance, serving youths from marginalized communities in the Portland area; and EUVALCREE, serving Latinos in rural Malheur County.

Two to highlight include a grant for $80,000 to help the American Leadership Forum bring urban and rural leaders together to create genuine dialogue and leverage relationships that bridge the urban-rural divide that can keep Oregonians apart.

Another $80,000 grant, to the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis, will help build the leadership skills of teens working to advocate for better policies and relationships with local law enforcement.

Capacity Builder: $1.4 million awarded through 10 grants

Why?

A central tenet of Meyer is equity. So we asked ourselves: What will that mean for organizations that are early in their journey to embody equity in their ranks and programs? And where will they get the support they need to meet us along the way? The answer is to support capacity builders with grants and collective learning.

Capacity building grants traditionally help strengthen what nonprofits do. These Capacity Builder grants help strengthen management support organizations that help nonprofits be more effective. You could say these grants support those capacity builders to strengthen their own equity chops and their services to be more effective in helping the nonprofits they work with get — and get better at — equity.

Meyer received 36 proposals totalling $4.3 million.

Two to highlight include a $88,195 grant over two years goes to Northeast Oregon Economic Development District — which serves nonprofits in Union, Wallowa and Baker counties — to help embed diversity, equity and inclusion into their trainings and to provide ongoing support to the organizations they serve through facilitating DEI discussions.

Another two-year grant is a turn on the saying: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. The $147,178 grant to Oregon Health & Science University’s Evaluation Core Unit helps train small nonprofits serving marginalized communities to evaluate their work through research, collection and analysis of their data — and to provide them with a complete evaluation of their own work.

We’re asking all of the Leadership Development and Capacity Builder grantees to participate in learning collaboratives: one year for leadership development, two-years for the capacity builders. Over the course of their grant periods, we’ll host Learning Collaboratives through a series of meetings: three for Leadership Development grantees, four for Capacity Builder grantees.

Our Learning Collaboratives are intended to serve as an opportunity for grantees and Meyer staff to lift up collective wisdom to share and build knowledge to advance diversity, equity and inclusion work. With facilitator support, participants will be encouraged to reflect, plan and, to some extent, take action. All the grantees will have a chance to learn from experts in the field and will have a voice in informing how Meyer might fund these types of work in the future.

These collaboratives will help Meyer model best and promising practices among leadership development and capacity builders to advance DEI in Oregon.

— Carol

I was once a grantwriter. And this time of year, during the month when Meyer’s annual funding opportunity is open, I feel the pain of grantwriters.

Grantwriters are tasked with figuring out how to write the most compelling application possible in fewer than 2,000 words and convince a funder that a particular project is worth investing in. Coupled with funders’ selection criteria and processes, which are not always clear and can even seem arbitrary, the application process can feel downright frustrating.

One of Meyer’s values is transparency, and we strive to be open about our grantmaking and decision-making criteria. That’s why we organized in-person and virtual information sessions and created a new section on our website to share useful resources for applicants. I hope these tips help make applying for Meyer funding even easier.

Eligibility vs. alignment

Many organizations are eligible to apply for Meyer funding, but not all of them will be in alignment with our goals.

Eligibility means that the applicant fulfills certain requirements, such as having tax-exempt status and meeting our nondiscriminatory policy. Eligibility is a paved road — you’re either on it or you’re not.

Alignment, on the other hand, is more like a hiking trail — sometimes the path is clear; sometimes it’s harder to see. To show us that your project or proposal is a good fit with Meyer’s portfolio goals, you’ll want to demonstrate not only that the work you’re proposing to do directly ties to our desired outcomes but also that you have a strong analysis of how this work is (or is committed to be) rooted in equity and inclusion.

To get an idea of the projects we might fund, check out what each portfolio funded last year. Building Community’s list is here, Healthy Environment’s is here, and Housing Opportunity’s list is here. The Equitable Education portfolio begins making grants this year.

Read about our funding priorities, grant types and amounts

For some organizations, choosing a portfolio will be easy; for others, it might be a bit more difficult. If you’re in the latter category, spend some time reading about the different portfolios and decide which of their goals your work aligns with most closely. If you still have questions after looking at the portfolios, feel free to email us at questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org) or visit Meyer’s frequently asked questions page.

In the Inquiry Application, you will have an opportunity to choose one — just one — portfolio goal and up to two outcomes your proposed work will help to achieve.

To read more about the types of funding available, please click here.

Use plain language

When talking about your work, don’t assume we know what you do, who you are, or what communities you serve. Answer each question fully and in as plain a language as you can, providing examples if appropriate, and avoiding jargon and acronyms if at all possible.

Check out the cardstack above for an example organization and program description for “Awesome Organization.” It can be a bit of a Goldilocks situation to find the sweet spot of clarity and simplicity.

Connect your work to root causes and systems-level impact

For your proposal to be competitive, you’ll want to make a strong connection between your programs and services and the root causes of the problem you want to address.

To continue with our previous example, improving access to chocolate is a worthy cause in its own right, but Awesome Organization’s proposal would be significantly more competitive if it demonstrated that it not only addresses the immediate need of the community, i.e. access to delicious chocolate, but that it is also thinking about what creates that immediate need (in this case: lack of farmer training and access to capital — especially for farmers from underserved communities), and how the organization can effect long-lasting change (in this case: providing low- or no-interest loans to farmers to keep chocolate affordable, and addressing barriers to access to both connections and spaces for innovation for farmers and chocolate makers).

Some additional tips

Create or update your profile in GrantIS, our online submission platform, with plenty of time and consider that:

• The setup takes a few days.

• If you already have a profile, you’ll need to certify that your organization’s information is correct.

• New this year: You’ll need to add your executive director or CEO’s start date.

• If you are applying through a fiscal sponsor, the process can take additional time.

Right-size your ask

Familiarize yourself with the range of funding amounts in your chosen portfolio. In determining whether your request is “right-sized,” we will consider your project size, project complexity, project budget, organization size, and what other funding you’ve secured.

Prioritize conveying key information in the body of the application

We receive such a high volume of requests that — as much as we would like to — we may not be able to read attached materials we have not specifically requested. Equity demands that we give all organizations the same amount of time and attention.

Let us know if you’re experiencing challenges

If your organization is going through a major change or has experienced some challenges recently, note it in your application and explain how the challenges might impact your project.

Write clearly and concisely, but don’t sacrifice meaning

If your friends or next door neighbors can’t understand what your organization does or what your proposal is about, we probably won’t either.

If you’re not funded, ask for feedback

If you are not invited to submit a full proposal this time around, we encourage you to contact us so that we can go over your Inquiry Application with you and discuss our perspective on what you can consider when submitting your next application.

We are looking forward to reading about the great work you are all doing and meeting some of you at the information sessions. In the meantime …

Here’s wishing you a productive grantwriting season!

— Violeta

Last year, as part of Meyer’s newly restructured grantmaking programs, we launched the first set of opportunities under the Building Community portfolio. We were excited and heartened by what we saw! We learned about how organizations across the state are working to support marginalized populations and prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion.

This year as part of Meyer’s 2017 annual funding opportunity, the Building Community portfolio is investing $4.8 million in grant funds. We will begin accepting Inquiry Applications on March 15, with a deadline of 5 p.m. April 19, that advance one of the following portfolio goals:

• Invest in strategies that dismantle inequities and create new opportunities to advance equity.

• Support efforts to encourage and strengthen civic engagement and public participation in democratic processes.

• Support arts and cultural initiatives that create inclusive communities.

Learning from 2016

The Building Community portfolio received more than 400 applications as part of the 2016 annual funding opportunity, and it was able to provide funding to 68 grantees. A few characteristics of last year’s grantees:

• 26 percent were focused in rural communities, 10 percent worked in both rural and nonrural communities and 28 percent were doing work at a statewide level.

• 25 organizations received project grants, 21 received capacity building funds, 20 received general operating support and two received capital funding.

• 10 percent were organizations with annual operating budgets of $200,000 or less.

• Four organizations were first-time applicants to Meyer.

• The average grant size was $113,000.

Most applications we received were compelling, but the ones that were competitive shared similar characteristics:

• They focused on historically marginalized populations. The Building Community portfolio has a special interest in people of color, people living on low incomes, women and girls, crime/abuse survivors, indigenous peoples and tribes, immigrants and refugees, the elderly, people with disabilities and LGBT people.  

• They considered how direct services were tied to broader systems or root causes. It’s important to consider how a direct service or program (e.g., domestic violence counseling) is part of a broader context or connected to other issues that address the root causes requiring the service.

• They employed strategies that were clearly informed by the intended audiences or those that would be most impacted by the proposed activity. Consider in what ways are the intended audiences for your work included in creating plans? Do they have some opportunity to influence what you do?

• They considered diversity, equity and inclusion as part of broader strategies to improve and sustain organizational health (e.g., operations, policies and procedures, finances, staffing).

Changes in 2017

This is the second round of annual funding in Meyer’s new grantmaking programs. We received positive feedback from applicants and grantees and have made a few changes to try to make the process as clear and straightforward as possible. Past applicants may notice a few changes this time around.

• We’re asking more questions about how an organization is informed by the population it seeks to serve. Our application aims to understand how your work and your organization as a whole is informed by the people you seek to impact.

• Knowing that the process of preparing an application requires a considerable amount of time, we have tried to be clearer about work that is not a good fit with Building Community. You’ll find a list of examples of what does not fit in the funding opportunity materials.  

• One of the most common questions we received in the application process last year was about grant size. This year, we have tried to provide more specific details, including the average grant size from last year (listed above) and how this relates to grant type (e.g., capacity building, operations, project and capital).

• Of the 68 grant awards provided last year, two were for capital requests and each of those two was for less than $100,000. This year, we will again consider a limited number of capital requests. These requests will need to show a direct and compelling connection to improving conditions for priority populations and need to demonstrate how diversity, equity and inclusion considerations both informed the project and will be assessed moving forward.

• One starting point for gauging where organizations are on their pathway to prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion is by collecting demographic data. This year we have created more resources and tools in a new Applicant Resources section of our website to provide more help with demographic data collection.

• We have been clearer about what we mean by “equity.” Our Applicant Resources also includes more information to help applicants think about how equity takes shape, both externally through programming and services and through internal operations.

Get More Information

We are committed to being transparent about what we seek in an application. Over the next month, Meyer staff will be traveling the state to share information about the 2017 opportunity across all four of our portfolios, including Equitable Education, Healthy Environment and Housing Opportunities. A list of information sessions can be found here. The Building Community team will be hosting three webinars where we will provide more details about this portfolio and and respond to specific questions.

Of course, you can also check out our new Applicant Resources page with more information. And feel free to contact us at questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org).  

— Dahnesh

The Building Community team received more than 400 applications from the first funding call under Meyer’s new grantmaking structure (please take a look at Candy Solovjovs’ blog post which describes this in more detail). After months of careful review and many difficult decisions, we are excited to announce 65 grants under the Building Community portfolio, totalling $7.4 million over three years.

From raising up Latino voices in Oregon’s North Coast region to supporting an inclusive arts community among people with disabilities in Portland, the quality and breadth of work underway across Oregon that supports an equitable state for all impressed us.

In many respects, this was a very competitive pool of applications. Applicants that were advanced past the initial letter of inquiry phase were able to show a link between their strategic goals and the goals of this funding opportunity.

Although the full slate of grantees — viewable here — includes a broad range of projects, several themes did emerge.

Many grantees responded to Meyer’s interest in addressing systems change. Some organizations — including the American Civil Liberties Union, Oregon Justice Resource Center, Partnership for Safety and Justice, Red Lodge Transition Services and Central City Concern’s Flip the Script Project — are trying to address inequities in the criminal justice system, for example.

In other cases, the work was less about a specific issue area and more about understanding interconnectedness with others within a system to become more effective advocates. A number of grantees — including  Oregon Center for Public Policy, Rural Organizing Project, State Voices, Unite Oregon and Western States Center — promote equity and fundamental change by addressing a range of issues and employing a variety of tactics.

Recognizing that solutions to complex social issues cannot be created and carried out without community input and participation, a number of grantees are intentional about applying what they learn from those they serve. Groups such as The Next Door, Inc. in Hood River and the Health Care Coalition of Southern Oregon in Medford utilize innovative approaches to addressing health equity by relying on the lived experience and wisdom of community members.

By directly involving people with disabilities in program design and implementation, groups such as Families and Community Together, PHAME Academy and On-the-Move Community Integration are creating different paradigms that challenge notions of equity and inclusion. To amplify the voices of low-income families, grantees such as Multnomah County and Central City Concern/TANF Alliance are creating new programs aimed at achieving equitable outcomes while also influencing the way in which government services are delivered and received.

What these and all Meyer’s grantees and applicants show us is that the nonprofit sector is rich in solutions and passion and not shying away from addressing vital needs. Sincere thanks to all the time and intent put forward by applicants to the Building Community portfolio.

In an effort to continue to meet those needs, we are excited to jump back into grantmaking with two new opportunities designed to bolster the strength of the nonprofit sector through leadership development and support for capacity builders across all our portfolio areas. Both opportunities are open until December 7.

In the aftermath of this recent election, we are as committed as ever to promoting equitable outcomes for all Oregonians. Our work continues.

— Dahnesh

Grantee StoriesNovember 8, 2016

During the 2016 presidential campaign, a theme bubbled up in many news stories and kitchen table discussions: Women still feel invisible in many aspects of society.

A new comprehensive report on women and girls in Oregon, the first in a generation, aims to remedy that feeling.

Count Her In, a 120-page tour de force of analytics and research has revealed significant gender equity problems in Oregon. The state hasn’t seen much improvement for women since the 1980s, and in some cases, we’ve actually gone backward.

Within two weeks of the report’s release this fall, it was mentioned in four out of five gubernatorial debates. The report will, no doubt, reset the table for policy and lawmaking across the state. And yet, the existence of the report raises the question: Why was it produced by the Women’s Foundation of Oregon and not the state, which is mandated to produce such data?

When the statewide Women’s Foundation of Oregon (WFO) opened its doors in 2014, it wrestled with how it could raise the visibility of women’s issues and make a difference. When the WFO asked the organizations it supports how to move forward, the collective answer was surprising: Instead of more money, the organizations needed information that helped them make a better case for why they needed money. It was from this service-sector plea that the Count Her In report was born.

WFO Executive Director Emily Evans borrowed her family’s RV and hit the road with her team. With majority funding from Meyer Memorial Trust, additional funding from others, and the efforts of local volunteer organizing teams, they traveled to Bend, Burns, Medford, Newport, Pendleton, Ontario and the Umatilla Reservation. They went in-depth in all large urban areas and even relied on Spanish-, Somali- and Russian-speaking translators in Forest Grove, Gresham and parts of Portland to make sure ethnic groups weren’t ignored.

Along the way, the researchers at ECONorthwest crunched the information from more than a thousand interviews, several thousand data points and years of Oregon census data. Then they compared the results to every state in the country.

Here is a small sample of the broad findings.

• An estimated 1 million women and girls – over half of Oregon’s female population – have experienced some form of sexual or domestic violence.

• Nearly a quarter say they have been raped.

• Oregon women have the highest reported incidence of depression in the country and women are twice as likely to attempt suicide as men.

• Women and girls deliver nearly 2 billion annual hours of caregiving for family members, much of it free and with dramatic impacts on their careers, education and earning trajectories.

• Nearly one-third of women and girls are struggling to make ends meet: Women earn between 53 and 83 cents on the dollar, depending on race and ethnicity, for every dollar white men in Oregon make.

• For women of color, the racial wealth gap combines with the gender wealth gap to create a compound negative effect. Sixty percent of all minimum wage workers in Oregon are women.

• This year, only one of Oregon’s 39 publicly traded companies is led by a woman.

• There are still some Oregon counties where not a single woman serves in countywide office; this matters because counties are often the biggest providers of services to women and girls.

Of course, the news isn’t all bad: Women vote at higher rates than men in Oregon, commit fewer than 5 percent of violent crimes, comprise more than 70 percent of public educators and 80 percent of health care workers, give of their money and time more than Oregon’s men (and most women nationally), serve in statewide office at some of the highest rates in the country, and met the state’s 2025 goal for college graduation in 2014 — eleven years ahead of schedule.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown said after reading the report that although “some could point to our successes, and say, ‘See, it’s not so bad here,’ the data in this report doesn’t lie.”

Advocates say the findings match hard data to an unsettling reality they’ve witnessed for years: Oregon’s women and girls are struggling. According to Elizabeth Nye, executive director of Girls Inc., she spent years feeling like she was shouting into the wind, unable to substantiate what she was saying.

Count Her In changes all that. The report is a wake-up call, a celebration of resilience, and an opportunity to do things differently. And, as the report says, it’s an irrefutable imperative for change. WFO’s Evans says that the goal now isn’t small tweaks or a few more dollars to service providers, but structural and systems change. It’s recognizing that the structural barriers are highly interrelated and that if they’re not recognized and changed, then we’ll see stagnation.

Systemic racism and gender inequity are huge problems in Oregon, meaning women and girls experience disproportionate barriers to success. Today, thanks to the Women’s Foundation of Oregon’s report, progress can no longer be blamed on a lack of clear and compelling data.

I’ve been thinking a lot about leaders lately. Not just because of what’s happening on the national stage but because Meyer has released new funding opportunities, two Requests for Proposals, focused on leadership development and capacity builders aligned with our equity goals.

What makes a leader? Personality? Technical skills? Others who are willing to follow? I suspect that many people who are considered leaders feel like “accidental” leaders. That’s particularly true for leaders from communities that are underrepresented in positions of leadership (think of CEOs, elected officials or executive directors).

So what can Meyer do to facilitate the development of leaders? Companies and nonprofit organizations have been working on this for a long time. Funders like the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Ford Family Foundation have already partnered with many organizations over the years to support leaders. So has Meyer. There are many good programs and many good answers to “What makes a leader?” Now, as Meyer integrates equity throughout our work, we have the opportunity to consider what is needed to create a unique sort of leadership, one with equity in mind.

I’ve talked with many traditional and nontraditional leaders, reviewed the literature, including an important read, Leadership for Large Scale Change, and considered my own experience. Here’s what I’ve found:

• Accessing leadership development support focused on “hard” or technical skills, such as financial management or fund development, is generally easier to find than programs that teach the “soft skills” like relationship building, personal development and trust building.
• Leaders of color and rural leaders place a higher priority than other leaders on interpersonal communication, conflict management, self-identity and giving and receiving feedback.
• There is a desire to move away from programs that focus on individual leaders and to develop or use nontraditional definitions of leadership, including leaders who may not be in high-level positions but have lived the community experience and are trusted by the community.  
• The pathway to leadership for leaders of color and people with disabilities is not smoothly paved and, in some cases, not even accessible.
• Many leaders are eager for developmental relationship support, such as peer circles, mentorship and informal networking opportunities.
• Organizations, particularly those that are small and not as well-funded, need more capacity to allow time and space for leaders to build their skills. This capacity could come in the form of additional staffing or operating support for core operations while leaders are accessing capacity building or leadership support.
• To address complex social issues, and particularly to address inequities, there is a need for more collective community, cross-sector and networked approaches.
• Networked and community-level leadership require nuanced and longer-term evaluative approaches, and results are harder to measure but may have more large-scale impact.

Meyer, through our Building Community portfolio, is excited to partner with leadership development programs in Oregon in the next year by providing grants for programming and for participation in peer learning.

We don’t have all the answers, and in true shared leadership fashion, we seek to learn from and alongside our grantees and partners. Our goal is to meet programs where they are and work together to fashion a future program that leverages all the wisdom of leaders leading leaders.

Say that three times fast!

For more information about our just released Requests for Proposals, please contact questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org).

— Carol

Meyer's goal is to meet programs where they are and work together to fashion a future program that leverages all the wisdom of leaders leading leaders.

Dahnesh brings an impressive background that is an excellent fit with the vision for our portfolio (formerly called the Resilient Social Sector portfolio). Most recently, he worked with Education Northwest, where he provided capacity building and planning support to nonprofits and government organizations, both locally and nationally. His work included consulting with the Corporation for National and Community Service and nonprofit intermediaries participating in the Social Innovation Fund (a partnership of national funders and the federal government), as well as serving as a Plan Consultant for the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund's Flexible Leadership Award and its grantees in the Gay and Lesbian Rights and Immigrant Rights portfolios.

Previously, Dahnesh's roles included leading the organizational development consulting team at the Nonprofit Association of Oregon/TACS, serving as director of organizational services and capacity building with the National Community Development Institute in Oakland, Calif., and serving as Director of External Relations for the Tides Center in San Francisco. In all of those roles, Dahnesh supervised teams and led programmatic strategy development and implementation.

Dahnesh's experience with local and national philanthropy and nonprofits, team leadership and management, and his deep expertise with nonprofit organizational development and capacity building, provide an excellent foundation for building out and launching the Building Community portfolio.

In his spare time, Dahnesh tries to keep up with his two-year-old daughter and also serves on the national board of directors of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management and on the national advisory board for the Talent Philanthropy Project.

We couldn’t be happier to have Dahnesh lead our newest portfolio — and one of his first tasks was to help change the portfolio's name!

Please join me and Candy in welcoming Dahnesh to Meyer!

— Doug

Grantee StoriesDecember 22, 2015

Living Cully’s efforts to purchase the Sugar Shack aim to ensure that Cully residents can stay and rise with the neighborhood at a moment when gentrification is displacing low-income residents priced out of urban communities around Oregon.

Back in 1998, the year Street Roots started publishing a newspaper focused on homelessness and poverty across Portland, residents of the Cully neighborhood in Northeast Portland got some bad news: The old Young’s Marketplace building, about two miles south of Portland International Airport, was about to become an adult video store with "related businesses," as The Oregonian reported.

That set off alarms. The neighborhood had been fighting a crime problem for years and making progress. A porn shop was a step in the wrong direction.

Neighbors tried to stop the plan, but couldn’t. Over the next few years, the L-shaped building turned into a sort of porn supermarket, featuring not only videos but strippers, dancers and, reportedly, prostitution. The black-and-white checkered Sugar Shack building was a neighborhood black eye. Neighbors groused but had little recourse.

Then in 2014, the owners of the Sugar Shack were indicted on charges of tax fraud. It was the opening the neighborhood needed. The building and land went up for sale and a community organization called Living Cully, a collaboration between several groups representing Latinos and Native Americans in the neighborhood, rallied support to buy the lot for $2.3 million, putting up the first $55,000. Hundreds of Cully residents raised another $50,000 towards the purchase.

Meyer Memorial Trust awarded $200,000 to secure the loan to the collaboration of Verde, Hacienda Community Development Corporation (Hacienda CDC), Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) and Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East.

Today, what was once a neighborhood blight is a vessel of hope for the Cully neighborhood, one of Portland’s most racially and economically diverse neighborhoods. While the area around the Sugar Shack is becoming increasingly gentrified, making it harder for low-income people and people of color to stay in the neighborhood, the new Living Cully Plaza aims to ensure that Cully residents can stay and rise with their community.

Tony DeFalco, the Living Cully coordinator for Verde, said local stakeholders will define the future uses of the site.

"We’re looking at a whole range of things," DeFalco said. "Community-serving retail, potential for job and economic activities for people to work at or grow their businesses out of."

DeFalco said the 26,000-square foot building will reflect the character and face of the neighborhood and its goals. For months, volunteers have been cleaning up the property, picking up trash, landscaping, and even painting a mural. In 2016, they expect to decide how to use the space.

DeFalco said what’s happening with the Sugar Shack property shows what can happen when groups work together.

"The biggest thing it shows is the power of a real collective impact model," said DeFalco. He said that when groups with a variety of interests merge their thinking and their power, they can attract the support they need to make change happen.

Grantee StoriesJanuary 5, 2016

Poverty is a familiar bedfellow in Oregon. Statistics tell the alarming trend. Theater helps shift the numbers into dialogue.

In the first decade of this century, the numbers of people living in areas of concentrated poverty in the state grew to make Oregon home to one of the most severe increases in the nation. Proximity to clusters of poverty is a cruel amplifier: low-income families living in concentrations of poverty face higher crime rates, poor housing conditions and fewer job opportunities.

The problem is both rural and urban: A recent report estimates that roughly one in three of Multnomah County’s 760,000 residents earn less money than required to meet their basic needs. Children, communities of color, immigrants and refugees, single-parent households and persons with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by poverty — with poverty rates for these populations far higher than their rates in the population as a whole, according to a 2014 county report.

A Portland theater recently took on the issue of poverty, with solutions in mind.

Founded in 1999, the Sojourn Theatre blends performance and dialogue to engage communities in conversations about race, class, leadership, demographic change, public education, civic planning, housing and community sustainability.

Their February 2015 run of “How To End Poverty in 90 Minutes," turned the Portland Playhouse into a social-science laboratory. The goal of the experience of the play/lecture/workshop/theatre piece/public conversation: to erase the silence around poverty and provide a starting point for dialogue. Meyer was proud to support the theater's work with a $25,000 grant in October 2014.

During performances, the ensemble members gave each of 100 attendees the opportunity to learn about and actively engage with the realities of poverty in Multnomah County. Together, they decided how to best direct $1,000 of each evening’s receipts — $17,000 total over the run — toward poverty eradication.

“We wanted to host a conversation about poverty where we invite different perspectives and ideologies into a room to wrestle with this often silent issue,” Sojourn Theatre founder Michael Rohd told PDXMonthly. Rohd left Portland in 2007 to teach at Northwestern University, where he developed the show.

After each 90-minute performance, each audience member was handed a ten-dollar bill and asked to spend it on one of five approaches to ending poverty: System Change, Education, Direct Aid, Making Opportunities, and Daily Needs. The exercise aimed to help participants overcome the sense of helplessness that comes from being overwhelmed by issues of poverty.

A reviewer in the Oregonian wrote of the sell-out production: “Sitting alone writing a check to alleviate poverty feels like throwing a pebble into the abyss, while passionately exploring the issue with 99 other theatergoers leads to action with real weight behind it. The revolutionary insight of this production is that solutions are to be found only when we work as a community.”