In celebration of Black History Month, the Portland Trail Blazers honored six leaders in Oregon — including Linfield College president Dr. Miles Davis, Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, Oregon Health & Science University president Dr. Danny Jacobs, Oregon Supreme Court Justice Adrienne Nelson, Portland Police Bureau chief Danielle Outlaw and Meyer Memorial Trust president & CEO Michelle J. DePass — to recognize their groundbreaking leadership, each as the first African American to hold their executive-level position within their respective institutions.
Read the Skanner News’ reporting on the event that took place during the Feb. 5 🏀 basketball game between the #RipCity Trail Blazers and Miami Heat here.
Honorees Linfield College president Dr. Miles Davis, Meyer CEO Michelle J. DePass, Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, Portland Police Bureau chief Danielle Outlaw, Oregon Supreme Court Justice Adrienne Nelson and OHSU president Dr. Danny Jacobs.
The Opportunity Zone program — a federal strategy that provides preferential tax treatment to investors, allowing them to sell a good that has increased in value, such as stock or real estate, but delay paying taxes on capital gains if they immediately reinvest in a building or business that is located in a recognized site — has selected the Rockwood neighborhood as a new opportunity zone in Oregon.
Rockwood, between the borders of Portland and Gresham, has historically been a disinvested neighborhood in the Portland area. Zoning the region as an opportunity zone will make it a tempting investment opportunity for private investors and real estate developers.
The Oregonian reports on the selection of Rockwood as an opportunity zone:
Rockwood, just inside Gresham’s borders, stretches from roughly 162nd to 202nd avenues, along East Burnside Street and the MAX Blue Line. A high percentage of residents live below the poverty line, and many are members of racial or ethnic minorities. It’s long suffered under a reputation for high crime, though its crime rate is similar to other neighborhoods considering its population.
“There are a lot of complex reasons why a neighborhood like Rockwood gets overlooked, but the systems have really failed our neighbors, and getting unstuck has been a really complicated problem,” said Brad Ketch, founder of the nonprofit Rockwood Community Development Corp.
The Rockwood Rising site, owned by the city of Gresham, was the site of a Fred Meyer that closed in 2003. The city plans a major redevelopment it hopes will spur more development in the neighborhood. | Photo credit Elliot Njus at the Oregonian
On May 8, public school teachers across Oregon planned a walkout to advocate for more state funding. Districts responded by cancelling school for the day, adjusting calendars and, in the case of Portland Public Schools, demonstrating support for increased public education funding: “Our educators and students deserve better. It is long overdue that we prioritize schools in Oregon,” said Guadalupe Guerrero, Portland Public Schools superintendent.
As Oregon teachers continue to advocate for deeper investments in schools statewide, Meyer supports their efforts by investing in a system that not only guarantees teacher voice, but also sees it as a trusted, integral part of how schools operate and how students learn. As we elevate the voices of all teachers, Meyer is deeply committed to centering those who have been our communities’ most marginalized: teachers of color.
Meyer’s Focus
A key outcome for Meyer’s Equitable Education portfolio is diversifying Oregon’s public education workforce. Data show that racially diverse teachers have a significant positive impact on the achievement of priority students, specifically students of color, but we and others would argue all students benefit. The Oregon Legislature is seeing this need, too; the Joint Committee on Student Success is currently reviewing House Bill 2742, which directs the Department of Education to distribute grants for the purpose of developing and diversifying Oregon’s educator workforce, from pre-kindergarten through grade 12.
Meyer believes incorporating teacher voice is crucial to our state’s education puzzle. Legislation, district policies, grants and scholarships alone will not move the dial on our biggest challenges: We must build mechanisms designed for inclusion, created to recognize expertise where it exists and engendered to promote agency in determining the most effective solutions. Led by these principals, Meyer has sought opportunities to participate in education discussions centered on this topic. We discovered that those who are the most critical to defining challenges and creating solutions are often missing from the conversation entirely.
For Meyer to make informed decisions on investments that further our outcome of diversifying Oregon’s public education workforce, we needed to engage those closest to the subject. To do so, we connected with our statewide networks and gathered together teachers of color from across Oregon who are known equity champions in their schools and districts. This diverse group of 23 teachers of color discussed what brought them to teaching, what keeps them teaching and what daily challenges push them to consider leaving the profession. Most importantly, we discussed their recommendations for how public education in Oregon can attract, sustain and retain teachers of color.
The information below was collected during our gathering. It has informed Meyer’s present work and will serve as a guide for future investments.
Group Profile
Meyer’s Teachers of Color Gathering was facilitated by Zalika Gardner, a teacher of color who taught for more than 15 years and now serves as education director for KairosPDX — a school she co-founded in North Portland in 2012. The 23 participants were from different racial and ethnic groups and identified as Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Latinx, Native American, South Asian and multiracial (identifying with two or more races). The educators’ experience teaching varied from less than five years to more than 20 years and one administrator with five years of experience. The teachers came from cities and school districts across Oregon: Portland, Hood River, Clackamas, Medford, Gresham, Eugene and Seaside. Most teachers had earned their teaching credentials in Oregon. The few who earned their credentials out of state earned them in California or New York. One participant was a credentialed teacher in Mexico but was not able to teach in Oregon without earning a master’s degree in education in the United States.
Many participants commented that they had never been in a space with such a diverse group of teachers, primarily folks of color. Those who had experienced a similar space said that it did not happen in Oregon. Within the first few hours of the gathering many teachers began to express that eight hours would not be enough time to grapple with the topics of the day. It was clear that the event itself was serving a crucial need for networking and relationship building among educators of color within Oregon.
What We Heard
Teachers of color are mission-driven. The core message from participants was their love for their students and communities compelled them into the teaching profession and that passion for their students and communities keeps them teaching and persevering through common challenges.
Throughout the gathering, four themes emerged as central to transforming Oregon’s public schools and education system into an institution that attracts and retains teachers of color:
Teacher preparation programs must do a better job of educating emerging, pre-service teachers in culturally affirming pedagogy. At the same time, programs must create honest and nurturing spaces for pre-service teachers of color to share experiences and build support networks with other teachers and mentors of color that will sustain them as they enter the teaching workforce and face biases on a daily basis. Key programs cited as exemplary: Sapsipkwala program, Portland Teachers Program, and the Bilingual Teacher Pathway program at Portland State University.
Excellent, culturally matched mentors matter. In almost every activity, the necessity and influence of effective mentorship surfaced as a central reason participants remained in teaching. Participants insisted that placing emerging teachers with content-specific and grade-level specific mentors who are honest, culturally empowering master teachers is critical to achieving and retaining a diversified teaching workforce.
Teachers of color need an organization that shares the values and concerns of diverse teachers. This idea emerged as a “collective” or hub that offers resources for professional coaching, mental health support, legal support, lobbying and advocacy services. Teachers of color don’t always feel represented by their unions; leadership is predominantly white and trails behind national educator organizations on issues of equity. Because the majority of Oregon’s teaching workforce is white, the union serves the agenda of the majority of its constituents. Some participants felt they were vulnerable to being marginalized, tokenized and forced to stay quiet when union decisions and actions put them directly at odds with the organization charged with representing them.
The higher you move up in education leadership in Oregon, the whiter the population becomes. Currently there are 197 superintendents across Oregon and just seven of them are leaders of color: Guadalupe Guerrero (PPS), Paul Coakley (Centennial), Danna Diaz (Reynolds), Katrise Perera (Gresham/Barlow), Gustavo Balderas (Eugene), Koreen N. Barreras-Brown (Colton) and George Mendoza (La Grande); less than 4% of district leaders. Oregon’s teachers of color rarely have leadership that understands what teaching or leading in a school building feels like as a person of color. The cohort of teachers identified more responsive, culturally affirming training for emerging school building administrators and thorough ongoing professional development and equity training for those already leading buildings. Teachers believed that school building leaders set the framework for cultural norms in the building. Thus, this is a crucial role, one that has an immense effect on whether or not a teacher of color remains a teacher. It’s important that these leaders know how to lead, affirm and develop a diverse teacher workforce.
Conclusion
Meyer’s Teachers of Color Gathering uncovered clear alignment in why participants chose the teaching profession: their love for their communities. Teachers also shared the central issue that challenges them to stay: biased co-teachers, building administrators and others openly dismissing, belittling, disparaging and underestimating teachers, children and families of color.
If we truly seek to create an educator workforce that reflects Oregon’s increasingly diverse student population, we must not only examine how we prepare and train teachers of color, but also radically reshape the expectations for pre-service white teachers and administrators. A training system that exposes and examines biases isn’t one class or a few discussions but a central area of mastery essential to becoming a teacher or administrator in the state of Oregon.
Next Steps
Meyer remains committed to elevating the voices of teachers and administrators of color. We will continue to work with this core group of educators to determine meaningful investments toward our outcome of sustaining and increasing Oregon’s education workforce diversity. Heeding the feedback we received from the first gathering, we will hold another gathering in winter 2019, bringing back this core group of educators and adding more, including administrators of color who are leading for equity. We also plan to connect pre-service teachers of color with this incredible collection of educators to promote networking and relationship building for these burgeoning teachers.
This is the second blog in a series recapping “At The Intersection of Philanthropy and Tech,” a breakout session I presented last July during ACT-W Portland — an annual conference for women in tech hosted by our city's local chapter of ChickTech — that centered on what the philanthropic and tech sectors can learn from each other and where I think they will succeed by working together. The first blog detailed what the tech sector is doing well. In this one, I’ll outline what philanthropy has to offer tech. The most obvious thing that the philanthropic sector can teach the tech sector is how to deploy financial assets, our raison d’être. The philanthropic sector has made great strides in the areas of financial investments, social change and planning for long-term impact, and it is our charge as philanthropists to share these insights.
The philanthropic sector, or as it’s sometimes called “organized philanthropy,” came into its own half a century ago as a side effect of Congress’ decision to regulate charitable giving and track the flow of money.1 Since that time, the sector has come to encompass grantmaking institutions, including private, independent, family, corporate and community foundations; public charities, corporate giving programs, tribal governments, government funders, and operating foundations; infrastructure organizations, including regional associations, issue-based and affinity-based national groups, and international associations; and consultancies and companies providing everything from DEI training to legal advising to grants management software. Billions of dollars move through this sector every year, and it takes expertise to continuously improve on established practices.
Oregon’s tech sector has grown steadily in the last decade, plateauing last year at about 11 percent of Oregon’s jobs.2 Many high-tech corporations headquartered in Oregon have been involved in grantmaking for some time, including Intel, Nike, Adidas, Columbia Sportswear and (recently) New Relic. Many others are supporting nonprofits but haven’t established a formal vehicle for this work. In my opinion it is both desirable and necessary that they do, especially around issues that are directly caused by the movement of a technically skilled workforce into the state. For example, affordable housing is a major issue in our state, and part of the problem is that we have such a hot job sector, especially among high-paying tech jobs, that the housing supply cannot keep up with the demand. As Oregon’s lower-income population is displaced, the tech industry has an opportunity to step up as funders to invest in developing a homegrown workforce and to mitigate their own impact on the people being pushed out.
The technical aspects of grantmaking vary depending on the type of grantmaking entity, and a company’s leaders would need to consider whether an independent foundation, corporate foundation or corporate giving program best suits their vision. These are all questions no one should have to solve alone. Fortunately, the philanthropic sector is primed to educate tech companies on how to give money away, from legal and compliance issues to evaluation and reporting best practices to collaboration with other funders. The other part of “how to give money away” is the relationship piece. Being in relationships with nonprofits over a period of time means foundations like Meyer have access to real expertise in the form of constituent voice.
There are many causes that sound good to the untrained ear, but nonprofit professionals and their customers — who are engaged in social change all day every day — know what is effective and what isn’t. To that end, I believe that tech companies that want to create social change through giving will need to cultivate relationships within the social sector. There are numerous entry points, especially in the Portland area. One example is the CTE-STEM Funder Round Table, a group that meets quarterly to discuss shared interests in funding career-technical and STEM education. I believe that when they come to the table, they will find themselves more than welcomed by our philanthropic community.
Story Time
Full disclosure: One of the reasons I wanted to speak at ACT-W and share my thoughts on this topic is that I was annoyed with Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos. In 2017, Bezos announced on Twitter that he wanted to do something big with his money and asked for suggestions. My suggestion to him then (which was not unique) was to get connected to a regional or issue-based association of grantmakers. At the time, I worked for one such organization and knew that it was a basic but crucial first step to anyone wanting to establish a formal giving program. Ignoring all the feedback he solicited, Bezos decided the best use of his money was not to help with any real problems the world currently has but to solve imaginary problems (and possibly enrich himself further while doing it). The intense criticism that followed led to Amazon announcing in October 2018 that it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour and join the fight for 15. In a statement reported by the Washington Post, Bezos said “We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do and decided we want to lead.”
He didn’t decide to “lead” on this issue because it was the right thing to do; just just eight days before the announcement, Amazon was handing out 25-cent “damage control” raises. He certainly didn’t commit to rebuilding Puerto Rico or reuniting families detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or any of the great things that a pile of money like his could do. However, this story demonstrates the importance of sincere, intentional and strategic philanthropy that listens to constituent voice and focuses on the social return on investment of all that it does.
If you want to change the world, it’s not enough to throw money around. Your entire body of work — from start to finish — can be treated as an investment in the kind of world you hope to create. Meyer’s own investment team has been at the forefront of creating investment strategies and vehicles that place our assets in service to our mission. This isn’t easy work and it doesn’t happen overnight, but that should not deter anyone from doing it. Anyone can decide to lead, even before the critiques start coming. Tech companies have additional opportunities to create positive social ROI as well, in their core market offerings.
There are no bug fixes in social change philanthropy
There is such a thing as negative social ROI. Michelle Alexander detailed the implicit racism that is baked into “e-carceration” software in “The Newest Jim Crow.” Tech Workers Coalition works to stop the use of the tech labor force to support injustices such as the creation of software for ICE’s unconstitutional activities. Even the fact that the majority of apps that get funded and developed reflect the needs and desires of their mostly white creators is a form of negative social ROI. Some of these negative returns can’t be fixed. The court system is slower by design than artificial intelligence, but if AI puts more people of color in jail and their only recourse is a slow system we are taking years away from a human life that can never be replaced.
Philanthropy is often criticized for being too slow, but I believe slow can be good — especially if the goal is to make time to fully consider the implications of what we create. The last thing any tech company should do is rush into a grantmaking program with no clear idea of their goals, the environment they’re operating in or the people who inhabit it. As much as the philanthropic sector can learn from tech about being less risk-averse, it can also teach.
Some of the insights will be learning from philanthropy’s mistakes. The history of our sector is problematic, but we continue to work steadily toward social justice.
Come and learn with us.
— Rhiannon
Notes
The Foundation Center was established in 1956 to document charitable gifts in response to the pressures of McCarthyism and fears that foundations were somehow funding communism. Before this, there were foundations, but they each functioned as if in a vacuum. Click here for a more complete synopsis. Return to top ↩
The start of the year initiated a new chapter of life for me. I joined Meyer with 20 years in philanthropy, most recently serving as vice president of programs at the Brooklyn Community Foundation in New York.
Why did I come to Meyer? It was simple: I was drawn to Meyer’s top-to-bottom commitment to equity, both internally and externally, and the ability to guide this level of resources to invest in critical issues. Not only is equity guiding the grantmaking work but it is also guiding investment decisions as well, building to use all of our assets to advance our mission. Plus, I was pleased to see the hard work of living equity values internally has started here as well.
Meyer has one of the most diverse teams I’ve seen in philanthropy: an all-women, majority people of color executive team led by a visionary African-American woman; a diverse board, also led by an African-American woman; and a bold, diverse and thoughtful team. Among Meyer’s staff of 41, more than half identify as people of color or Indigenous, more than half have taken part in nine or more days of equity training and a third were raised in a home speaking a language other than English. My partner jokes that it took a move from NYC to Portland to find a foundation as diverse as Meyer, but it is indeed an amazing organization and I am excited to be a part of this thoughtful, talented and committed team.
I am thrilled to be here in Oregon. I moved with my spouse and two sons in January and have been welcomed with friendliness and warmth, and we respect and are falling in love with our new home state. For me, taking part in visits to Tribal councils and Native communities around the state has been a wonderful start to learning more about the land and communities here. And I am looking forward to getting out of the office to meet all the grantees and communities that we are in service to and partnering with.
My role isn’t a new one entirely at Meyer, but adding the word strategy to my title was an important shift for the organization. I’ll be working to foster organization wide collaboration and making sure we build a stronger learning culture inside Meyer, while also developing and implementing programmatic strategies that reinforce the foundation’s four portfolios and leverage underlying intersections among them. The goal is to implement best practices of the sector to help Meyer continue as a leader in the field, specifically to move from a culture of metrics and compliance to a culture centered on building connections with communities.
I look forward to working with you to tackle inequity and disparity and make our home of Oregon a place that is equitable and flourishing for all. I look forward to meeting with you soon.
Meyer staff and Asian Health & Service Center CEO Holden Leung, attended a two-day program team retreat to delve deeper into equity work and programmatic strategy.
Spring has finally arrived and so has our 2019 annual funding opportunity! Our team is excited to accept a new round of proposals through the Healthy Environment portfolio’s statewide program that align with our vision of nurturing a resilient natural environment, while supporting the well-being of Oregon’s diverse cultures and communities.
This year we anticipate awarding grants totaling $3.5 million. Applications are due by 5 p.m., on Wednesday, May 15. We encourage you to consider submitting a day early to give yourself a cushion in case anything needs a little extra time.
The biggest change to the Healthy Environment portfolio this year is that we’ve tightened up our Statewide Program goals. If you are a previous applicant or grantee, you may remember there’s been a fourth portfolio goal the past three years: Achieve the mutual goals of community well-being, economic vitality and environmental stewardship (triple bottom line).
This will no longer be a standalone goal. We changed this because applicants often struggled to decide between the triple bottom line goal and the other goals when preparing their applications. As we considered this change and our continuing value of work that delivers on social, economic and environmental impact, we took a close look at what grants we’ve made in support of the triple bottom line goal over the past three years. What we found is that all of these triple bottom line grants could fit under one of the other three goals.
So, we made the decision to revise our goals. We believe that keeping the three remaining goals of environmental justice, diverse movement and healthy natural systems with brighter lines between them will make the goal selection process for applicants much simpler. Despite making this change, we continue to value triple bottom line thinking and approaches and expect to continue funding work that aligns with this value.
We’ve begun to take a number of steps to simplify the grantmaking process. The biggest change toward simplification that we are rolling out this year is that our application is only one step. As a result, there are a couple of additional questions (but fewer in total than the combined questions in our first and second proposal applications used the past three years). We’ve also upped the word count limit from 1,500 to 2,000 to give you more room to explain your request and how you plan to carry out the work.
In addition, you may hear about a pilot “renewal grant process”, an idea we are testing with a handful of current Healthy Environment portfolio statewide program grantees. This is another strategy to simplify the process and create more space for grantees and our team to find new ways to partner beyond the transaction of a grant application.
What’s the same?
Pretty much everything else.
We will continue to partner with organizations that share our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and working toward a more reciprocal, restorative relationship with each other and the planet.
This means that strong proposals will demonstrate an approach that recognizes the need to change policies, relationships, roles and practices in institutions, structures and systems that govern how people relate to nature and make environmental management decisions. The most competitive proposals will include strategies that aim to address disparities in access to the benefits of a healthy environment and environmental protections in communities, particularly communities of color, indigenous communities and Tribes, low-income communities, and immigrants and refugees, in rural and urban areas.
You can find much more information about what does and doesn’t fit well with the Statewide Program, what we funded last year, and how to put together a successful application in the Healthy Environment portfolio section of our website and in Applicant Resources.
We also welcome your questions about your plans for a grant application or how to navigate GrantIS, our online application system. Please send your questions to us at questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org )or call us at 503-228-5512.
Thank you for your continued work for a healthy environment that benefits all of Oregon’s diverse cultures and communities.
Kimberly A.C. Wilson, Meyer’s director of communications, recently sat down with Building Community portfolio director Dahnesh Medora and program associate Erin Dysart to talk about changes in the portfolio this year, including accepting applications by invitation.
Kimberly Wilson:
Before we talk about the shifts within the Building Community portfolio, let’s spend some time capturing the evolution of the portfolio. Since Meyer redesigned its programs, there are often questions about the purpose or vision for this portfolio. Can you share some of that background?
Dahnesh Medora:
As I understand it, the vision was always broad. As Meyer moved away from a responsive grantmaking model, the Building Community portofolio was meant to serve as a space where a range of groups could see their work and access support generally. The initial outline for the portfolio had an emphasis on capacity building, with an added focus on civic engagement and the arts. Those were the three buckets that were most distinctly carved out.
What Building Community didn’t have, in contrast to the other portfolios, was a more topical focus that tied these things together. The closest thing we had was a focus on equity, which essentially meant that the Building Community portfolio mirrored the overarching focus of Meyer as a whole. In practice that meant Building Community was the “widest door” to apply for Meyer funding, and so we’ve consistently seen a high level of interest from the field.
Kimberly Wilson:
This has been Meyer’s largest portfolio in regard to the range of topic areas covered and when it comes to application volume through the Annual Funding Opportunity. Can you say a bit more about what that has looked like?
Erin Dysart:
Sure, over the three annual funding cycles, Building Community received about 1,000 applications, well over half of what Meyer received across all four portfolios. We funded just over 200. So about 80 percent of applications were declined each year. In terms of dollars, upward of $127 million was requested and about $22 million was granted. It has been a very competitive process.
Dahnesh Medora:
Yes, the door has been wide, but the funding hasn’t been quite as much. Let’s come back to that 80 percent in a minute. I do want to touch on the breadth of topics you asked about. When we reviewed a pool of applications, we found folks who were working on recidivism, arts organizations that were focused on youth development and groups that were in the traditional public policy and advocacy space, including collaboratives. We’d see organizations offering direct services for basic needs and family supports for early childhood ...
Erin Dysart:
… organizations working in or on health care, media, legal services, cultural preservation, out-of-school programming, community facilities, food systems, employment support … the list goes on.
Kimberly Wilson:
So it sounds like this portfolio, at least in its earliest days, carried forward some remnants of Meyer’s previous responsive grantmaking model.
Dahnesh Medora:
I think there’s some truth to that. We put this broad container out into the world, so although we did adjust and tighten a bit each year, we continued to receive a high volume of applications covering a vast range of issues.
For a variety of reasons, I don’t think it’s ideal that we turn down 80 percent of applicants. That means a lot of people put time and energy into an application, they base their planning around this work and our process can take between six to nine months before they even find out if they’ve been accepted as a grantee. I don’t know that there is an ideal acceptance rate necessarily — I think Meyer’s other portfolios tend to be closer to 50 percent — but I’d like to get to a place where Building Community can provide clearer guidance in advance that supports folks in making self selections and ultimately leads to a smaller number of declinations.
Funding will likely always be competitive to some degree, but we know we can make some improvements. That’s one of our goals in reformulating what we’re doing, to make the process less arduous for applicants generally. This also means that our staff will be able to focus and be more strategic with their use of time. If we’re not culling through those large numbers, we’re able to devote more time and attention to individual applications and make the case for why they should be funded to our trustees. That’s exciting to me, being more strategic.
Erin Dysart:
Me, too. And that relates to something I hear consistently from our portfolio colleagues as well, that we’d all like to be out in the field more and be able to work in more relational and less transactional ways.
Kimberly Wilson:
You mentioned adjusting and tightening each year, I think referring to the Annual Funding Opportunity. How has that played out?
Erin Dysart:
We have been working incrementally on narrowing the portfolio. We’ve made adjustments to our funding goals and intended outcomes each year, in collaboration with our trustees, for example naming systems change as a goal. So we’ve experimented with some of those sorts of modifications.
Of course, some narrowing has also happened as we’ve made hard choices about what gets funded and what doesn’t. Again, the door to apply has been wide, but the funding has always been more narrow. Part of what has emerged and guided us and grown stronger in doing so over the course of these three years are what we’re now calling our anchor criteria, three qualities that we look for in partner organizations.
Those are, one, an active commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion both in external programming or services and, importantly, in internal operations and leadership. We’re looking for indications that go beyond some initial training. Two: centering, listening to and remaining accountable to the service community. We sometimes call this raising up constituent voice. Finally, three, and this is a big one for us, we’re looking for organizations that ensure that their work fits within broader efforts to address systems that perpetuate economic, political and other disparities.
Dahnesh Medora:
You might notice that these are “issue agnostic” characteristics or rather that these are about how an organization works rather than what issue they might be focusing on. In some ways the “how” has always been a bit easier for us to pin down.
One other thing to mention, and this is connected to our anchor criteria to some degree, is that we’ve grown more clear about the need to prioritize racial equity. That’s not at the exclusion of thinking about other issues of oppression, of course.
Erin Dysart:
Moving forward, we’re going to be more clear that we are looking first and foremost at work that is designed to support communities of color and Indigenous people and Tribes, and then particularly where they may experience overlapping oppressions related to gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status ...
Dahnesh Medora:
… or other oppressions that might be specific to a community.
Kimberly Wilson:
Can you share what’s ahead for the Building Community portfolio in the 2019-20 funding cycle?
Dahnesh Medora:
Some things are different, but I want to be clear that the foundational pieces remain the same. Our vision, for example. We want to create a just, complex, multicultural society where everyone can thrive. That’s been a consistent aim, and that will remain the same.
In support of that, we’re going to provide funding in the amount of roughly $2.5 million for groups that have a strong track record of work around systems change. These are organizations that will be invited to apply, so we won’t have a broad open funding call. That is the biggest difference that folks in the field are going to notice.
Erin Dysart:
Again, our anchor criteria are key: The organizations invited to apply for this funding are working explicitly on systems change, as Dahnesh said, and are also strong on our other two anchor criteria, constituent voice and DEI.
Dahnesh Medora:
We will also put out a dedicated request for proposals this spring that will focus about a million dollars of funding on organizations that are primarily in the direct service space that have an interest in focusing on systems change. Grantees of this RFP will also participate in a cohort or a community learning process that will be supported by subject matter experts in the field.
Kimberly Wilson:
So this is for direct service providers who are really thinking about root causes?
Erin Dysart:
Exactly, organizations that want to create a condition where their service isn’t needed. We work with some organizations who have figured this out beautifully. They have a vision of what it would take to ultimately work themselves out of a job. And they’re working on it! The cohort programming isn’t fully worked out yet, but we may end up reaching out to some of the groups we know that are already strong on this to see if there is an appropriate (resourced) way for them to share some of their experience with other organizations looking to build this muscle.
Dahnesh Medora:
So this is an area — direct services to systems change — where we’re going deeper, in a sense, both for the purpose of supporting the field but also to support our own learning. Our own learning is a piece of what we’re hoping to do this next year through engagement with organizations that are in the field.
Kimberly Wilson:
Are there other ways you’re pursuing that learning during this interim year, other elements of work not tied specifically to the two funding streams you’ve talked about? Are you in fact thinking of this as an interim year?
Dahnesh Medora:
We are thinking of this year as unique, yes. And I’d say that all of the learning we are pursuing is in some way tied to systems change, that’s the big theme. The idea of systems change has become more and more central to Meyer’s work, but it has been defined somewhat loosely. In Building Community, we’re thinking about how we can make that more tangible. What does systems change really look like? How can we best support it? Where are the levers and opportunities in Oregon that we might be well suited to move?
Erin Dysart:
We’re also talking more about how policy change and systems change overlap but aren’t the same. Policy change is part of systems change but isn’t the entirety of it by any stretch.
Dahnesh Medora:
That’s a good way of putting it. And in that sense, the policy and advocacy component of our work has been there all the way through, and I think we’re now making more of a distinction between the two, between policy and advocacy and broader systems change efforts.
In the future, we’ll make an effort to try to convene our grantees a little more than we have in the past. You might think of it as formal convenings or meetings, but there’s also a great benefit in just deepening relationships with individual organizations and those are one-on-one conversations. Our hope is that we create enough space for our staff this year to actually go out and engage with groups one on one.
Erin Dysart:
And that could go beyond grantees, too. We know there may be groups doing great work in Oregon that connects well with what we’re trying to achieve but that we haven’t partnered with or even met yet for one reason or another.
Dahnesh Medora:
We also have Building Community staff members who represent Meyer on some important funder collaboratives — Sally Yee on the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative and Erin on the Census Equity Funders Committee of Oregon — so that is work that is also ongoing on a parallel track that can inform how the portfolio evolves.
We’ll also try to keep our tools sharp by attending conferences, working with other funders, intermediaries and peer organizations that dig in on a particular issue or have an approach that we think might lend itself well to the other efforts we see in the sector. That’s definitely a piece of the field engagement. We’re going to focus some exploration on issues related to immigration, democracy and wealth creation, themes that have emerged from our first three years that feel like they might have potential to help us sharpen our approach. We are open and ready.
Erin Dysart:
This all really ties back to when Meyer’s trustees chose to shift to strategic rather than responsive grantmaking. That’s about naming the impact you want to see in the world and focusing resources on the strongest opportunities to make it happen. So when we talk about narrowing, reformulating or possibly identifying topical focus areas, these are all essentially different ways of saying that we’re trying to get more specific about the highest impact strategies that are going to help us actually shift power and achieve the transformational change we want to see in the world––and that communities have been working toward for decades!
Dahnesh Medora:
And I think Meyer is at an inflection point more generally. As a whole organization, we are trying to understand: Where can we have the greatest impact? Our board and staff are constantly asking that question, and I think a healthy organization has to do so on an ongoing basis. To not just ask it once.
Kimberly Wilson:
So what comes next after this year? And how can people in the field connect with you or stay tuned into what you’re working on this year?
Dahnesh Medora:
We don’t know exactly what the year after next will look like. I know that’s not a terribly satisfying answer, but that is the genuine truth of where we are. Again, we do have core elements of the portfolio that won’t change, but the pieces that may feel most urgent to folks in the field, such as specifics of what funding opportunities will look like, we just can’t say yet. But we will stay in communication with the field about this as we have more information available. We’ll share updates online via our portfolio-specific newsletter and Meyer’s website. If folks want to know more or have specific questions, we encourage them to reach out to us directly.
Erin Dysart:
Right now, as we’re announcing these changes, we’re also encouraging folks to reach out via questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org) so we can compile questions and share a FAQ with the field if we find themes that would be helpful to share out. Additionally, we’ll host an online Q&A session with the field at 10 a.m., Wednesday, April 24. (Register here)
Dahnesh Medora, Building Community portfolio director, joined Meyer in November 2015 in the late stages of planning for a major programming restructure. The portfolio was still taking shape at the time and was then referred to as the Resilient Social Sector portfolio. (Its name was later changed to Building Community based on field feedback.)
Erin Dysart, Building Community program associate, joined the team in March 2016 when Meyer’s strategic grantmaking structure publicly launched and its first Annual Funding Opportunity opened.
Building Community program associate Erin Dysart conversing with community members at Meyer's 2018 Annual Funding Opportunity information session at Immigrant and Refugee Organization (IRCO).
A partnership between Tribes of the Pacific Northwest and Meyer seeks to integrate and honor Native wisdom within the environmental movement.
Inside Philanthropy examines a recent batch of grants awarded through Meyer's Healthy Environment portfolio and the unique role its grantmaking plays in supporting Tribal communities:
"[We] are excited to learn more about how traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous communities and Western science can work together to support healthy natural systems and communities," portfolio director Jill Fuglister wrote in a blog at the end of 2018. She tells IP this integration "opens the door to addressing the disparate impacts of environmental problems that indigenous communities experience by creating space for indigenous leaders to bring their concerns, priorities and solutions to environmental protection efforts."
By turning to local Native American communities to help steer its environmental grantmaking practices, Meyer may create a rich example of how environmental and social movements can come together. We see more, but arguably not enough, environmental, social justice and human rights-focused groups acknowledging and exploring how their causes overlap. At the crux of this intersection is the fact that minority groups are often the most affected by environmental degradation and calamity, and the recognition that these same communities can be a source of experience-based, authentic responses to these problems.
The Chinook Indian Nation recently bought about 10 acres of heavily forested land in Warrenton around Tansy Creek, one of many locations where Chinookan tribes — Clatsop, Cathlamet, Lower Chinook Wahkiakum and Willapa — were pushed off by European settlers. The plan: to purchase, protect and revitalize the Tribes’ historically important 1851 Tansy Point treaty grounds.
The Daily Astorian documents the purchase, made possible by grants from organizations such as the Oregon Community Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, Collins Foundation and others:
“'The Clatsop folks covered this whole south shore of the Columbia, really, from around Astoria itself heading west, and then of course down the adjacent seashore all the way down to Tillamook Head, that country,” (Tony Johnson, chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation) said. “But all the main country people think about here in terms of Hammond, Gearhart, Seaside — that’s all Clatsop territory.'
The property near Tansy Point is near where, in the summer of 1851, members of all five Chinookan tribes gathered to negotiate with Anson Dart, the first superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory, to avoid relocation east of the Cascade Mountains. It is the only known instance when all tribal ancestors were gathered in one place, Johnson said."
In honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 90th birthday, 13 leaders in philanthropy share thoughts on how they and their organizations are advancing King's vision of racial and economic justice.
"Yesterday's injustice remains today's inequality," wrote Meyer President & CEO Michelle J. Depass. "The racial wealth and income gap endures, wider, even, than it was in 1968, when King was killed. Built, as it is, on the great fortunes of America, U.S. philanthropy holds a key role in closing that racial wealth and income gap.
Since refocusing its work to address inequities in Oregon, Meyer Memorial Trust has been working to dismantle structural and systemic inequities at the root of disparities in education, housing, the environment and communities, both rural and urban."
