Those unfamiliar with the term "tipping" in the nonprofit context may be wondering why as a funder we are advising how much you should leave on your restaurant bill. While tipping fortunately may not be a very common occurrence with nonprofits, it has significant consequences on the legal/tax status for an organization that may be in jeopardy of being tipped (and ultimately its ability to attract funding). As the majority of our grantees are public charities who are responsible for maintaining their tax-exempt status, Meyer wants our organizations to be aware of this issue — and discuss ways to avoid the unintended consequences of tipping.
What is tipping and why does it matter to Meyer grantees?
One of the key elements reviewed for 501(c)(3) determination (the most common tax exempt classification by the IRS) is an organization's sources of revenue and diversity of its funding. A 501(c)(3) organization is then further classified as a private foundation or a public charity. A public charity follows more flexible IRS rules since it's considered to be more accountable to the public as a widely, publicly supported organization. This is in contrast to private foundations, most of which have just a single source of funding and therefore more strictly monitored by the IRS.
Tipping occurs when a large contribution from a single donor to a 501(c)(3) public charity causes that organization to fail the IRS public support test and is therefore "tipped" out of public charity status.The organization will then become reclassified by the IRS as a private foundation and will need to comply with more restrictive and complex legal and financial regulations.
The other huge impact of being tipped is that the organization may then face losing future funding. Since it's more difficult for funders to give funds to private foundations (many foundations only give grants to organizations with public charity status), fundraising and receiving grants could become significantly more challenging for the nonprofit.
What is public support and how does it get calculated?
The IRS requires a public charity to annually submit a Form 990 — which provides the organization's financial information — which is then made available to the public. As part of this form, the organization needs to calculate both its public support (income from the public) and total support (income from tax revenues, membership fees, government grants and contracts, gifts and grants from private foundations, public charities, individuals, corporations, etc.) over a five-year period (current year and prior four years). While there are complex rules around calculating public support percentages and the different options for doing so (additional information can be found via the resource list at the end of this article), it is crucial to maintain this support to ensure continued public charity status.
How does a nonprofit avoid tipping?
First and foremost, a nonprofit should be highly aware of its overall funding situation and the portion of its income derived from the public. Do you have a low public support percentage (or barely meeting the 33.3 percent threshold)? Are you currently receiving funding from just one or two sources? Are you expecting to receive a significant grant from a private foundation soon — how will this impact your overall revenue?
The most important thing that a nonprofit must do to avoid tipping is to diversify their funding to include substantial public support. That means securing funding from multiple sources and more than one private foundation, such as government funding, donor-advised funds and of course the general public/individuals. While this may be easier said than done for some organizations — particularly for new or smaller organizations with limited fundraising capacity — this will be key to maintaining the organization's status and overall long-term financial health. In certain cases, a potential large grant by a funder may ultimately need to be restructured (decreasing the grant amount, changing payout timeline, etc.) so as not to tip the organization.
An alternative option used in some circumstances is for an organization to apply to the IRS to classify an award as an "unusual grant." While this is a somewhat complex process, getting an "unusual grant" ruling (which completely omits a single substantial grant from the organization's public support test) may be a possible solution.
While nonprofits operating with small budgets and/or with a narrow base of funding, as well as newly formed nonprofits with seed funding, may be more vulnerable to tipping, any public charity can be tipped if their funding is not carefully and regularly monitored.
Below is a list of resources as a starting point. Organizations concerned about being at high risk for tipping are strongly recommended to consult their accountants, tax advisors or lawyers with nonprofit expertise for further guidance.
I used to write grants and didn't exactly love doing it, so I feel the pain of grantwriters: When a funding opportunity opens, they are tasked with figuring out how to present the most compelling information possible and persuade a funder that a particular project is worthy of investment. To add to the stress, funders' selection criteria can seem obscure, with processes that are often daunting, unclear and even seemingly arbitrary.
Our values dictate that we strive to be transparent about our grantmaking and open regarding our decision-making processes. In addition to our website's Applicant Resources section (where we have compiled useful information, templates and examples) and the many in-person and virtual information sessions we've organized around the state, I'd like to offer the following — hopefully helpful — tips to make the application process easier and your proposal more successful.
Determine eligibility and alignment
Many organizations are eligible to apply for Meyer funding, but not all of them will be in alignment with our goals.
To be eligible, your organization must fulfill certain requirements, such as having tax-exempt status and meeting our nondiscriminatory policy, among others.
To show alignment, however, you have to demonstrate that your project or proposal "fits" with Meyer's goals, i.e. not only that your project will help Meyer achieve a portfolio's desired outcomes but also that you have a strong analysis of how your work is (or is demonstrably committed to be) rooted in equity and inclusion.
If this is still too vague, information sessions are great opportunities to engage with our staff, hear us talk about our funding priorities and ask questions. You should also check out what each portfolio funded last year. Building Community's award list is here, Equitable Education's award list is here, Healthy Environment's list is here, and Housing Opportunities' list is here.
Familiarize yourself with our portfolios, grant types and amounts
In the Initial Application, you will choose one portfolio goal and up to two outcomes your proposed work will help achieve. Spend some time reading about the different portfolios, their grant types and their maximum amounts, and decide which goals your work will most likely help to accomplish. If you're unsure about what the types of funding mean, please click here. To find out about maximum amounts, visit each portfolio's page.
If you still have questions after looking at the portfolios or feel like you fit in multiple places, email us at questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org) and our staff will get in touch with you. You may also take a look at Meyer's frequently asked questions page.
Use plain language
When talking about your work, don't assume we know what you do, who you are, or what communities you serve. Answer each question fully and use as plain a language as possible, providing examples if appropriate, and avoiding jargon and acronyms.
Perhaps a good question to ask may be: If a friend read your application, would she understand what your organization does or what your proposal is about? If the answer is no, then chances are we probably won't either.
The cardstack above illustratesthree approaches to writing the program description for "Awesome Organization." As you can see, finding the sweet spot of clarity and simplicity can make a big difference.
Connect the need for your project to its root causes
Your proposal has a better chance of rising to the top if you can articulate clearly (a) how your work will dismantle barriers for underserved communities or (b) how your project will somehow address the root or systemic causes of a problem.
Using Awesome Organization as an example again, we can say that improving access to chocolate (or food or shelter or education) is a worthy cause in its own right, but Awesome Organization's proposal would be significantly more competitive if it demonstrated that it not only addresses the immediate need of the community to access chocolate but that it also understands what creates that immediate need — lack of farmer training and access to capital, especially for farmers from underserved communities — and how the organization can effect long-lasting change — providing low- or no-interest loans to farmers to keep chocolate affordable and addressing the barriers that prevent them from connecting to each other and accessing spaces that allow them to innovate.
Create or update your profile in GrantIS as soon as possible
And consider that …
The setup takes a few days.
If you already have a profile, you'll need to update it. (Before you submit your application, we will ask you to certify that your organization's information is correct.)
If you are applying through a fiscal sponsor, the process can take additional time.
"Right-size" your ask
Familiarize yourself with the range of funding amounts in your chosen portfolio. In determining whether your request is appropriate, we will consider your project size, project complexity, project budget, organization size and what other funding you've secured.
Include key information in the body of the application
We receive so many initial applications that — as much as we would like to — we may not be able to read attached materials we have not specifically requested. Having said that, if you are citing a report or quoting experts, please include links in the body of the narrative instead of providing a bibliography. It saves you words and it makes it easier for us to find the information.
Share the good ... and the bad
We love to hear about the great work you're doing. But if your organization is going through a transition, has experienced some challenges recently or is expecting some rough times ahead, note it in your application as well and explain what you've done or are going to do to address the challenge.
If you're not invited to submit a full proposal, ask for feedback
We'd be happy to go over your application and share our perspective on what you can consider when submitting your next application.
Once again, we are looking forward to reading about all that you're accomplishing.
Preparing a project budget begins with capturing the correct numbers. Simpler, straightforward projects are typically fine just focusing on creating a clear and accurate budget.
For organizations with large, complex or multiyear projects, more advanced budgeting techniques can be helpful. Numbers have meaning in themselves, but the budget framing tell a larger story about the organization's values and how it is approaching the project. It requires strategic thinking. Without some strategy, the budget for a complex project may fall flat or raise more questions than it answers.
Here are some practical considerations as you prepare budgets for larger, complicated projects.
Understand the funder's guidelines
The crucial and often overlooked first step in the grant process is to orient to the funders' requirements. Is it willing to be the only funder on a project? Does it require matching funds from other sources? Is it only willing to fund a certain percentage of the project budget or the organization's operating budget? Does it like to see an organization's own investment in a new project before seeking outside support? Getting that clarity up front will guide both your thinking about fit with the funder and also strategy about how to frame the budget.
At Meyer, we are rarely the first or the only funder of a project. Beyond that, there are few generalizations. We look at proposals differently based on the type and size of the project and the type of funding requested. More nuanced explanations can be found in funding guidelines for each portfolio.
Locate your proposal on the project timeline
Timing is a crucial aspect of a proposal, and capturing timing in a budget can be a little tricky. It may be helpful to think about the larger project and the steps that build on each other for a larger vision. We often see projects that build on some prior work or pilot effort and want to bring to bear the data, understanding, connections and vision to scale up the project or new business line. In these types of proposals, the narrative sections of the application will describe this pilot step and how it informed the larger vision.
The budget can mirror that progression by reflecting the work that has gone on up to the point an applicant applies and capturing it in the budget. Put another way, your project budget doesn't need to start at the time of application. Your project may be a four-year effort, starting with the year before the application, including a two-year grant period and also a year after the grant ends. Being clear about how the proposed grant period fits into the larger project timeline helps to ground your efforts and orient the reader.
If you are using Meyer's sample budget templates to describe a multi-year project, the project or capacity-building formats can be adjusted to show multiple years.
Consider your framing – wide-angle or close-up?
Related to timing, we often see that a project is defined discretely, as a finite piece of a larger effort. With this kind of close-up framing, it often appears that Meyer is being asked to fund 100 percent of the project, and this bumps up against the notion that Meyer is rarely a first or only funder of a project. To get around that issue, you might consider putting a wider angle on the project framing by showing the work that has come before it or the work expected after the grant, as long as it is reasonably connected. This wider angle can show a more diverse range of financial support for the proposal, and consequently, it does not appear that Meyer is being asked for 100 percent of the project budget. Panning out so far that the project is framed as a 10-year effort, however, loses a lot of detail and punch. Balance is prudent.
Describe the role that Meyer funding can play
We understand that, for many projects, any funding will help. For others, a Meyer grant represents something different, and it is often larger or more flexible than many other sources of grants or revenue. If the Meyer funds can play a certain role in the support of your project, describe that in your project budget and narrative. Some examples of the roles we are often asked to play:
Experiment with new approach or prototype.
Evaluate a demonstration project.
Support efforts to build diversity, equity and inclusion in your work.
Leverage or matching grant for public funders.
Fill a key funding gap.
Complement more restricted grants and contracts.
Share funds with partners in a collaborative effort.
Provide support during a critical transition.
Augment advocacy and systems change efforts.
Build a new or strengthen an existing skill base in the organization.
Achieve a level of work that unlocks funding from other, larger sources.
Describing the role of Meyer funds, if appropriate for your project, can build a more compelling case for your grant proposal.
Reflect your organization's commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion
Every organization Meyer partners with is expected to share our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). As such, project budgets can also be a good place to reflect your organization's commitment to DEI in your external or program delivery as well as in internal work of the organization. When DEI is centered in a proposal, it can raise some additional costs for the organization, such as training consultation, compensating community partners, collaboratively sharing grant funds, or data management and evaluation to track DEI outcomes, to name just a few. You are encouraged to include these important costs in the project budget.
The bottom line? For complex or multiyear projects, don't overlook budgets as an opportunity to amplify the application narrative, strategically frame the project, build the case for Meyer funding and reflect your organizational values. Budgets are an integral part of the application and more than a mechanical exercise.
Meyer believes that we have to work better together in order to achieve our mission of a flourishing and equitable Oregon, and we know that working collaboratively to tackle complex issues together takes resources. We have structured our 2018 Annual Funding Opportunity to encourage and support collaboration across organizations in addition to funding the work of individual organizations. We do this in the following ways:
Organizations may submit an additional grant application on behalf of a collaborative even if they are also applying for grant to support their own organization's work or they have an active Meyer grant.
Organizations applying on behalf of a collaborative may request up to $250,000 for projects in order to accommodate the scope of work being tackled by large-scale collaborations and, in many situations, to support the participation of multiple organizations.
Organizations applying on behalf of an emerging collaborative — meaning they are just getting started in their work together — may apply for a planning grant of up $35,000.
What do we mean by a collaborative?
To determine eligibility for collaborative grants (not the planning grants), we ask that organizations applying on behalf of a collaborative certify that the following three things are true:
The collaborative structure and priorities are inclusive and demonstrate an equitable approach.
The roles and responsibilities of collaborative partners are clearly defined and demonstrate an equitable approach.
The decision-making processes demonstrate an equitable approach.
What qualifies for collaborative grants?
With the grant funds that are available to collaboratives, we are looking to support collaborations that have established partners' roles and responsibilities, that have clarity of purpose, and where all partners are committed and on the same page. We also want to support collaborations that have integrated equity into the way the collaborative operates in terms of who is at the table, how decisions are made and how power, resources and responsibilities are shared among partners. Although we don't have a hard definition of a "large collaborative," projects that will be competitive for grants at the top end of our scale generally have a large budget, a significant number of partners, a demonstrated history of successfully working together and are working on large-scale change.
As with all applications, strong collaborative requests demonstrate clear alignment with a portfolio goal and associated outcomes. We look for policy, systems change and movement building strategies that are grounded in the perspective of the communities and constituencies they represent, and we will assess collaborative requests based on our values and equity commitment.
If you are thinking about a collaborative proposal, consider attending our information session webinar on collaborative proposals on Monday, April 2. Finally, below you can find some answers to common questions about collaborative applications for those of you thinking about taking advantage of this opportunity.
What does Meyer mean by "roles and responsibilities of partners are clearly defined"?
When we say "roles and responsibilities of partners are clearly defined," we mean that the partners all have a clear understanding, in writing, for how the collaboration will move its work forward. This can include a defined decision-making process, defined membership and leadership levels (including how new membership will be determined), which partners will bring specific resources to the table (staff, financial, etc.), and how resources will be shared among the partners. Unless you are requesting a planning grant, we ask you to share your Memoranda of Agreement (MOA), letters of commitment or similar documents that your collaborative has in place to capture your joint agreements and understandings.
What exactly does Meyer mean by the phrase "demonstrates an equitable approach"?
There are a number of ways that different collaboratives do this. Examples of ways that collaboratives demonstrate this are:
Clarity about a shared purpose and goals for the collaborative and that communities most affected by the issues you aim to address have informed and shaped this.
All partners have a voice in decision-making.
Clarity about resource sharing. Even if the request is for Meyer funds to only go to one partner, we will consider the collaborative's overarching approach to sharing resources. We trust the collaborative to determine how grant funds can best support its collaborative effort, but we will look for some indication that the different needs of partner organizations to participate as full partners have been considered.
Co-creation of work plan and budgets.
Clarity about ownership of work products and credit for work completed and accomplishments.
Commitments of different partner representatives to participate and commitments of resources they are contributing.
How does Meyer define the difference between a collaborative, a partnership and a contractual relationship?
For our Annual Funding Opportunity, we will prioritize funding for collaboratives tackling systems change work and problems that can't be accomplished by organizations working in isolation and doing "business as usual." An application generally won't be considered a collaborative for our purposes when one or more organizations are signing on to support a policy agenda of a lead organization. We also don't consider contractual relationships between nonprofits as "collaboratives" where one organization has hired one or more other organizations as contractors to provide specific services.
Do the following types of applicants meet the criteria for collaborative proposals?
Collaborations between separate programs that operate independently but are part of the same umbrella organization? (A: No)
Coalitions that have come together around a specific short-term project or campaign? (A: Yes, if power-sharing and working together toward a shared goal — not just signing names onto a list of supporters)
Coalitions that function as a program of one organization? (A: Yes, if involving multiple organizations, power-sharing, collective decision-making and working together toward a shared goal)
How can funds be used?
Although we are open to considering a variety of uses, most often funds support the time of partners to participate in collaborative activities, staffing support to coordinate communication and the work of the collaborative and/or consultant support to advance the collaborative's agenda.
Still have questions? Please join us at our April 2 virtual information about collaborative proposals (RSVP here) or contact us at questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org).
A crowd gathers near Dawson Park in North Portland for a climate justice rally lead by a coalition of Meyer grantees: OPAL, Oregon Just Transition Alliance, APANO, Beyond Toxics, Environmental Justice Oregon, PCUN, Unite Oregon & Rural Organizing Project.
“A journey is called that because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you will do, what you will find, nor what you find will do to you.” — James Baldwin
In 2017, Meyer received numerous proposals from organizations seeking to increase equitable outcomes by including diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their missions, diversifying staff and leadership, providing DEI training, or creating an equity lens through which to filter policies and deliver programming.
We know that embarking on a DEI journey can be an incredible growth period for an organization, but the destructive history of oppression and ongoing persistent injustices are big and personal, which can make stepping onto this path really scary! The 2017 Race to Lead report published by the Building Movement Project reported results from a survey and interviews conducted with more than 4,000 nonprofit staff, capacity builders and funders around the United States. One finding indicated that 48 percent of people of color and 39 percent of whites agreed or somewhat agreed with the statement “nonprofits trying to address race and racial equity in their organizations often create tensions they are not equipped to resolve.”
This statistic made me curious. What does it take to be “equipped” for a journey toward diversity, equity and inclusion? Are there common pitfalls that we can anticipate? What are the “tensions” that show up and how can we address them effectively? To reflect on these questions, I turned to leaders I know who have done this work from different vantage points: Jeana Frazzini, former director of Basic Rights Oregon; Cliff Jones, a Portland-based DEI consultant of more than 30 years; and Dr. Gail Christopher, who has designed racial equity and healing work for decades and most recently led the development of Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation implementation and guidance at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
In a series of blog posts, I’ll share what I heard from each of these leaders about organizational readiness for DEI. We’ll hear about practical strategies, success and challenges, and the personal impact that the DEI journey has had on them. Through this process, I’ve learned so much from these colleagues through their candor, courage and their willingness to share - and about what might be the true costs of integrating DEI into an organization’s work. My hope is that, while each experience is different, you will also be able to use the wisdom from these leaders for your own organizational and personal journeys.
Jeana Frazzini served in board and staff leadership roles at Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) from 2000 to 2016, including eight years as executive director. During that time, BRO was tackling big issues like marriage equality; a statewide nondiscrimination policy; inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) students in schools; and a shift in the lesbian, gay and bisexual community to be inclusive of people who are transgender.
As a movement, the LGBTQ community has struggled with marginalization and exclusion of LGBTQ people of color, despite overwhelming evidence that LGBTQ people of color experience some of the most inequitable outcomes related to health, employment and poverty due to the compounded impacts of racism and heterosexism. Jeana, a white woman, recognized that Basic Rights Oregon was not meeting their mission of serving and including all LGBTQ Oregonians in their movement building and advocacy work. With the support and leadership of her board of directors and staff, BRO embarked on their DEI journey in 2005 and intensified it over the next five years. The work is ongoing. (BRO’s leadership benefited from significant technical assistance and support from Western States Center throughout this process.)
Jeana and I sat down over breakfast to talk about what she and BRO learned about DEI and organizational readiness (a meaty topic, with food to match!).
Basic Rights Oregon’s journey
For Jeana, engaging in DEI work meant not starting with something like diversifying the board and staff and getting some training.
“It was important to line people up on the what and why,” she said. “The what was the intention and it was explicit: to become an anti-racist organization. The why was more a process of discovery, achieved by getting some challenging feedback from people of color in the community who shared that Basic Rights Oregon was not meaningfully engaging — and often tokenizing — LGBTQ people of color and that BRO’s inability to address race issues meant that their opposition was able to advance discriminatory policies, including the 2004 constitutional amendment defining marriage as between ‘one man and one woman.’”
As hard as the feedback was, it was meaningful and honest, and it helped BRO leadership more deeply recognize that the organization had a problem it needed to address.
With buy-in on the what and why, the organization began to assess the scope and scale of the issue and identify areas of growth. It was at this point that they put a training plan in place to more directly address real-time training needs and aligne staff and board with basic terms, language and understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion. That created a shared foundation from which to move forward.
“Even with this ‘prework,’” Jeana said, “not everyone had the same vision of what the end result will look like or where the ‘end’ is. The process is like a series of waves.”
In Jeana’s example, the bottom of the wave could be the need to increase staff diversity. But, she said, people shouldn’t cut corners to get to the “crest” by simply recruiting and hiring diverse staff, where nothing has changed but the diversity quotient. The old ways have to change, and the next trough will be trying to figure out why diverse hires are not retained and what are the barriers that are keeping the old ways in place.
Lessons learned about equipping the journey
Basic Rights Oregon’s vision was to transform the organization.
But along the way, Jeana, the board and staff quickly discovered that this work is more than that.
“Leaders need to recognize that this is not only about organizational transformation but individual transformation,” she said, “and then support people to take a personal journey as well as an organizational one.”
Some things that helped BRO navigate and balance personal and organizational needs included establishing principles and practices that went beyond the usual ground rules for group process and organizational planning:
Create a “brave” space, not just a safe space. This ground rule allowed people to step further into risk-taking.
If the organization is large enough, have a cross-program, cross-positional “Transformation Committee,” charged with being a place where people can bring questions, ideas, feedback and concerns.
Don’t lose sight of the environment in which we are operating. Recognize that our organizations and we as individuals are part of a larger system of inequality that is continually reinforced in our society into everything we do.
Explicitly identify the expectation that things will get emotional, and that’s OK. In dismantling systems, it can be really painful for people to become conscious of their own biases. This is not business as usual. You can’t continue to do the same things and except the same results.
This is long-term work, but without a way to measure progress and accountability, staff may feel that it’s a waste of time or just another exercise to “check the DEI box but doesn’t result in meaningful change.” Once shared goals are established, spend time collectively identifying a set of benchmarks to measure progress to your goals. A map of the journey can also help people see that their own priorities have a place on the journey, even if it’s farther off.
Examples of benchmarks Basic Rights Oregon established included having all staff and board go through training within a certain amount of time, committing paid staff time to the work, setting benchmarks for meetings with leaders of color, and creating supports for those meetings such as work plans and conversation guides.
At the same time, hold the process loosely enough so it develops as it needs to develop, while maintaining accountability and understanding of what progress looks like.
Be mindful of the leadership in the room, about how much space leaders take up, and be a role model. As a leader you have a dual role: You are managing your own emotions and find your own counselors outside the room.
Include support for staff, such as coaching and space for people of color to be together and for your white staff to do the work they need to do separately.
If you are working with both staff and board, keep in mind that the staff are together every day, working out issues and may outpace the board’s ability to do the same.
I asked Jeana if there was anything she would do differently now that she’s had this experience at Basic Rights Oregon.
“BRO had a typical policy that employees should bring concerns to their supervisors in the course of regular check-ins,” Jeana said. ”But because conversations about race can be so difficult, it would be good to establish a shared approach and specific policies to address concerns. One option that comes to mind is to bring on a mediator who builds trust across the team and can be called upon as conflict comes up.
“Personally, I would have liked to do more work early on to understand white supremacy and white privilege. Our process wasn’t inclusive enough about white people doing work to understand our history and ongoing role in upholding these systems. I recently listened to the ‘Scene on Radio’ podcast, which includes a series called ‘Seeing White.’ The series illuminated the work that white people need to do to understand the construct of whiteness.”
Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion
I wondered what it meant for Basic Rights Oregon to be committed to this work. Jeana shared that the commitment evolved over time.
“Early on we had a general idea that we had a responsibility as an organization to meet the needs of all queer and trans people in Oregon — including people of color,” she said. “As we did the work, the commitment became operationalized through investing in the leadership of people of color in our organization and in our programming, which meant how we allocated resources and how staff were supported to do their work. Commitment goes back to getting clear about what your values are — the commitment and values will be tested in the context in which we work: white supremacist culture.”
One example, Jeana said, would be turning down funding when funder values don’t align.
“For every donor or volunteer who didn’t understand, 10 other donors or volunteers stepped up,” she added. “So fears about losing funding are totally unfounded, in my experience. We had hard conversations with donors and funders and practiced with role plays. Again this is where humility comes in — knowing ahead of time you don’t have all the answers.”
I asked Jeana about surprises along the way.
“We had this rich experience internally, then we had to figure out how to operationalize our plans and discover how to work this in — it’s so important to figure out how people can see and feel it becoming real,” she said. “We had a process to build work plans. On every person’s work plan there was a place to ask, ‘What are your racial justice goals?’
“There were a lot of surprises along the lines of unexpected benefits of the process. The way in which it deepened relationships across teams. We had a very pleasant surprise in the way the work expanded the organization and opened BRO up to funding, opportunities for partnerships, volunteer activism/engagement.” For Jeana personally? “Because the process required difficult conversations, I surprised myself in my capacity for courage,” she said
I wondered if there was one thing Jeana wishes all nonprofit leaders knew as they step onto the DEI path?
She thought for a moment.
“This is the work — this isn’t a distraction from the work, or really even optional, particularly in this moment,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter what issue area, geography or constituency that your organization prioritizes. We had a realization that our view of what was possible, necessary or needed was so limited by our lack of organizational diversity. Just the way we thought about what was needed in the community was based on such limited information and was reflected in our policies. Our work then became so much richer.”
I’m so grateful to Jeana and to Basic Rights Oregon’s current co-directors, Nancy Haque and Amy Herzfeld-Copple, for allowing us to share BRO’s DEI journey!
Next time, I’ll share a conversation with consultant Cliff Jones, who has helped organizations establish strong DEI principles and practices for more than 30 years.
Meyer’s focus on equity over the past few years has brought a powerful intention to our grantmaking and opened the door for community-serving organizations and institutions across the state to build their own equity infrastructure. This has been especially evident in rural Oregon communities. To tell the story of where and how equity has emerged, and operates, in three rural Oregon counties, we sat down with Kelly Poe, director of community based services at Malheur Education Service District.
Education service districts across Oregon are designed to provide services and programs that meet the specific needs of their local school districts. Like school districts, their purpose is to assure that all students have the educational opportunities that will prepare them for success beyond high school. Malheur Education Service District defines its work as a crucial ingredient across the entire education continuum, from birth to college and/or career.
Meyer:
Tell us about yourself and your work at Malheur Education Service District.
Kelly Poe:
I’m the director of community based services, and I serve Malheur, Baker and Wallowa counties. The position was created when the Commission on Children and Families went away, and the education service district chose to fully embrace the zero to 20 continuum of education. My job was to focus on those things outside K-12 walls. The Early Learning Division was formed (in the Oregon Department of Education), and they created hubs and regional hubs.
The Early Learning Division also required us to provide eight hours of structural racism training. I knew it was coming about a year before it actually was a requirement. I also knew that every time I talked about equity to our community advisory groups, cradle-to-career partners or one of the three counties, I could feel the tension in the room. People stiffened up and got ready to defend themselves.
Because it is a much easier conversation talking about equality, rather than equity, I knew it was going to be a challenging conversation. We could require people to attend an eight-hour structural racism training and they would, but behaviors and attitudes would not necessarily change.
Meyer:
Why do you think equality is an easier conversation and equity is a hard conversation?
Kelly Poe:
People don’t understand what equity is right off, and when you say equity, they immediately think you’re saying equality. And they treat everybody the same, because they love everybody. I have to say that in all three of my counties, I have not found a single person that sets out in their day to do bad things. Or to harm people. Or to plan to do disservice to families. They don’t.
I’ve met only really good people who want to do good work. And I am that person, too. I am that person who wakes up every day and sets out to do good work but realized, part way down the road, that my good intent is actually doing harm, and the sooner I find out, the better for everyone. So I have that lens when I look at other people and I think: They intend to do good, so let’s get informed of what equity is.
Meyer:
How do you start an equity conversation?
Kelly Poe:
One of the things that we’ve been saying is, “equity begins where equality leaves off,” and that’s been a good opener for some of our conversations.
I heard Dr. Bill Grace speak at a Ford Family Foundation workshop. He creates a space where people relax their guard and can have authentic, genuine conversations. He calls it “gracious space.” And I knew that’s what we needed.
We needed somebody to come to our communities who used common language, who could get people to that place of having a conversation and not be defensive. I called Bill and said, “This is what’s going on, we’re going to have to do this training, and I don’t think we’re prepared. It’s not going to make a difference. I want to do something that’s going to make a difference.” I know we have huge disparities in our communities and three counties that are extremely different from one another. As much as you say eastern Oregon is different from Portland, Wallowa County is different from Malheur County, and Baker County is different from either of the other two. You can’t do the same thing in each one of the counties; it has to be different.
Through a technical assistance grant from Ford, we paid for Bill to help us develop our plan and facilitate focus groups and a three-county workshop. After we completed the focus groups, it was clear that a three-county workshop would not be successful, so we had three workshops.
Our focus groups defined “gracious space.” We also came to a common definition of equity. We talked about our values. About two months later, we picked up on those themes and did a community assessment, asking: “So where do you think you are, as a community, in advancing equity? Are you at a place where you really are just crossing the threshold of raising awareness? Or is your community aware but they’re not dissatisfied? Do we need to raise the dissatisfaction? Or are you at the place, community is aware, people are dissatisfied, and we want to take action?” We started in Wallowa County, then Baker, then Malheur. After we finished all three, we said, “Well, we have to make three plans. We can’t do one, three-county plan for anything.”
So, we have three plans. It took us nearly a year to raise the money. Meyer was first. (Meyer program officer) Sally Yee believed in us. She said, “This is the conversation that we need to have.”
Meyer:
Meyer invested in this work in August 2016. How is it going so far?
Kelly Poe:
We have a really great group in Malheur County that meets with Bill once a month either in-person or we all get together in a room and he Skypes in. There’s 18 of us, including elders, members of the faith community, education and social services. We have nonprofits, health care, mental health; it’s just across the spectrum.
In Baker and Wallowa counties, we’re creating leadership groups, and they want to go deep.
People are passionate about this, but then when the work begins, it gets hard. One of the first things that Bill does is walk us through an exercise that helps us identify our own core values, and then we find common group values. So each county has a list of core, common values, and we can hold each other accountable to those. Love and family are core values that are in all three counties. Integrity and community, too. They’re all good values, but to be able to hold each other accountable, it requires us to go deep. It requires you to make this work meaningful.
Meyer:
What evidence are you seeing that work is taking shape in communities?
Kelly Poe:
They’re taking it in, and they are stepping up, but the reality of it is that some conversations are really challenging. Each community has a little bit different feel to it; there are three separate answers.
In Wallowa County, the workshops are complete and received really positive feedback. Conversations have ranged from creating a sense of belonging to the increasing fear of the newest members of the community. Our work with values-based leadership has been occuring at the same time as other diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) trainings through the Northeast Oregon Economic Development District, so the local effort is on multiple fronts.
In Baker County, there’s a small group of people, about 15-20, who really caught on to values-based leadership as a tool in their own organizations. They are actively working toward embedding the values conversation into a plan to move work forward. They’ve created a monthly meeting that explores the book “Sharing the Rock: Shaping Our Future through Leadership for the Common Good” and creates a support network for sharing challenges and progress on how each participant, and organization they represent, is advancing equity. This group has great leadership and diversity. They’ve also done a deep dive into the history of Baker County, which is very complex. They’re continuing to build a deeper understanding of the work, what they believe and what their organizations can do collectively in preparation for moving forward larger community impact.
In Malheur County, we really felt the urgency, and we were ready to take action quickly, but we still focused on the need for relationship building. We initially intended to do a project, but because there is so much work to do, we couldn’t agree on one. Instead, we decided to create a movement, and that’s what the proclamation is: The Malheur County Compact for Advancing Equity is an effort to get institutions on board for proclaiming the need to advance equity throughout the whole community. Each of the organizations that signed the compact designated someone to attend and participate in the monthly, three-hour equity team meetings.
Another example of how the work is taking shape is a gathering of equity team members and community members focused on the topic of safety concerns for the refugees arriving in the Ontario area. This group, now known as Newcomers Support Committee, had no idea what they needed to do or how they were going to do it at first, but through their collaborative effort to authentically engage community, they developed a strategy, wrote a concept and submitted a proposal to the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative for consideration. Right now, we’re planning our second equity summit, scheduled for Nov. 1, 2018, and we hope it will be an opportunity for local institutions to “raise the bar” by showcasing their equity work.
In each community, the pace is appropriate, and in each situation, the community is working together to create a sense of belonging. I know people are going to say, “Oh, we’re not like them.” And they’re right. But this is just an example of something that could happen, and it only happened because local people drove it.
Meyer:
How do you think this will impact your work and the communities you serve?
Kelly Poe:
The commonality across all three counties is our ultimate goal of people who live in the community feeling like they belong and are welcome. We acknowledge now there are people in our community who don’t feel welcome, so knowing that, how do we create a community where there is a sense of belonging? In Malheur County, they call it “hope”; everyone should have a sense of hope. In every community, the end game is that everyone feels like they belong.
The Newcomers Support Committee learned this when they discovered there are refugees who arrive here and never feel like they are a part of the community. They’re required to stay one year, but after that, they leave. So how do we create a community that makes them want to stay? It’s huge for a community to say, “We want you to stay. You add to the fabric of our community; your culture makes us better.” It’s a shift in all three counties to say, “You think differently than I do and you believe differently than I do, and we need you to be here. Our differences make our community better.” That’s what we’re hoping to accomplish.
Meyer:
Very well said, Kelly. Thank you for your time!
*While listening to Kelly describe the equity journey of Malheur, Baker and Wallowa counties, I was struck by the importance of communities to firmly establish their core beliefs and common values. As Meyer staff travel around the state, we often hear, “We’re different than them. That won’t work here.” And they’re right; of course communities are different. In our interview with Kelly, she artfully described exactly how different seemingly similar communities can actually be. But that’s not the reason something, equity in this case, might work in one community and not the other. The real barrier is a community’s lack of clarity — or identity — around the subject matter. If you’ve never ventured into the conversation, and you look at what someone else has accomplished, it’s understandable that your first response might be, “We’re different than them.”
But here’s the real difference between communities that have embraced equity and those that haven’t: When a community establishes its equity identity (i.e., common language, values, beliefs, accountability structures and protocols), they’re free to explore what other organizations and communities have done to advance equity and say, “That might not be exactly what we need, but it looks interesting and we might be able to modify it so we can accomplish our own goals.”
Once you’ve established the key foundational elements of your equity identity, you can then bring in new partners and new ideas and not relinquish or sacrifice any of what makes you, your organization or your community unique in the process. Your identity stays intact, and as Kelly suggests, new relationships and new information simply add to the “fabric of the community.”
We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to talk about Drupal 8, the tool we used to build this website. What on earth is a tech article doing on Meyer's site? Well, we believe in openness and knowledge sharing, including on the tech side.
When we built our last Drupal site, we shared the full recipe of all the modules and themes we used, and it was quite popular. We planned to do this again with this site, but developing on the Drupal 8 bleeding edge meant using early solutions rather than the best ones, making that less useful or even misleading. We still want to share knowledge, and I decided to focus on an oft neglected area, namely admin modules. Here are some useful modules that site owners and maintainers love having but all too often don't get.
This module automatically generates URL/path aliases for content (nodes, taxonomy terms, users). It builds the URL from the title so that you don't have to manually type it, including leaving out noise words such as and and the (configurable). It also follows rules you set up that help you make URLs more descriptive, for example automatically adding the /news/ part of this article's URL. You can see how closely this page's URL aligns with this article's title. This allows you to have URL aliases such as /news/amazing-news instead of ugly ones such as /node/123, and it removes hassle and human error from other approaches. A usable site really can't do without this module, and this one is usually included in new sites.
The image shows an example taken from the edit screen of this article.
This module lets you automatically provide structured metadata, aka "meta tags," about a website, which helps with SEO. It also helps you to control how shared content appears on social media (e.g. by using Open Graph Protocol for Facebook and Twitter Cards for Twitter) by letting you configure how your content should be interpreted by those services, including drilling down by content type if needed. This module is a tad cumbersome because of all it lets you do and it could use some better default values, but it is vital if you care about search engine ranking and social media control and therefore it is regularly included in new sites.
The image shows an example of the Metatag options for Twitter as associated with a particular content type, namely news articles.
I've yet to receive a site or be involved in a vendor-built site that was delivered with a module like this one installed and that baffles me. It lets you add redirects for incorrect URLs (e.g. I've added a redirect to fix issues caused by a newsletter URL typo) and for an aliased URL (e.g. redirect common URL guesses/mistakes to the intended page). It removes case errors, tracks redirect usage and errors, helps you easily fix 404 errors and helps in a number of other ways with reducing URL noise, which in turn helps with SEO, efficiency, errors and more. Alternatives to this module usually require risky .htaccesss changes or, in our case, cumbersome settings file changes. This is faster, is easier to maintain, gives you some awesome power and flexibility, has plenty of useful reporting and is doing so much for you out of the box that I think it is a must have, particularly since it is also the D8 successor to the awesome Global Redirect module.
This module shows site maintainers the differences between revisions in their content revision history for any given piece of content (assuming a content type where you have revisions turned on). At the time of writing, this module was still in RC status, but it is backend only, works very well out of the box and is also configurable.
The image shows an example of revision differences for this article being highlighted.
Those of you who have been patiently waiting for a D8 version, then this is the replacement you're looking for. This module improves the default Drupal administration menu at the top of your site by transforming it into a mouse-over drop-down menu, meaning much faster access to all administration pages. No more multiple clicks and page loads to get to some admin screens. It's really a must-have for modern sites. Note: Many folks use theAdminimal Theme to improve the overall administrative backend (we do), and if you do too, then you'll also need the Adminimal Admin Toolbar module to fix a number of CSS issues.
The image shows an example of menu mouse-over going three levels down. Note that the blue color is ours, not the module's (indicates production, see more about the Environment Indicator module below).
I've only just added this module to our site, and it was love at first sight for our Communicorns. Site maintainers are tired of the default method of adding links from a WYSIWYG editor, namely: open another tab, find that page, copy the URL, come back into their editor sesion and paste the URL, while also remembering to remove the domain part of the URL to ensure it's a relative link. It would be so much easier if there was a friendly interface with an autocomplete field to help you find links to content on your site — be it for a page, a file or even an image — and which saves relative links automatically. That's what this module does and why site owners love it.
The image shows an example of the Linkit popup where typing the word Housing has revealed loads of matching pages, images and files.
Site builders are probably more familiar with Node Clone, but the old module is currently either dead or dormant. This module was added by a team that had to rewrite it for their own D8 needs and decided to freely share their work. Thanks folks! It allows you to clone existing content, even complex content. I could clone one of our involved Portfolio pages as easily as an article. Site maintainers always want this kind of functionality, but strangely they rarely get it. And why not? They are plug and play and usually have little or no configuration. Add it and it just works.
The image shows an example of us cloning this article where you can see that all fields are being cloned.
This module simplifies the ever-so-long modules page with vertical tabs and improves the search features on that page. It also adds useful search capability to the available updates page and the permissions page. This is only for site developers, but it still gives you enough UX improvement to always have it.
The image shows an example from the modules page, where you can see how the list is compressed, the search filter and options for the search. For more examples visit the Module Filter page.
This is a terrific module for anyone with a professional site tech workflow that includes the usual development, test and live versions of your site. Have you ever accidentally changed your live site instead of your test one or some similar mishap? It's easy to do. Our web host provides dev, test and live sites automatically, but I still want to work locally so I now have four environments to get confused between. The problem I had before was having several browser tabs open for each site as I worked on a problem, and they all looked identical and had identical favicons on the browser tabs. It was a struggle to find the tab I wanted, and then mistakes were easy to make. This module helps with cutting that down by giving you some visual cues for logged in admins about which version of your site you're on. Each environment has a different colored admin menu bar and a site name (I imaginatively named mine local, Development, Test and Live). Additionally it sets an optional overlay over the favicon in your browser tab with the first letter of whatever you named your environment and the color you specified for that environment. This helps you find the right tab quicker because when I look at my tabs I can see at a glance which environment that tab is for. Further I have a grey version of our favicon set for our admin theme so I can differentiate frontend pages from backend ones in addition to the above. This module is super helpful to devs and admins alike, really to anyone with access to more than one environment.
The image shows how my four environments are given different colors and how they appear on tabs, including having an admin favicon, plus the ability to switch between environments that reinforces the color choices (I chose not to include my localhost site as it only affects me).
At the time of writing, this module was still in beta, but it's admin only and I have had few problems with it. I also love it to bits, and so do our Communicorns. It speeds up getting to Drupal admin screens even more than the Admin Toolbar moduleby letting you navigate between admin screens without using a mouse. You type alt and d and a popup appears with a search field, then you start typing and an autocompleter will show you all the available admin screens that match your text. You can then use arrow keys to navigate to the desired option and press enter to select it. The module allows you to include nonadmin menus too, but so far I haven't needed that. You can watch a short demo video of the Drupal 7 version of the module if you'd like to see it in action.
The image shows an example of the popup where I've typed "add co," and Coffee has shown me all the admin options that match.
Sometimes finding files and images already uploaded to the site is a real pain. Frustrated site owners end up uploading the same image multiple times. This module lets you browse and select from your existing files using a friendly, attractive, mobile-ready interface. You can also upload new files. It makes the experience of finding a file/image so much better.
The image shows the file browser with options to restrict to files that include the word housing sorted by name.
That's it. Let me know of any notable omissions or if you have thoughts about any of the above modules.
Members of Meyer’s Housing Opportunities team recently sat down with Portland filmmaker Cornelius Swart, who has directed and narrated two documentaries about the drastic housing changes Portland has undergone over the past two decades. Swart’s latest film, Priced Out, offers context for the cycle of blight, gentrification and revitalization that has especially hit African American neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland.
Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Lauren Waudé:
What would you want someone who’s new to Portland, moving into North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods, to know about housing here?
Cornelius Swart:
I think knowing the history is probably the most important thing. I think if people had a sense of the history, had a sense of the pain, the root shock, the feeling of invisibility that many residents feel, I believe that they would interact with people differently.
What we most consistently hear from folks who have lived in the neighborhood for a long time, is that as these communities changed, that sense of community has evaporated. It’s been replaced by maybe a big city mentality, in which no one interacts with anybody, or just outright hostility to their presence in the neighborhood. There’s a feeling of being invisible, and that feeling of invisibility can be hurtful.
Lauren Waudé:
That was one of most heartbreaking elements in that film, hearing Abriana Williams talk about how kids don’t want to play with her son, and how people don’t look at her. That was really a powerful moment to see.
Theresa Deibele:
It really was for me, too.
Lauren Waudé:
In the beginning of the film you introduce yourself as a gentrifier. Why? Is there power behind acknowledging that space?
Cornelius Swart:
Yeah, I think it’s just important to talk real, have real honest, just call a duck a duck, and not be afraid of what that means or how it could implicate you. I think ultimately, what kind of gentrifier I am will be up for the audience to determine at the end of the film.
I’m not a house flipper. I’m not a developer. I’m not an investor. But those distinctions are not clear to the audience at the beginning of the film.
Theresa Deibele:
So in your research and your interviews, how have you seen people navigate those distinctions? Where can people buy and feel like they aren’t gentrifying and displacing or is that impossible to do?
Cornelius Swart:
Right. Yeah, I mean, I would say that when we talk to people in Albina, black folks especially, we’ve never talked to anybody who said, “People shouldn’t buy houses.” Nor did we ever talk to anybody who said, “People shouldn’t sell their house.”
I think where it comes to is how the individual treats other people once they’re there. How they engage with community organizations, institutions, businesses and other residents. Are you coming into the neighborhood to be a part of the neighborhood, or are you here for some other purpose? Investing, flipping.
Are you here and talking with your neighbors even though they may look, act, or seem different than you? Where are your expectations at? People need to…I mean, do you have suburban expectations, like, “Don’t park in front of my house!” “Turn your music down after seven o’clock at night!” “Your lawn should look like my lawn!” I think that’s really where people are having a problem.
It’s really not about the presence of white people on my block. I haven’t heard that one, as much as, “These particular people are treating me this way.” That’s where the problem comes in. It’s being motivated by the market, but the pain that people talk to us about is really, “You came in and now you’re treating me like this.”
Lauren Waudé:
Meyer supports organizations that have implemented housing preference policy that you mentioned in the film. That’s a preference for people who have roots in North and Northeast Portland to return there. How important do you think it is to invest in community as well as housing itself? Can you have one without the other?
Cornelius Swart:
So what I’ve heard about the housing preference is, it’s been mixed. Optimism and cynicism alike.
I’ve heard people say, “Well, they haven’t put enough money into it,” or, “It hasn’t really impacted anybody.” There are other people who, like Steven Green, who’s quoted in the film, say, “It’s not about where people live, it’s about how they’re doing wherever they live.” So there’s certainly people who have said goodbye to the neighborhoods, so to speak. Not Steven, but I’ve talked to other people who are like, “It’s never going to be the same.” That’s either a bad thing, or it’s fine.
I do think it’s important to invest in affordable subsidized housing so people have a choice, whether collectively, folks choose to come back, or want to, whatever, it’s up to them. Housing choice is what it’s all about, and that’s about making the mixed income communities a priority. But housing choice is language that was used a lot while doing the first film, NorthEast Passage, and now it’s kind of disappeared from city discourse, during the second filming over the last ten, fifteen years. We just don’t hear it anymore.
Theresa Deibele:
So it feels pretty clear that Nikki Williams in the movie, the film, feels differently about gentrification between NorthEast Passage and Priced Out. How did you find audiences react differently in that period?
Cornelius Swart:
When the first film came out in 2002, everyone knew Albina was a black community, it was not a surprise. Everyone always gets behind Nikki, right? They can always relate. The first film is about trying to improve a neighborhood that is dangerous and not healthy for anyone. Nikki is fighting for that.
I think the early reactions I’m seeing to Priced Out have been from people who didn’t know anything about the history, didn’t make the connection between the history of displacement in the neighborhood, and their presence in the neighborhood today.
So I think people are more upset, they’re feeling more moved by the history, as opposed to, the first time people were like, “Oh yeah Nikki, she’s just really nails it. She’s just really strong, and I appreciate her struggle.” Now people who are watching the film see themselves in the story. And they’re having, different reactions, you know: guilt, upset, frustration, anger. Now, it’s like, “It’s not over there anymore, it’s implicating me and I don’t know what to do.”
So the biggest thing is people always say, “What can I do?” The first time, with NorthEast Passage, that wasn’t an issue, it was more like, “Oh, yeah. I hope the changes keep happening.”
Theresa Deibele:
Many documentarians, my sense is, they choose subjects outside of their own time, or place, or experience, and yet in this story, North/Northeast gentrification also affected you as a person living in the neighborhood, albeit in different ways than your African American neighbors. So what changes do you experience reporting and documenting the issue and being a part of the community at the same time?
Cornelius Swart:
It has made me more aware. I don’t know if I had forgotten, but I’m more aware of my interactions with folks now. I go out of my way to greet people and just talk with people a little bit more, just shoot the breeze with folks. I’m excited about running into a stranger now.
I do feel a greater sense of joy, interacting with my neighbors, when I’m like, “Let’s just try to put a smile on someone’s face today.” So that’s been a nice part.
Lauren Waudé:
So speaking of neighborhoods, I was really surprised at what a strong role that neighborhood associations had played in the past with like stopping development. So what role do you see them having as we’re moving forward, or what do you think they could do as we look at development in the future?
Cornelius Swart:
I think neighborhood associations are a great tool, especially when they’re engaged on community organizing, and community building levels. At the land use level, and the reason why they exist is really for land use, like local home rule, or home influence, on land use stuff. That’s a more complicated thing and I think that’s where reform helps, and I know the city is struggling with that.
I would love to see neighborhood associations having, not a grading system, but you could look at an association and say, “Okay, this is the membership in a neighborhood that’s seventy percent renters, and a hundred percent of the board are homeowners.”
I always thought that when a neighborhood association goes to the city council and says, “This is what we want, this is what the community wants,” the council should be able to say, “Okay, but you’re all homeowners, representing a majority renter community. So I understand where your point of view is coming from, I appreciate it and I’m going to take it into consideration.” Rather than, at times, like in the 90’s, the government would jump up and say : “Oh, the community has spoken.”
As a reporter, when I ran a community newspaper, to reporters, I would always say, “Don’t just go off of what the neighborhood association says. Go to the schools, go to the churches, and canvas those communities, too.” Because often the churches and the schools have a broader representation of who’s actually in the neighborhood.
Lauren Waudé:
At what point do you think development becomes displacement? I mean, it might not become a point, but what could developers do to preserve the communities that they build in?
Cornelius Swart:
It depends on the developer, and the scale of development.
You obviously have the inclusionary zoning, a statute now that, according to Joe Cartwright, has killed off all permits for a certain class of buildings entirely. But I think the impulse is correct. Let developers do what they do in the marketplace, but have a systematized carve-out for folks who are not their customers so that the market can function in some way, and some social benefit can be transferred from market activity towards people who are not included in that activity.
In housing, new housing always goes to the wealthiest person it can go to. That’s just the way the market functions. I think you see a lot of conversation about, “Why can’t developers build for working class people? What’s wrong?” Traditionally, new housing was subsidized after WWII, through freeways, 30-year mortgages. It was made possible by industrial suburban tract house building techniques. And of course, it was exclusively for white folks.
The market does not produce housing for working class people unless the market is subsidized, or regulations favor it. So you do need to create a market incentive, in order to reach someone other than whoever’s going to create the biggest profit margin. But I am very hopeful on things like Land Trust. I don’t think there’s enough being done on Land Trust. I’m glad to see there’s conversation around affordable, subsidized, commercial homes.
Just getting rid of Measure 50 alone might adjust the marketplace organically. I don’t know why the libertarians and the progressives can’t get together and be like, “We both don’t like this policy.”
One group doesn’t like it because it distorts the marketplace, the other doesn’t like it because it creates all these social and equity problems. Why can’t they just agree to reset, the way opponents came together against the Columbia River crossing? The transit people didn’t like it because it was too much freeway, and the freeway people didn’t like it because there was too much transit. So they were able to join in their hate.
I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same thing with Measure 50.
Lauren Waudé:
One of the most moving moments was seeing all the names on the screen of people who had been displaced. Where did that come from? What’s the source material for those names?
Cornelius Swart:
Oh those came from the city department, the housing bureau. They had all the names.
Lauren Waudé:
Why was that important?
Cornelius Swart:
So that was a dramatic moment that I envisioned off of seeing another film which was called, The Fog of War, in which they show the names of the equivalent cities that would have been destroyed if the American firebombing campaign in Japan had been done on the United States rather than Japan. There’s like fifteen seconds where it goes, “Cleveland, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, New York, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Santa Fe, Albuquerque” — it’s just a frightening, horrifying — you’re like, “Oh, I get it now. The scale.”
I wanted to create that kind of a sense of seeing the scale, rather than just talking about the scale. I was like, “How do you make that connection? Visually.”
Theresa Deibele:
For me, it wasn’t just scale, it was people, and the families behind it.
Cornelius Swart:
Exactly.
Lauren Waudé:
Are there other screening opportunities in the works in Portland at the moment?
Cornelius Swart:
At this point, now that we’ve premiered, our part is to recoup cost, because production is expensive, even though everyone’s pretty much a volunteer, or volunteering. So we’re trying to get a theatrical screening, because we don’t receive any of the ticket sales from the festival showings. It’s being shown around the country, in Grand Rapids, Mich., Tulsa, Okla., Pittsburgh, Penn.
And in January and February, there are free community level screenings with Q&As planned in North Portland, Southeast Portland and Beaverton.
Lauren Waudé:
Thank you, Cornelius.
Get your tickets to local screenings of Priced Out, here. And stream Swart’s first film, NorthEast Passage, here.
Audiences packed the McMenamins’ Kennedy School theater in Northeast Portland on Dec. 12 and took part in a heated Q&A after the screening. "We had a great discussion," Swart said. "I start the film saying, ‘I’m a gentrifier.’ Even though this is a film a
The cost of creating affordable housing continues to be a hot topic across the state. Caught between an urgent need to bring tens-of-thousands more permanently affordable units online and a relative trickle of public resources to make affordability possible, developers find themselves in the crosshairs of critics who, understandably, insist that we stretch every public dollar as far as possible.
This month, Meyer will convene more than 150 leaders and experts in real estate development, finance, construction, design and policy to explore genuine opportunities to deliver more housing for less.
The Cost Efficiency Summit will build on Meyer’s past engagement with these issues. In 2014 we convened a group of experts on real estate development, construction, design and finance, and issued a report summarizing more than a year of detailed explorations of the factors driving the cost of affordable housing development and possible ways to bring those costs down.
The report illustrates that many cost-related challenges are out of our hands. The price of land, the shortage of skilled labor, and the complexity of publicly funded projects set some parameters no one can ignore or work around. At the same time, there are some decisions that could be made differently, so long as we don’t lose sight of other important goals such as long-term durability, lifecycle costs and help for tenants with low incomes or special needs.
The discussion is not a simple one, but we hope to help create a larger shared framework to evaluate these tradeoffs. The summit is built around a series of wide-ranging but grounded conversations, focused on specific problem-solving strategies for getting the most out of our collective investment in affordable housing. We also look forward to sharing the progress so far (and lessons learned) from five pilot projects that Meyer has supported to test new approaches to lowering costs.
We will also share what we learn from this Cost Efficiency Summit later this year. The afternoon plenary session on Friday, January 19 event will be streamed live via Facebook (feel free to follow us, too!) and will be available afterward for viewing there.
Meyer’s Healthy Environment portfolio endeavours to center equity as a catalyst in philanthropy to address environmental disparities in Oregon and support work that directly benefits under-resourced and historically marginalized populations in rural and urban communities.
Recently, Inside Philanthropy examined the portfolio's approach to grantmaking and the environment in coverage of Meyer's 2017 Portfolio Grant Awards:
The foundation recently announced its second round of grants since launching a new Healthy Environment portfolio, which places emphasis on “underresourced and historically marginalized populations in rural and urban communities” in its funding for the state’s environment.
Before the new program was unveiled, the foundation was giving a lot to rivers and watersheds, and that’s still a priority. A lot of key Northwest green groups are still on the docket. But Meyer points out that in the 2017 round of green grants—totaling $3.9 million—every grantee has a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, with a half-dozen asking the foundation for training and support in developing them.
Read Inside Philanthropy’s full exploration of Meyer’s Healthy Environment portfolio’s approach to grantmaking and the environment here.
