As we continue to adapt to the changing landscape of business brought on by the novel coronavirus COVID-19, we want to reiterate to our partners that: We're with you for the long haul.
In March, Meyer Memorial Trust announced a decision to offer community lending partners 12-month forbearance on loan payments and extend the same terms on loans to borrowers in response to the pandemic.
Portland Business Journal wrote about Meyer’s response earlier this month:
Meyer Memorial is one of Oregon's largest foundations. Among other philanthropic activities, it loans money to nonprofits that use the cash to extend credit to small businesses.
This week, the foundation said Portland-based MESO and Springfield-based Community LendingWorks, two such partners, do not need to make any interest or principal payments for a year. In return, the foundation wants MESO and Community LendingWorks to extend the same terms to their borrowers.
Meyer will continue to reach out to our regional investment partners to better understand their needs. We will get through this together.
We will never forget spring 2020. The impact of and response to the novel coronavirus has been simultaneously saddening, enraging and inspiring. We are seeing heart-wrenching losses and immense health and economic fallout. We are being inspired by front-line workers who put themselves at risk to take care of the sick and keep essential services moving. People are adapting, innovating and showing kindness in so many ways. We are also coming together in one of the biggest collective actions ever by physically distancing ourselves from each other in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.
What’s also crystal clear is that although COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is harming all communities, communities of color are the most impacted. A study released last week found that COVID-19 patients exposed to even a moderate increase in air pollution long term are at a greater risk of dying. Black Americans are dying from COVID-19 at higher rates partly because they disproportionately live in places with more air pollution. On Friday, Race Forward, which has a mission to catalyze movement building for racial justice, summed it up: “Let’s be clear: Coronavirus kills, and structural racism is its accomplice.” This is because the systems and structures that drive how our society operates in a pandemic are the same broken systems that drive how it operates in normal days.
At Meyer, we understand this. We know that structural, institutional, historical and systemic racism are components in the context in which we do our work. We also know that the exploitative mindset that underlies structural racism is the same mindset that drives and sustains the overexploitation of nature. Dominance of people and nature is the story of our nation and of Oregon.
Organizers of the Oregon Environmental Justice Pathways Summit postponed the in-person convening until fall 2020. However, the organizers decided to host a virtual summit “teaser” last week by engaging some of the speakers to share a preview of their presentations on what would have been the summit’s opening day. In honor of Earth Day 2020 and to elevate the need to strengthen and grow Oregon’s environmental justice movement, I wanted to share some highlights from the preview.
University of Oregon Professor and Ethnic Studies Department Head Laura Pulido moderated a 90-minute webinar on Oregon’s environmental justice history that included the following speakers.
In the opening presentation by David Harrelson, entitled “The Kalapuya and the Myth of Wilderness,” David spoke about the history of the Kalapuya people’s cultural management of their ancestral territory in the Willamette Valley since time immemorial. He also explained how one of our country’s core conservation laws, the Wilderness Act of 1964, has played a role in building the narrative around the idea of “pristine nature without humans” that is grounded on the removal of Native American people and has informed how conservation has been practiced in the United States.
He reminded us that the cultural practices of the Kalapuya people have shaped their ancestral lands in northwest Oregon for more than 500 generations and that there is no “untrammeled land” — a term from the Wilderness Act — in their traditional territories. This narrative of pristine nature and the practices driven by it have invisibilized the Kalapuya people’s history and created barriers to their ability to practice traditional cultural management of the land today. David noted that he sees the opportunity to learn from, understand and translate ancestral teachings about land management to have a much more holistic and resilient management regime in the future.
Gwendolyn Trice’s presentation “Oregon Timber Culture: Then and Now” opened with the story of Black loggers from Maxville, who were recruited to move to Oregon to work in the timber industry at a time when the Oregon Constitution prohibited Black people from residing in or owning property in the state. Gwendolyn shared how the Black families in Maxville lived in segregated housing, attended segregated schools and played on a segregated baseball team, as well as greatly contributing to creating a vibrant timber community.
She talked about the significant role of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon in the early 1900s, describing it as the the biggest social club in the state that played a key role in connecting the dominant culture at the time. It also played a prominent role in Oregon politics. Gwendolyn also talked about Vernonia, another small timber community, as a place where different racial and ethnic groups lived and worked in segregated and substandard conditions until the NAACP stepped in to advocate for improvements. Beatrice Morrow Cannady, who was the first Black woman to graduate from law school in Oregon, was a key leader in this movement.
Ramon Ramirez grounded his presentation about Oregon farmworkers in the history of the agriculture movement in the U.S., which is rooted in exploitation that began with slavery and shifted to the sharecropping system and now excludes farmworkers from national labor laws, which were first passed in the 1930s.
Ramon shared that 70% of the farmworkers who work for piece rate in the Willamette Valley are members of undocumented and Indigenous communities. Their exclusion from labor law protections, poor living conditions and legal, but dangerous, industrial agricultural practices expose them to significant health risks. Ramon shared startling information gathered from a Marion County clinic that over half of the farmworker women they serve have had miscarriages. He also shared that the average life expectancy of a farmworker is 49 as compared with 78 in the U.S. and that 25% of farmworkers get cancer.
He ended his comments by highlighting the brutal reality that even though farmworkers are deemed “essential workers” during the coronavirus crisis, most of these workers will not be able to access benefits from the recently passed CARES Act because of their citizenship status.
Linda Tamura shared how Japanese immigrants came to Oregon and how racism impacted the Japanese community for generations in the state. Japanese workers were drawn west to work on the railroads’ expansion. In the early 1900s, a strong community of Japanese immigrants grew in Hood River and gained property in exchange for clearing land for white property owners. They grew strawberries and asparagus, while establishing apple orchards.
Linda recounted how after a number of attempts, Oregon passed an Anti-Alien Land Law to prevent Japanese immigrants from purchasing land in 1923, which Japanese families were able to subvert by buying land in their children’s names. In 1942, the U.S. passed Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced removal of the Japanese community from Hood River and imprisonment in concentration camps during World War II. Many Japanese families had to abandon their businesses and personal possessions during this period. Some lost their land. After the war, parts of the Hood River community did not welcome the Japanese community’s return and tried to prevent families from returning to land they already owned.
The remarks and reflections of the speakers threaded together pieces of the history of structural racism in Oregon and its intersection with our relationship with nature today. There’s much more to unpack from this history. Understanding our shared history is an important part in addressing environmental justice issues and ensuring that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, income, or citizenship status are able to access a clean and healthy environment where they live, work and play.
I encourage you all to tune into the full 90-minute presentation and join me in the fall at the Oregon Environmental Justice Pathways Summit.
On the street where I live in Portland, neighbors within two blocks have shared an electronic document that lists our names and contact information, resources we have access to and can share, and a way to notify each other if we need or can provide help for things like household supplies or trips to the grocery store. The collective caring has been incredible and it feels so much better to know that we are in it together.
Our collective health depends on our individual knowledge and actions. What we do for each other matters, and a vulnerable link in our shared chain can break the protective barrier keeping the virus at bay and make us all vulnerable. I so appreciate Gov. Kate Brown’s executive decision to require us to “Stay Home, Save Lives.”
It’s pretty normal in a crisis to go directly to what is known and familiar. For more than 100 years, what was known and familiar in philanthropy was funding mainstream groups that had little or no connection to communities made most vulnerable by systemic racism and other forms of oppression. It’s really just been in the last decade that mainstream philanthropy has begun to more deeply understand equity concepts and more equitably fund organizations serving communities that are also the most vulnerable during pandemics. But circumstances of today will call on philanthropy to make a critical choice to redouble its efforts to fund equitably.
Eleven years ago, Oregon and the rest of the nation faced a similar, but less severe, pandemic: H1N1. When that pandemic was over, public health researchers studied population-based disease outcomes. What did we learn? How has that learning changed what we do now?
One study in particular sought to understand the racial disparities in exposure, susceptibility and access to health care that contributed to higher rates of H1N1 illness and death for people of color. The study found that people of color were more likely to live in crowded living conditions. They made up more of the service and wage labor force and were less likely to be able to work from home, thus increasing their exposure. They were more likely to have a chronic condition that increased susceptibility to the virus. And, finally, they were less likely to have health insurance coverage and experienced greater systemic barriers to accessing care, from lack of plain-language information and interpreters to differential treatment.
This should all sound familiar and not be surprising. New York Times magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones shared a tweet stream highlighting the disproportional impact from the novel coronavirus on Black people in places where officials aggregate the data by race. We haven’t learned the lessons from H1N1, yet.
What would be surprising is if we don’t use the opportunity we have in front of us to act based on lessons learned about barriers to equitable outcomes from the past. When I was an organizational development consultant, I once worked with a nonprofit whose mission was to prepare a coastal community for the potential “Big One” earthquake and subsequent tsunami. This volunteer group was highly organized: They had a team of ham radio operators, heavy equipment (think Caterpillar) drivers and even a team responsible for rounding up lost pets. They had thought of everything, almost. What they hadn’t planned for was the small but growing group of Latinx people in their community who were fairly segregated by geography, income, language and culture. This community didn’t have information about the potential natural disaster in their own languages, didn’t know about the emergency preparedness efforts — and didn’t know where to go to be safe and accounted for, should a tsunami strike.
Unfortunately, many of the conditions that existed during the H1N1 pandemic haven’t changed. In a society that remains segregated by income and race, it’s easier to forget those whom our usual approaches (unintentional or intentional) make invisible. These systems have yet to truly address the challenges and barriers of a mere decade ago that communities of color still face. To their credit, the coastal volunteer group, once they realized their oversight, acted quickly to get linguistically appropriate information to their Latinx community members in culturally appropriate ways. Is that happening now in your community?
In the future, let’s hope that the data show that equitable outcomes were achieved even during the coronavirus that is, in itself, indiscriminate. I, for one, do not want to look back at data from today’s crisis and ask why we didn't act upon what we already knew. Meyer’s vision is a flourishing and equitable Oregon. We will only flourish if all of us, our collective Oregon, stays healthy. That’s why we will continue our commitment to prioritizing funding to our partners serving communities that remain the most vulnerable. The collective is only as strong as its most vulnerable member. The knowledge is there.
A bicyclist rides down Tom McCall Waterfront Park on a wet spring day in Portland, Oregon. Blossoming cherry trees on to the left and the Willamette River to the right.
Today, Meyer’s Building Community portfolio is pleased to open our 2020 Annual Funding Opportunity (AFO) for applications. Our approach is both new and familiar, carrying forward important elements of our work from previous years and refining them based on our learning over the past year.
Last spring, our portfolio announced that it would have a year-long invitation-only funding call rather than an open funding opportunity while we explored ways to make this portfolio more effective. Over its first three annual funding cycles, Building Community received about 1,000 applications, well over half of what Meyer received across all four portfolios, funding just over a fifth of them. We asked key direct-service nonprofits focused on systemic-level change to complete requests for proposals while we considered how to make this competitive process more clear and more clearly focused on equity. These activities as well as others gave us an opportunity to both support key organizations while also learning how to advance community based on connection and belonging.
Leading with race
We’re back for the 2020 AFO with the clarity we were searching for: the best way to achieve the broad goal of creating and sustaining justice for everyone is to focus work and resources where injustice is most concentrated. This is why the Building Community portfolio’s priority populations are people of color, Indigenous communities and Tribes and immigrants and refugees. We will only consider funding requests from organizations that have implemented strategies designed specifically to benefit at least one of these populations.
We recognize that injustice is complicated and that other aspects of a person’s identity have impact as well. We are interested in supporting work that recognizes such complexity and is designed to support members of our priority populations who experience intersecting oppressions related to gender, race, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation or economic status.
Overarching criteria remain
For several years, the Building Community portfolio has shared key factors that guide our review of funding requests. Those overarching criteria remain firmly in place. We continue to look for track records of:
Operationalized DEI — understanding of structural oppressions and at least initial investments toward embedding equity in the organization’s operations
Connection to systems-level change — working to address root causes or underlying issues that create the need for a service or program
Community engagement — meaningful guidance or leadership of clients and communities shaping an organization’s work, with accountability to the people engaged
These criteria, along with strategies to support priority populations, are all deeply interwoven. An organization cannot effectively work to shift systems toward justice without centering impacted communities, particularly the priority populations noted above. Likewise, an organization that aims to effectively work with and for priority populations without causing unintended harm needs to have solid grounding in principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. When that grounding comes first, community engagement follows.
Continuing focus on systems change
While a connection to systems change is listed alongside our other criteria, it may rightfully be considered the foundation of all that Building Community does. The concept of systems change has always been present in this portfolio’s work and has become ever more important over the past four years of grantmaking. But systems change is a big idea, one we have found challenging to pin down and describe well.
This was a key part of our work in 2019 — to get clearer about what systems change is and how it’s done. With the help of grantee partners who do the work, we have come to understand that “systems change is about advancing equity by shifting the conditions that hold a problem in place.” Our funding goals for 2020 are designed to address conditions at different levels.
Our first goal, Civic Engagement, Policy and Leadership is designed to address explicit and semi-explicit conditions of systems change, while our second goal, Connection and Belonging, is focused at the implicit level.
We know that changing deeply rooted systems is long-game, non-linear, complicated work. It’s not a one year grant project, though small efforts can be part of a great whole. We’re continuing to learn from grantees and others about how to gauge the effectiveness of systems change strategies, how to collaboratively set long term goals while remaining responsive to changing conditions and how to think differently about what success looks like.
Ongoing learning with service providers
Another area of continued exploration is how direct service providers can be an essential part of systems change efforts.
In July, we opened a request for proposals from service providers who were early in this work but eager to go deeper. We selected twelve organizations to participate in a Learning Circle before submitting plans for projects to advance their capacity for systems change work. Funding for those plans has just been awarded, and we will continue to learn alongside these organizations through 2020 as we consider how Building Community can better support this type of work going forward.
Thanks for your interest in what the Building Community portfolio does — and is trying to do. We look forward to hearing from you, applicants, current grantees and the merely curious.
Meyer is supporting the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians’ (ATNI) work with its member Tribes and Tribal communities to engage in important regional and statewide water policy discussions focused on quantity, quality, access, rights and cultural understanding. To encourage a broad conversation among the nine federally recognized Tribes of Oregon, ATNI hosted their first Water Summit in 2016. ATNI also connected with mainstream conservation organizations, such as Oregon Environmental Council (OEC), to find alignment around inter-Tribal water policy priorities.
To continue these dialogues and ensure Tribal perspectives inform mainstream initiatives, such as Gov. Kate Brown’s 100 Year Water Vision, ATNI and OEC partnered to create Changing Currents, a website that uses storytelling to explore how water relates to Tribal culture, governance, economic infrastructure and community health and wellness.
If you haven’t already started listening to the rich stories they’ve gathered, we recommend beginning with Shirod Younker’s exploration of the Coquille Indian Tribe’s canoe customs and the inter-Tribal healing that a single canoe can provide.
It seems like not a day goes by without new information emerging about the state of our changing planet.
Reports and data, such as the evidence presented by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), continually show how increases in pollution and carbon emissions are warming our climate, causing sea level rise and affecting the earth’s water supply. Although the science is sound, arguments over climate change divide our nation and fracture relationships in the communities that call this state home.
As we look toward a flourishing and equitable future for Oregon, we’ve begun to ask ourselves who is by our side and who is missing? Where both trust and relationships are most strong? And recently, how have or haven’t we addressed mistrust?
At Meyer we use the phrase “centering front-line communities,” which is a blanket term to refer to neighborhoods that are most vulnerable to the detrimental effects of climate change because they lack things like shade, air conditioning, access to parks, nature and clean air.
In reality, these words have much more meaning.
Last summer, Momentum Fellow Denise Luk sat down with Alan Hipólito, who represents Verde — a nonprofit organization that works to secure social and economic benefits for low-income people and people of color through social enterprise, outreach and advocacy — to discuss the creation and passage of the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) and why front-line community leadership was key to building the relationships needed for success.
Below is an abridged transcript of their conversation edited for clarity.
Denise: Who developed the Portland Clean Energy Fund? Where did the idea come from?
Alan Hipólito: It started with a conversation between Jo Ann Hardesty, a civil rights, social justice advocate who was then the director of the Portland NAACP (and is a now Portland City Commissioner) and Brent Foster, an attorney and environmental advocate.
In the summer of 2016, front-line communities were already doing a lot of work together on climate policy issues, whether that was Oregon’s cap and invest proposal, The city of Portland and Multnomah County’s 100 percent renewables, or just building capacity within front-line communities around climate change issues, for example the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), Verde and the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC). The NAACP reached out to say, “Hey, do you want to come and sit and talk with us and a couple of environmental organizations, mostly 350PDX, to talk about this idea (the Portland Clean Energy Fund)?”
Denise: How did this group expand?
Alan Hipólito: Jo Ann and Lenny Dee from 350PDX, a longtime Portland activist and organizer, were out talking to different organizations, environmental, small business, social justice, environmental justice and the trade unions about the concept of PCEF, seeking endorsement or a willingness to work on the campaign. Simultaneously, those of us at Verde, APANO, NAYA and the Coalition of Communities of Color began doing our own outreach into the front-line communities.
That whole year, summer 2016 to summer 2017, was really about building relationships and trust across the core organizations — NAACP, Verde, APANO, CCC, 350PDX, Sierra Club — so that we could ultimately build a kind of collaboration and relationship that was necessary to be successful.
A key watershed moment was in the summer of 2017. We had a two-day planning retreat for the front-line community organizations, where we learned about ballot measures and what it would take to run a campaign. We set some common values about how we wanted to work together and most importantly the agreement that front-line communities were going to lead the effort. After that, things started to really pick up speed.
Denise: At what point did more mainstream environmental groups get involved?
Alan Hipólito: Portland Audubon’s entry into the coalition was really important. They’re a well-respected, long-standing environmental stakeholder, have a strong membership base and influence with local policy makers and other environmental organizations.
When they came to our meeting, they said, “We want to be involved: first, because we like the initiative; and second, (and even more importantly), we want to support the movement that you’re building.” They’ve been in many campaigns where it’s solely about getting 50.1% of the vote and therefore don’t include front-line communities. They saw PCEF as a chance to change the status quo of campaigns. “Win or lose, we want to help grow a more inclusive, front-line community-centered environmental movement.” While they wanted to contribute their experience to the decision-making and bring our resources to the table, they did not need to be in charge. “We’re ready to support the leadership of front-line communities in this campaign.”
That was a really big moment.
Denise: Since this effort, have there been other types of environmental ballot initiatives led by front-line communities — in partnership with mainstream environmental groups — in other places?
Alan Hipólito: Obviously, front-line communities lead all sorts of things, all over the country, including environmental measures. But this was the first of its kind in Oregon in terms of the partnership that was formed by front-line community-led leadership and then bigger mainstream groups signing on. That was a rare thing and hopefully changing.
Denise: What was the power dynamic like within the steering committee and then within the smaller subsets of PCEF? How was the decision-making process?
Alan Hipólito: It was pretty harmonious. There were obviously points of tension and stress because none of us had ever really worked on or run a campaign like this before.
We maintain a distributed leadership structure. We didn’t have, unlike some campaigns, a bunch of paid core staff. Our field team was paid, but our campaign manager, communications colleagues, fundraiser and the point person for our political endorsements committee were all volunteers or staffed and funded by partner organizations. It didn’t make sense to have a rigorous, centralized, decision-making model. It meant that we had to free folks up to be creative and use their best judgment in the day-to-day work they were accomplishing.
Denise: What were the key takeaways from this coalition and how the partnership worked?
Alan Hipólito: A lot of folks would say there would be no way to build and hold this kind of coalition together unless it was front-line community-led. Progressive efforts that bring mainstream environmental groups together with construction, labor and trade unions don’t often happen. However, everyone understood the need to center this kind of community leadership if any kind of progressive change was going to happen.
This kind of broad coalition building can win elections, especially when it comes to addressing the more traditional arguments against such initiatives. To arguments like, “This is going to kill jobs” or “This isn’t really an environmental solution” or “How is this going to affect poor people?”
The answer simply is: Environmental organizations have been putting in a lot of work and investment to build their understanding of equity and what it means to operate from a justice framework. Audubon’s posture in coming to the initiative was a testament to the growth and diversity, equity and inclusion work that they’re doing. The trades are the same way. They know where future workers will be coming from, that things haven’t been fair and just in the past or even today. They saw that a front-line community can put together an initiative that will make a difference in the things they care about.
Another takeaway is that I would certainly want to provide to the next group that tries this sort of coalition building is to not have to nickel-and-dime-it the way that we did. That was really hard to manage from a budget standpoint. At the same time, not being well-resourced required creative energy and distributed leadership. Without having a heavily centralized staff, organizations ended up putting in their own staff time. This is critical to the success of the movement we are building. However, those organizations need to be funded, too.
Denise: What’s it been like after the measure passed and is now in place? I understand the coalition is still working together.
Alan Hipólito: That’s correct. The PCEF coalition’s work did not end on election day, it shifted from winning an election to successfully and faithfully implementing the initiative. To do that, we’ve used the same front-line community-centered practice that we’ve talked about. This has allowed us to work in strong partnership with the city of Portland on key implementation issues like staffing the program, seating the PCEF grant committee, launching communications platforms and outreach efforts as well as building front-line community capacity to develop strong applications to the PCEF grant program
So I think we can feel good about all the work that we’ve done since election day, feel good about the collaboration that we built with the city bureaus and the elected leadership … and moving forward we need to make sure that the coalition has the resources needed to not just implement this victory but to solidify the power and endurance of the coalition. Organizational-level infrastructure such as internal communications will allow us to not only defend the win, but to also figure out how to move forward and build on this initiative.
And there’s still the need to fund the nuts and bolts of the work among the many organizations who developed and led the initiative, especially the front-line community-serving organizations. One of the things that we’ve learned the hard way is that the opposition doesn’t run out of money. They see this initiative, and any future initiatives, as a threat to their control over resources and political power. They are going to keep coming after us, trying to weaken or overturn PCEF at the city and state levels. The big challenge is to have the strength and resources as a coalition to counteract that consistency.
Denise: Do you feel that sense of power-building and power-sharing is still part of the implementation piece?
Alan Hipólito: Absolutely. This coalition, if it’s viable and enduring in the way that we want it to be, will inevitably decide or be asked to get involved in other things. How are those decisions going to be made? Who makes them? On what criteria, if any, are they made? How do new groups come to the table? All of these questions are where the extension of power sharing and practice of front-line community leadership is going to grow.
The story of the PCEF coalition demonstrates the unique position of front-line communities in the environmental justice movement and illustrates the way lived experiences of the communities most impacted offer solutions and innovative strategies — across interests — that transform campaigns and accomplish wins. In this way, front-line communities are transforming the environmental movement and allowing more people to see it as relevant to their lives.
Mainstream conservation organizations are important partners in this work. With established credibility and influence with local officials and the broader community, their endorsement can activate many and shift perspectives. As new approaches to climate justice emerge from the front line, it will be important for mainstream groups to explore new and innovative ways to contribute their resources, time and established reputation.
This doesn’t always mean taking a visible lead, but instead backing the proposals of those whose voices are new to the movement and allowing for new possibilities in our shared future in the face of climate change.
This year marks the opening of our fifth year of grantmaking through the Healthy Environment portfolio. As this Annual Funding Opportunity kicks off, the portfolio remains committed to investing in organizations and partnerships that have a vision for change and an approach based on values of justice, ecological sustainability, cooperation and healing.
2020 is a pivotal year for the environment. The lack of action on climate change, a growing number of environmental policy rollbacks at the federal level, intractable structural challenges in our state budget and the intersection of white nationalism with opposition to environmental protections are among the weighty issues our grantee partners wrestle with daily. At Meyer, we invest in organizations and collaboratives that demonstrate an understanding of this political, social and economic context -- and how power operates within this context to create and maintain social inequality and environmental problems -- in rural and urban communities across Oregon. Understanding context and seeking structural changes that get to the root of these challenges are crucial capabilities.
There are many examples of inspiring work aimed at tackling these challenges: efforts to reimagine and redesign systems and structures for 21st century realities, projects to scale up successful models for enhancing community and ecosystem resilience, and initiatives that expand the political influence of those most impacted by environmental problems.
We hope you will draw insights about the kinds of solutions we aim to support through our grantmaking from this interview with Alan Hipólito. We see the work of the Portland Clean Energy Fund Coalition as an example of the kind of approach and creative, structural solution we need to advance Meyer’s mission of a flourishing, equitable Oregon. In particular, we want to point out the important coalition structure that they created, one that centers the lived experience of communities that are on the front lines of climate change. From PCEF’s inception, frontline community organizations have led its effort, guiding organizations that have traditionally held more power in Oregon’s environmental movement to step back in support roles. This is equity in action.
The Healthy Environment team is eager to work with you on your upcoming grant applications, so please get in touch with us to discuss your ideas. We also are committed to exploring new ways to partner, across philanthropy and other sectors, to imagine what’s possible, build the capacity of Oregon’s environmental movement, back resilient communities, share stories about solutions and manifest a more equitable vision for the future.
News broadcasts and headlines these days include any number of stories about the 2020 presidential election. But the results of another nationwide civic engagement next year will last beyond the tenure of the next U.S. president, no matter who is elected.
The census.
The U.S. Constitution requires that every ten years the federal government conduct a complete count of all people living in the United States, including immigrants (documented and undocumented), Tribal members and refugees. This is a fundamental, nonpartisan element of our democracy. On census data hinge apportionment of congressional and electoral representation and allocation of more than $800 billion of federal funding each year.
Only a full census count can ensure Oregon receives its fair share of federal funds for schools, housing, highways and more. The 2020 U.S. census will impact all Oregonians for at least a decade. That is why Meyer’s largest grant award this year supports work toward a full, accurate and equitable count. And we are not alone. Oregon philanthropy is marshaling its resources and partnering with public agencies to ensure a full count that will secure resources, information and the representation that Oregonians deserve.
Why the census matters
The results of each decennial census count have a number of direct and tangible impacts.
Representation — Census data determine the number of legislators each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives (apportionment) and are used to set the geographic area that each Representative covers (districting).
Federal funding — Many key safety net programs are funded according to population information, including Head Start, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, school lunches, Section 8 housing, Pell Grants, short-term rental assistance, medical assistance programs and more. Federal funding allocations vitally impact rural communities, which tend to rely more on federal support.
Resource placement and priority — Census data influence countless decisions, both public and private, about infrastructure needs, investment opportunities, business locations and types of goods and services to be offered.
Beyond resources, the census also helps express who we are in the United States. Data tell stories, and if the census is incomplete or inaccurate, many of our stories about ourselves will (continue to) be as well. For example, until 2000, all census respondents were forced to select a single race; mixed race people were not allowed to identify as such. Likewise, the 2020 census will be the first to count same-sex couples. These identities are invisible — and the people who hold them not fully seen — in federal data from all prior decades, data that is still referred to today and will be indefinitely. Communities that are un- or undercounted also lose visibility, and being left out of the story has very real impacts, social, political, and economic.
What’s at stake in Oregon
According to Census Bureau estimates, Oregon is among a handful of states whose population has grown significantly since the 2010 census and could therefore gain a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2020 census.A decade ago, Oregon missed adding a sixth seat by a little more than 40,000 people.
Since 2010, Oregon’s population has grown by more than 8%, and we know that demographics have shifted in that time as well. In 2016, Oregon received more than $13 billion through the top 55 federal funding programs, amounting to roughly $3,100 per person. If the count in 2020 fully reflects Oregon’s estimated growth, federal funding allocations to the state will also grow. Oregon will have better data to help lawmakers, businesses and the nonprofit sector make informed decisions on any number of efforts.
What’s different about 2020
Oregon needs a full count. Although no census is perfect, we know that to even achieve status quo accuracy in 2020 will require substantially more than a status quo approach because a number of unique factors this time around could hinder a full count, particularly among Oregon’s hardest-to-count populations:
This will be the first digital census, raising concerns about personal data security and internet scams. It’ll also reinforce a digital divide in Oregon, where almost 20% of households do not have access to broadband internet.2
Substantial delays and reductions in federal funding have resulted in a lack of critical infrastructure needed to support the count.3
Debate over whether to include a citizenship question — which the Supreme Court ultimately blocked in July 2019 — has politicized the census and instilled fear in communities of color and immigrant communities. That fear could still threaten Oregon’s count: Almost a half-million Oregonians live with a noncitizen, and 78% of those living with a noncitizen are people of color.4
Efforts to spread disinformation — which are expected to intensify — that could suppress census participation, particularly among nonwhite populations.5
Increasingly polarized public discourse during the run-up to the presidential election.
How Oregon philanthropy is stepping up and centering equity
Given all that is at stake, Meyer and several peer funders began talking in 2017 about the upcoming census in Oregon. Conversations quickly revealed that our diverse group, all with different funding programs and priorities, had common purpose around ensuring a full and accurate census because it impacts every population we focus on in our individual institutions.
We took time to establish shared agreements, among them, an equity lens to help guide our collective work.
“We recognize that structural racism, other oppressions, and geographic isolation have historically suppressed census counts of certain communities and that this continues to have compounding negative impacts on resources and outcomes for those communities. Therefore, we believe that investing first and most in efforts that arise from and focus on communities of color and populations that experience barriers to census and civic participation is the best way to ensure that our work ultimately benefits all Oregonians.”
From there, we — City of Portland Office of Community & Civic Life, Collins Foundation, Ford Family Foundation, Gray Family Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, North Star Civic Foundation, Northwest Health Foundation, PacificSource Foundation for Health Improvement, Pride Foundation, Spirit Mountain Community Fund, United Way of the Columbia-Willamette and Meyer — formalized our partnership as the Census Equity Funders Committee of Oregon (CEFCO) and engaged in an extensive field scan regarding census work, learning about community and philanthropic efforts inotherstates, connecting with community groups in Oregon, meeting with U.S. Census Bureau staff, and building partnerships with public agencies, including the Office of Gov. Kate Brown and the City of Portland’s Office of Community and Civic Life.
Our research was clear: The philanthropic community can best support a full and accurate census count by supplementing federal efforts with strategies and resources specifically focused on reaching “Hard to Count” (HTC) populations across Oregon. So CEFCO moved forward with two significant and interrelated pieces of work: investment in the development of a statewide get-out-the count plan to reach HTC communities and creation of a pooled funding mechanism to support work identified in the plan.
“Hard to Count” populations, as designated by the U.S. Census Bureau, are just what they sound like: Groups at risk of not being fully counted. These are both geographic and demographic populations, including people of color, Tribal communities, children under age 5, people experiencing homelessness, geographically isolated households, recent immigrants, people with limited English proficiency, communities with low response rates in the last census, and more.
#WeCountOregon campaign plan
In December 2018, CEFCO released an RFP seeking a contractor to create and implement a statewide plan to ensure that Oregon’s hard to count populations are included in the 2020 census. Dancing Hearts Consulting emerged through a community-informed selection process as the right partner for this work given their organizing and grassroots experience, proposed field approach, and relationships with key community organizations. In fact, the proposed approach and resulting #WeCountOregon campaign plan were collectively developed with — and implementation will be conducted with — the leadership of 12 Partnership Organizations.
This comprehensive get-out-the-count plan includes coordinated strategies for field outreach, communications, Native/Tribal education and engagement, and other culturally specific training and education. The work will touch all 36 counties in Oregon. It is data informed and centers trusted messengers for door-to-door, community-based, and in-agency outreach and communications, which will be available in multiple languages.
Implementation of the #WeCountOregon plan will unfold on this general timeline.
PREPARE
Develop field operation plans to help increase census participation.
July - December 2019
EDUCATE
Increase community awareness and tackle misinformation about the 2020 census
January - April 1, 2020
ACTIVATE
Engage every Oregonian in the 2020 census (with focus on HTC populations)
April 1* - August 2020
IMPACT
Secure resources and representation for our communities
September 2020 and on
*April 1 is Census Day, the date by which all households should receive an invitation to participate in the census.
A number of community-based organizations across the state will serve as Census Assistance Centers (selected through a recent RFP) during the most active period of the count, April through July. These are physical locations frequented by members of hard to count populations where resources and assistance related to the census will be available, including on evenings and weekends in most locations. The centers will have computers that community members can use to submit their census forms online, with linguistically appropriate support as needed.
The #WeCountOregon campaign’s focus on reaching hard to count populations is meant to complement broader “complete count” efforts made by the State of Oregon and the federal government. CEFCO collaborates closely with the State, and has members serving on the Oregon Complete Count Committee to ensure that our efforts are coordinated and effective. That committee is co-chaired by Chi Nguyen, Executive Director of APANO, which is one of the #WeCountOregon Partnership Organizations.
Census Equity Fund of Oregon
Fully implementing the #WeCountOregon campaign plan will require an investment of $10 million, which is significant but is only a tiny fraction of the resources that will flow to Oregon based on results of the census count. Because we know that work will move quickly and that funds need to be deployed with maximum efficiency, CEFCO opted to establish a pooled fund: the Census Equity Fund of Oregon. To date, 14 foundations and several public entities have collectively contributed more than $9 million to the fund.
The State of Oregon is the largest contributor at $7.5 million. This is a first-of-its-kind investment from the state, and, along with $600,000 from the City of Portland, makes this the only fund in the country where public and private dollars are commingled and allocated toward a coordinated statewide effort to reach Hard to Count populations. Roughly $1 million has been contributed from philanthropic sources. We are proud to be part of this innovative cross-sector collaboration, and we need more partners to join as well. Fundraising efforts are still underway to make sure that we fully resource the field work needed to achieve a full, equitable count for Oregon.
How everyone can engage to support a full count
Now is the time to get involved, to uphold our democracy and support our communities by ensuring a fair and accurate census in 2020.
Learn — Watch #WeCountOregon’s Census 101 webinar in either English or Spanish and visit sites such as Count Us In and Census 20/20 to find resources and learn more.
Connect — Register your pledge to be counted, and sign up for updates from the #WeCountOregon campaign to keep attuned to census work around the state. Funders, potential funders and partners can also stay engaged by attending monthly Census Equity Fund meetings, which are accessible remotely.
Invest — Contribute to the Census Equity Fund of Oregon. Join this innovative collaboration and help close the gap toward our fundraising goal of $10 million for census engagement in hard to count communities statewide.
Network — Spread the word! Engage your colleagues, peers, and friends in census activity and outreach. Encourage them to pledge to count. Share resources. Help CEFCO connect with potential funders and partners.
To invest or connect with the Census Equity Fund of Oregon, please contact Lauren Gottfredson, Community Collaborations Senior Manager at United Way of the Columbia-Willamette (which is serving as backbone agency for this collective effort). Lauren can be reached at 503-226-9303 or laureng [at] unitedway-pdx.org (laureng[at]unitedway-pdx[dot]org).
Many challenges remain to achieving an accurate census in 2020; this count will require stronger statewide efforts than ever before. Meyer is proud to join with philanthropy peers from across the state in the Census Equity Funders Committee of Oregon (CEFCO) to ensure that each Oregonian is counted.
When I spoke at the plenary session of the 2019 Philanthropy Northwest Annual Conference a few weeks ago, I remarked that although Meyer Memorial Trust’s course toward equity was set about six years ago, this was the year we really started sailing into the deep waters. That’s the story of 2019 at Meyer. We’ve been digging deep into the work of dismantling barriers to equity in education, housing and the environment and improving community conditions with our sights set on the horizon: a flourishing and equitable Oregon.
The final year of the decade was my first full calendar year as Meyer president and CEO, and it has been a formative time for the organization. I’m proud of what we have accomplished through the hard work and dedication of our staff and trustees and alongside our partners across the state.
Meyer’s Housing Opportunities team hosted an Equity Housing Summit that was two years in the making and brought together hundreds of housing-focused grantees and homeless service provider partners to share strengths, insights and lessons to advance diversity, equity and inclusion efforts within the field. The Building Community portfolio shifted to a two-part funding strategy focused on supporting systems change to create a just, complex, multicultural society where everyone can thrive. The Equitable Education team hosted their second annual Teachers of Color Gathering, bringing together more than 30 educators of color from around the state. The Healthy Environment team added its first program officer, Mary Rose Navarro.
After 10 years and more than $18.5 million invested in the health of the Willamette River, Meyer’s Willamette River Initiative transitioned into the independent Willamette River Network to continue and expand the Willamette Basin restoration movement. We said a fond farewell to our longest-serving trustee, Debbie Craig, who retired in April. Our trustee, Toya Fick, became our new board chair. And a few months later, we were delighted to welcome our newest trustee, Alice Cuprill-Comas, who brings strong expertise and a well-versed background in business, nonprofit governance and corporate law.
We hit the road, determined to get to know the state of Oregon through the eyes of its original inhabitants. Between October 2018 and October 2019, Meyer staff and trustees visited all nine federally recognized Tribes in the state, seeking to forge new, strong relationships with these sovereign nations.
We hosted the fourth lecture in Meyer’s Equity Speaker Series with a riveting, powerful talk by the Rev. Dr. William Barber II. In collaboration with Literary Arts, the Equity Speaker Series will continue next March with award-winning author Tommy Orange, as the culminating event of Multnomah County Library’s 2020 Everybody Reads program.
We have also been looking to the future. Next year, Meyer will undergo an exciting transition when we move from rented office space in Portland’s Pearl District to our new and permanent campus, currently under construction in North Portland’s Eliot neighborhood. Preparing for the move across the Willamette River has inspired us to think deeply about what it means to be a neighbor. We are looking forward to deepening our connection to North Portland and the community of historic Albina. We are also committed to making the campus a physical embodiment of Meyer’s mission and values, which means using the new building as a resource that will provide us the ability to offer new types of support and further investment in communities across the state.
2020 promises to be a big year for Meyer and for Oregon. Each and every day we will be looking to do more, in addition to grantmaking, to invest in change at the systemic level to ease inequities and disparities. Stay tuned for more news in the coming months as we work with our peers in the Census Equity Funders Committee of Oregon to support efforts to ensure an accurate count in the 2020 census. Visit our website and sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on all things Meyer in the new year.
Until January, all of us at Meyer wish you a warm, joyous holiday season.
I’m lucky to be working at an organization that holds significant privilege but has asked us to take a “learning stance” to better understand the issues that face those we serve. Meyer Memorial Trust envisions a Meyer that, among other tenets, requires us to build our learning muscle to step out of our traditional philanthropy ivory tower and reduce our distance from the organizations we fund and the communities they serve.
To that end, Meyer has established an “Equity Speaker Series,” bringing national leaders to Portland two or three times a year to ignite dialogue on issues of race, equity, inclusion and diversity.
In partnership with the Coalition of Communities of Color and the Oregon Center for Public Policy, Meyer hosted 2019 Equity Speaker, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, in November. Rev. Barber is a nationally recognized social justice advocate and pastor who has built a broad-based grassroots movement to strengthen civic engagement and inspire people to imagine a more humane society.
Rev. Barber has served as the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, since 2003 and as president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP from 2005 to 2017. Calling himself a “student of morality and public policy,” Rev. Barber founded Repairers of the Breach. The national leadership development organization began a series of “Moral Monday” rallies outside the North Carolina statehouse to protest laws that cut funding for public education and health care, suppressed voter turnout and further disenfranchised poor White, Black, First Nations and LGBTQ+ communities. The movement waged successful legal challenges to voter suppression and racial gerrymandering, and it engaged massive voter registration and education efforts.
Expanding on the Moral Monday movement, Rev. Barber has also revived Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign for the twenty-first century. In recognition of his selfless street-level activism and long history of leading national civil rights campaigns, Rev. Barber was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant” in 2018.
Although the issue of U.S. poverty is deep and challenging, Rev. Barber reminded us that it may not be as complex as we make it out to be. When it comes down to it, the mandates that we hold as foundational and even sacred as stated in the Constitution require us to interrogate what it really means to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” when140 million people are living in poverty in this country.
Additionally, he asked the audience to consider that the racialization of poverty has only supported policies that keep poverty in place. Population data show that in raw numbers, there are 40 million more White people living in poverty than people of color. In Oregon, that equates to 1.3 million. At the same time, people of color are overrepresented in the poverty and low-wealth categories. Making poverty a race issue divides us to create and maintain racist, and therefore, morally corrupt policies. We need to work together across races to address poverty. As Rev. Barber stated, “If we can’t pay the light bill, we’re all Black in the dark.”
In past positions and as Meyer’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion manager, I have theorized, planned and trained around DEI issues. But as much of these things I’ve done, and as passionate as I feel about equity and inequities, there is something so simple, and perhaps even more moving, about Rev. Barber’s logic. His call for us to stand together against the racialization of poverty and build bridges across race to address this moral crisis make total sense to me!
We are truly grateful to Rev. Barber for sharing his message in Oregon. Want to hear more from Rev. Barber himself? Watch his speech here. Want to talk more about this or Meyer’s Equity Speaker Series? Please reach out to carol [at] mmt.org (carol[at]mmt[dot]org)
P.S. If you missed the event, you can watch Rev. Barber’s keynote on Meyer’s YouTube channel here.
