KeyBank’s Key4Women program, along with Microenterprise Services of Oregon and the Portland Thorns Football Club have announced a collaborative business pitch contest for women-owned businesses in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

The competition will feature opportunities for startups and existing businesses, with cash awards totaling $50,000. The winner will receive a grand prize of $20,000.

To be eligible for the pitch contest, businesses must be 51% woman-owned, controlled, operated, and managed. Contestants must also have headquarters in Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Columbia, Hood River, Yamhill, or Marion County, —or Clark County in Oregon or Cowlitz or Skamania County in Washington. Applicants can be entrepreneurs with an idea for a new business, or an existing business as long as annual sales are less than $3 million.

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Microenterprise services like MESO typically offer small-scale loans to businesses in the early stages of growth, combined with business advising to give the business the best chance to succeed. In addition to the competition, MESO advisors are also offering free application workshops on Tuesday and again on Aug. 2, and Aug. 5 to any qualifying business candidates.

Business mentoring through MESO will also be available to all applicants after the contest.

“We are delighted to join forces with Key4Women for this inspiring pitch contest. It serves as a platform to connect with an extensive network of women-owned businesses and enterprising individuals in Oregon and SW Washington,” Cobi Lewis, MESO CEO said in a press release . “Our mission extends beyond providing financial resources for the growth of the contest winner’s business; we are committed to offering comprehensive support as they navigate their journey forward. We firmly believe that when women-owned businesses thrive, they become catalysts for job creation and become integral players in fostering robust local economic growth.”

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“Women business owners and leaders positively impact our economy and communities in powerful ways every day,” Rachael Sampson, national director, Key4Women said in the press release. “Through this pitch contest we look forward to offering two critical supports women-owned businesses often struggle to find or ask for: mentorship and capital.”

Applications are available at https://www.mesopdx.org/key4women. They are due by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time Aug. 31.

The host representatives will select 10 finalists on Sept. 18. Finalists will present a four-minute pitch and field questions for six-minutes to a panel of five judges at a live event on Nov. 16 at Providence Park in Portland. Winners will be announced the following day.

Criteria used to determine winners will include the quality of the presentation, clarity of business vision and mission, economic impact of the idea and the soundness of value proposition. Existing business applicants must pitch a new product or service that expands their current business.

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According to the organization, the projects selected promote cultural tourism and environmental sustainability and accessibility for people with disabilities.

It’s the largest amount of grant money Visit Central Oregon has ever had to distribute,  CEO Julia Theisen says. Despite shelter-in-place orders and business closures, tourists flocked to Bend, Redmond, Sisters, and La Pine between 2020 and 2022. According to hotel tax data gathered by the Central Oregon Visitors Association, the region generated 50% more transient room tax during the 2020-2021 cycle than the year prior to the pandemic and grew another 14% during the 2021-2022 cycle.

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Monthly numbers suggest tourism in the area will be slightly down this year compared to last year, but still above the 2019 average.

Theisen says the Future Fund was much larger than she and her colleagues anticipated, and gave the organization a unique opportunity to make a big investment in projects to improve the region’s future for tourists as well as residents of the area.

“We generated revenue through the pandemic by people coming to Central Oregon and staying in vacation rentals throughout the year when they were homeschooling and working from home,” says Theisen. She notes that Visit Central Oregon was not able to promote tourism in the region during the early part of the pandemic, which also accounted for the bump in funding.  

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“We were not able to do a lot of our traditional programming, so we reserved quite a bit of money from that time period when the pandemic was at its worst. Now we’re able to reallocate those funds into the Future Fund,” she adds.

One of the fund’s recipients was Oregon Adaptive Sports in Bend, which was granted $67,475 for its Moving Mountains Program to enhance opportunities for residents and visitors with disabilities to access Central Oregon’s outdoor recreation opportunities. Sisters-based Sisters Trails Alliance will receive 37,152 to modify the Whychus Creek Overlook with two 10-foot viewing sections able to be accessed by visitors in wheelchairs, who could previously only stare up at the overlook’s walls.

Theisen says making the region more accessible to tourists with disabilities was a key pillar in deciding which projects to select, and will be an important part of Visit Central Oregon’s mission moving forward. She pointed to a 2022 literature review by accessible travel website Travability, which valued the disabled tourism market at $10.8 billion, and suggested accessible tourism was the fastest-growing tourist market.

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“Not that our organization is only about making money, but it’s a big piece of business,” says Theisen. “You could potentially lose a huge number of people when you’re not making your destination accessible to people with disabilities. It’s also just about being welcoming to people and making people feel like they can come to the region.”

Theisen says the grant piece is just one small component of her organization’s efforts to make central Oregon a more accessible destination. She hasn’t included accessibility in her marketing materials just yet — Theisen says more work needs to be done on the issue — but says her organization plans to partner with Wheel the World, a disability travel website, to conduct a needs assessment next year to identify areas where more accessibility work should be done by the organization.

Theisen isn’t the only one with disability travel on her radar. Eight Oregon Coast destination management organizations were granted a total of $201,240 through Travel Oregon’s 2022 Capacity and Small Project Grants to partner with Wheel the World to conduct similar assessments.  

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Theisen says this year’s large amount of Transient Lodging Tax funds is something of an aberration, but that these projects will bolster the region for greater success in the future.

“At this stage we’re not going around and saying, ‘hey, we’re welcoming people from all over to this super accessible region,’ we’re more on the ground level, saying, ‘how do we fare as a region in terms of accessibility and what potential projects that come out of this assessment could we support?” says Theisen.

“My hope is that if we do that project with Wheel the World it could potentially steer some of the projects coming to the Future Fund around accessibility, because we’re identifying a need.”

Other projects funded by the 2023 Future Fund include:

• The Bend Parks and Recreation District will receive $100,000 to improve access along a busy stretch of the Deschutes River;
• The Central Oregon Trail Alliance will receive $60,000 to improve signage and trip planning information on trails in the area;
• The Deschutes Soil and Water Conservation District, along with nine community partners, will receive $95,000 for Got Stars Central Oregon, a community-wide initiative to showcase the importance of dark skies and astrotourism;
• Discover Your Forest will receive $77,375 to enhance the Skull Hollow Trail Head in the Crooked River Grassland;
• The High Desert Museum will receive $50,000 for its Changing Exhibits Initiative to bring new experiences to the museum;
• The Maupin Area Chamber Endowment will receive $60,000 to improve the Deschutes River Athletic Complex;
• Oregon Equestrian Trails will receive $66,083 to install steel corrals at Sheep Springs Horse Camp;
• Sunriver Owners Association will receive $74,148 to provide 25 new signs throughout the community;
• The Tower Theatre will receive $49,140 to improve audio amplification in the venue;
• The Warm Springs Community Action Team will receive $100,00 for the Warm Springs Commissary, a visitor destination and business incubator for 40 businesses in the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.

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At the end of January, Shannon Evers celebrated her one-year anniversary as CEO of the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington.

Originally from California, Evers attended college in Eugene, where she studied business administration with a focus on sports marketing and management: “I’m one of those Bay Area transplants, but I’m an Oregon Duck.” Evers has spent much of her adult career working with the Girl Scouts. Most recently, she served as CEO of the Girl Scout council in Oklahoma City for nine years; before that she worked for the Girl Scouts of Western Washington as the chief fund development officer and for the Girl Scouts Columbia River Council.

January 2022 was not an easy moment to take the helm of any organization, let alone one driven by in-person meetings and camps — and funded by cookie sales, which traditionally happened at grocery stores. But a survey conducted in early 2023 found members and caregivers are happy with the direction Evers’ council has taken, with 73% of caregivers saying their child wants to stay in the organization, 62% saying the Girl Scouts provided “an important sense of normalcy during the pandemic” and 67% saying it helped them feel less isolated and lonely. Members themselves report the organization has helped them have positive values, with 95% saying they’re more likely to try something new at school as a result of Girl Scouts.

Still, the organization has struggled with the longer-term effects of COVID isolation, as well as a funding model Evers bluntly describes as an unfair one. Just as Girl Scouts across the country were getting ready to set up virtual and in-person cookie sales, Evers talked to Oregon Business about how the organization has fared through the pandemic and what’s next.

This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

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How has your first year been?

Starting a new job in the middle of a global pandemic really requires you to be creative and innovative and open to trying new things. My very first meeting was with a group of girls from all throughout the state. We got on a Zoom call and asked a lot of questions; they gave me incredible advice for the year ahead. And that has grounded me for dealing with incredibly difficult challenges that are not only facing Girl Scouts but facing a global market: We’ve got inflation, we’ve got supply-chain issues, hiring people and retaining staff is challenging, and Girl Scouts is facing all of those same challenges that businesses are facing as well.

We’re starting to recover as an organization off of COVID. We’re seeing great results from our girls: A lot of girls are getting a lot out of Girl Scouting. But there’s so much more need now than there has been.

When you say that you’re, as an organization, starting to recover from COVID, what does that mean? How did COVID impact the Girl Scouts?

We had a pretty significant decline in our membership numbers with COVID, just because girls weren’t able to meet in person. And our volunteers were really scrunched for time and overwhelmed. We had a lot of people just leave the organization, and that has impacted us a lot.

I’d also say that a lot of people don’t realize, but a lot of our revenue is dependent on the Girl Scout cookie-sale program, which is the largest girl-led business in the world. It brings in about 70% of our revenue each year. And without as many girls selling, we sold a lot fewer cookies. We were thankful at the height of COVID to get federal-relief dollars. But now that those things are over, we still don’t have as many girls selling cookies. I don’t have as many volunteers helping us. Our fundraising is going OK, but it could be stronger. So it’s really just starting to get focused on the basics of recruiting adult volunteers, encouraging girls to participate in high-quality programs, and encouraging our funders to reach deeper into their pockets and help us as we recover to get stronger. Those are the big impacts that we’ve seen across the organization.

I think when a lot of people think of scouting, they think of things that are in person; they think of camps and they think of service activities, and of outings and cookie sales. I know there were online cookie sales. As far as other activities go, how has the Girl Scouts pivoted in terms of keeping kids engaged?

When people couldn’t go anywhere, we leveraged a lot of online programming. Girls were able to connect to people across the country and in other foreign countries that they wouldn’t normally be able to connect with. As we’re recovering, we’re keeping what worked. We’re making it easier for our volunteers to volunteer with us by offering a lot more online trainings.

There’s a huge education gap that girls are facing. The social skills that they used to have at certain ages aren’t there like they used to be, because they’ve lost out on almost three years of engaging with other people personally, especially at the younger ages. During our summer camp programs, we’ve really tried to increase our focus and attention on giving girls some of the basic interpersonal skills: How do you make a friend? How do you deal with conflict when conflict arises? How do you solve problems?

And you mentioned earlier that staffing and hiring has been a challenge. What are the particular challenges that you’ve seen and how have you addressed them?

Hiring talented people is a challenge for any business. Working for a nonprofit adds an extra layer because there’s an extra layer of financial responsibility. Being able to pay people a livable wage is challenging, especially when you consider that girls are selling cookies to pay our basic bills. We’re relying on 8-year-olds to pay the salaries of grown adults, which isn’t very fair. We’ve got to do a better job fundraising to help fill that gap. I’m working on that.

Our board has invested a lot in increasing our wages and in doing market-pay surveys so that we are providing a livable, competitive wage. We made a significant decision to do that this year with our budget. I’m so proud of the work that we do. It doesn’t get fixed overnight. Not very many people get to actually show up and work for an organization where they know when they wake up, and they turn on their computer or they’re interacting with somebody that day, they have the opportunity to change somebody’s life. We remind our staff of that. I think when we look at employee surveys, they’re showing up because they want to make a difference, and they are making a difference. And that feels really good. That feels better than a paycheck on many days.

Can you talk about how you’re diversifying your funding?

We’ve been pretty stagnant with fundraising over the last decade, and we’ve got a stable source of revenue, but we really are encouraging our organization to push it further so we can do more for girls in our state. We are launching a new program this summer called the Daisy Dash, which is going to be a 24-hour adventure race where girls and families and people who are not connected to Girl Scouts actually will participate in teams on it and use an app to do everything, from making a canoe out of cardboard and floating it on a body of water to serenading a group of strangers on the street with their favorite song, things that are very connected to our Girl Scout brand. We want to connect to a little bit of a younger audience, the Girl Scouts, because a lot of our donors are actually aging out. They’re getting older. We need to really engage the next generation of givers.

We’re also looking for all kinds of program partners. We really are looking for companies and foundations to connect with us to invest in the next generation of female leadership, and we’re looking to make partnerships with companies and organizations that are like-minded. So it’s a win-win. Investing in us is helping to create the workforce pipeline of the future. And so many businesses don’t have female representation at the table, especially when it comes to industries in the STEM fields. When people look at boardroom tables across the world, usually when there’s a woman at the table, she was a Girl Scout. We’re kind of leaning into that a little bit more to hopefully create more partnerships.

How did supply-chain issues affect the Girl Scouts?

Supply chain issues have actually affected the Girl Scout cookie sale. Last year we were challenged because we didn’t have enough cookies when we needed them. This year we started to see some challenges as well. So we’ve decided to delay our cookie sale by about a month to make sure that we had all the cookies on hand that we needed. Everything from the cost of flour and sugar to transportation is going up and that increases our costs. It’s hard to find drivers to deliver the cookies when we needed them. We’re hoping to mitigate some of that by delaying the sale a little bit. But I’m hoping that our community steps up and still, when they see the cookies, they buy them.

A Portland-based venture capital fund with a focus on accelerating Black-founded businesses has announced a significant, but unspecified, investment from the Oregon Community Foundation.

The Black Founders Matter Fund announced last week that it was due to receive an historic investment from OCF — one the fund’s press release describes the investment as the largest ever given to a Portland-based investment fund.

“The BFM Fund aligns so well with Oregon Community Foundation’s community-led approach,” said Lisa Mensah, President and CEO of Oregon Community Foundation. “Our investment in the BFM Fund brings diverse women to tables where decisions are being made and into leadership positions across Oregon to create transformative change that benefits us all.”

A spokesperson for OCF told Oregon Business the organization was unable to disclose the amount of money it has allocated to BFM, saying “We just don’t disclose amounts of this nature, generally.”

The announcement comes one month after Bank of America it would invest a “sizable portion” from its $1.25 billion commitment to advance racial equality and economic opportunity.

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Himalaya Rao-Potlapally, managing director of The BFM Fund, says OCF approached BFM because of the fund’s success in finding and developing brands from BIPOC entrepreneurs.

Current companies in the BFM Fund’s portfolio include footwear and apparel brand Saysh from track and field athlete Allyson Felix; Hued, a health care startup in founded in partnership with tennis star Serena Williams; and Glow Up Games, an all-women founded entertainment studio.

Rao-Potlapally says her organization has already laid out a pipeline of Black and brown founders across industries to OCF along 14 different industries within Oregon, with multiple founders across each vertical.

Even though she says the organization is already looking at founders to invest in, any founder from BIPOC community should feel free to reach out.

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“Even if we can’t invest, we have a network of other funders that we connect with,” Rao-Potlapally says.

According the press release accompanying the announcement, the funding is also expected to help BFM gain access to federal funding and contracts through Oregon’s Small Business Credit Initiative Program, worth $83.5 million.

The BFM Fund is currently led by a leadership team composed of women of color.

Last year, BFM underwent a rebranding following the ouster of founder Marceau Michel, who launched the Black Founders Matter brand in 2017, and the venture fund in 2019.

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Rao-Potlapally says that while the fund’s rebranding was recent, its mission and mode of operation remain the same.

“Our fund prioritizes Black and innovative businesses. This grant through OCF was to be able to focus specifically on Oregon-based entrepreneurs and focus on the Pacific Northwest, because in the Pacific Northwest, and particularly in Oregon, there’s like a huge underrepresentation of black and brown founders in the ecosystem and in the innovation space,” says Rao-Potlapally.

She adds that building the relationship between BFM and OCF has been the result of a three-year process of connecting, and seeing how the BFM fund could help achieve OCF’s goals of investing in more diverse business founders in Oregon.

“The OCF really wanted to help promote entrepreneurship across diverse founders, and they were looking for a vehicle to be able to do that. They realized ‘Hey, we don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. There’s an organization here that’s been on the ground doing this work and building up their careers and building up the firm, and demonstrated a track record of investing,” says Rao-Potlapally.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated from an earlier version.

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Venture capital dollars saw a significant pullback in the Portland metro area last year, according quarterly data from the research firm PitchBook. The amount of money invested in the fourth quarter of 2022 was just $67.5 million, compared to $385.4 million invested during the same time in 2021, and down 42% year-over-year.

Rao-Potlapally says founders from underrepresented backgrounds are frequently misperceived as being risky investment bets, and that when venture capital dollars drag, it’s usually founders of color who bear the most brunt. She says her own history navigating the Oregon venture capital system has given her plenty of insight on how to make the space more equitable for founders of color.  

“There’s not as much money in Oregon as there is in other states for seed and pre-seed level funding for sure, and there’s still an issue around access, because you still have to know someone with wealth and privilege to be able to get a warm intro to get connected to then be able to pitch. Historically, Oregon hasn’t had the most diversity, so we’re still pretty new at this,” says Rao-Potlapally.

“Largely, venture capital is very much an apprenticeship model,” she adds. “If no one looks at you and sees a younger version of themselves, it becomes difficult for you to rise up. I’m lucky in that a lot of people who run venture capital in Oregon took me under their wing and I was able to work across many of the funds in Oregon. I feel grateful for that, but it shouldn’t end with me.”

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Last week the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners voted 5-3 to approve purchasing the 100-room Quality Inn located at 9717 SE Sunnyside Road in Clackamas for $15.2 million to provide housing and mental health services for people experiencing homelessness.

More than 50% of the funds to purchase the hotel came from Project Turnkey, a $115 million statewide fund to help cities buy hotels to shelter people experiencing homelessness. The Quality Inn was the biggest in the project’s history, and drew widespread public comment, and criticism, from residents of Clackamas County.

Cities apply for Project Turnkey funds through the Oregon Community Foundation, which serves at the fund’s fiduciary and administrator. The OCF has provided funds to purchase 22 properties across the state since 2021.

Once the hotels are purchased, cities operate these hotel projects on their own, often with the help of community organizations.

Megan Loeb, senior program officer of economic vitality and housing at OCF, says the initial two phases of Project Turnkey have shown a great appetite for these hotel transition projects in rural and metro areas of the state. She tells Oregon Business Project Turnkey is having data collected on how its hotel projects affect outcomes of individuals and families experiencing homelessness, and that the project is providing cities with an independent way to curate and manage their own unique needs when it comes to fighting their own unique homelessness situations.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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On Feb. 18, Oregonlive reported of the 1,700 homeless Portlanders offered shelter during citywide encampments sweeps in the last 10 months, 89% remained unsheltered. How does Project Turnkey’s approach differ from conventional approaches to solving homelessness?

I believe strongly that Project Turnkey is transformational because you’re providing dignified shelter, a room with a door that locks, and the ability to decompress, to stabilize, to have an address, and to have services brought onsite.

At The Arches for example, in downtown mid-Willamette Valley run by the Community Action Agency, they have medical professionals who come onsite to make appointments and meet with folks there. They also have behavioral health folks who come onsite and are able to provide help with identification and documents, which is a big concern for folks who are looking to stabilize to get a job.

It’s about bringing the services to an individual at a place where they are able to feel safe, where they’re able to bring loved ones. If you’re in a congregate shelter, oftentimes you’re separated from a loved one. In a non-congregate setting like a hotel room, you can even bring your pet.

In many shelter environments, if you have a child of the opposite gender who’s over the age of 12, you’re separated in a congregate shelter, and that doesn’t feel like a safe option for your family. So, this is a better alternative for those reasons.

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When Project Turnkey gets an application, how does it determine whether or not the project will be a good investment?

Project Turnkey is an example of a public-private partnership that leverages the strengths of each of the partners to create solutions.

What we’re looking for is a history of provision of services to people experiencing homelessness, strong community partnerships, and connections to culturally specific providers. If they’re not a culturally specific entity, we’re looking at an equitable framework for the distribution, we also were looking at a diverse geographic distribution of the funds around the state.

We also were looking at qualities of the properties themselves. Part of the due diligence process includes an independent appraisal and a full property inspection which also includes an environmental review.

In 2021 we helped purchase 19 properties around the state in 13 different counties. We had a total of 32 applicants this year, with 12 of those projects moving forward.

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Before receiving its second round of funding, Project Turnkey presented data to the legislature showing the project led to a 20% increase in the state supply of shelter beds. How are you currently collecting data on the people served by the project, and tracking their outcomes?

Oregon Housing and Community Services are working on a formative evaluation of Project Turnkey. They’ve contracted with Portland State University’s Homelessness Research Action Collaborative and are in early phases of conducting an evaluation of Project Turnkey 1.0’s recipients.

How has Project Turnkey’s process changed between its first and second round of implementation?

One way we changed our process from 1.0 to 2.0 is that legislatively, we had a broader definition of eligible properties. So, in addition to hotels and motels, we now have an expanded definition that includes other existing structures that can be readily converted to shelter and temporary housing. That has allowed some of our more rural communities who weren’t able to find a good fit through the first round in hotels and motels to be able to submit an application for a better-sized solution, or for some other properties in the cases where there may not have been any hotels or motels for sale in their county.

A second change is a longer application window. What we heard from applicants was that the first round didn’t allow for enough time for the type of deep community engagement that needs to happen, and sometimes at the local level to put an application together. And so we had a longer application window, this time to allow for more community engagement or collaboration for local level to prepare applications.

RELATED: Lisa Mensah Brings Philanthropy Home

One concern voiced by the project’s critics is that it is financially unsustainable, and we won’t be able to afford the cost of staffing the facilities and generating $65 million or $50 million investments every year. What would you say to critics of the project two who say that Project Turnkey is an unwise expenditure of state funds?

I would argue that this is a strategic investment. These are one-time dollars that have been invested in local communities for an asset that they can own and steward for the long term. This is not leasing hotel rooms where the only thing left at the end of the day is a longer receipt for the city. This is an asset that these properties that these providers now own, are able to operate and are able to take the funding that they might have used to lease hotel rooms, and instead invest that back into supportive services into wraparound services, and into more stability for the guests that they hope to serve.

I listened in to the Clackamas County meeting last week and saw the numbers presented by Adam Brown at Clackamas County, where he demonstrated that right now, they spend a little over $4 million a year renting hotel rooms. Under the new assets that they own, it will be about a million dollars in operations per year. So that means the $3 million dollars that they were previously spending per year to lease hotel rooms can be used to help more adequately resolve people’s housing instability.

This investment not only meets the short-term need of shelter right now but has the potential to convert these buildings into transitional housing or permanent supportive housing or other types of affordable housing later on.

These are assets that right now are meeting the immediate need of shelter and longer term could be converted to address the root cause of our housing crisis, which is a lack of abundant affordable housing stock in our state.

This way we are providing a permanent source of curative homeless infrastructure.

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What is the status of the Project Trunkey funds? Will Project Turnkey have a third phase of funding?

We anticipate that all $50 million from Project Turnkey 2.0 funds will be allocated by June.

We also have 11 additional properties on our waiting list – high-quality applications that our advisory committee was very confident would be stellar sites for Project turnkey, that unfortunately, we do not have funds for at this time. That tells you that there is demand around the state for this solution.

We will also have some really exciting news to share by mid-March.

And I don’t know what the future holds, but I do really believe in the promise of this model. And I do believe that when Oregonians come together in the way that we have, through Project Turnkey through this public private partnership, that we can find solutions for our most vulnerable neighbors.

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Toya Fick took the reins at Meyer Memorial Trust in September — just as one of Oregon’s largest foundations plans a major shift in its approach to philanthropy.

Fick, a nonprofit veteran and former member of the foundation’s board of trustees, has been hired to shepherd the 40-year-old organization through a grantmaking sea change. Meyer Memorial Trust’s Annual Funding Opportunity, an open-call system for proposals set in place in 2015, is gone — to be replaced with what the organization is calling “a more integrated, community-centered process.”

The foundation is also changing its strategic framework to “use an antiracist, feminist lens to strengthen movements, change systems and support communities to build an Oregon that works for all,” according to its jargon-heavy website.

Meyer Memorial Trust’s new headquarters in North Portland.  Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

Fick frames the change in more accessible terms: “We’re moving from an equity lens to a justice lens,” she says via a Zoom interview. “It’s about racial, social and economic justice, and engaging with communities in a more robust, intentional way.” When pressed further, she offers a bit more: “Equity is like a level-101 college class. Justice is the doctorate level.”

But what does this mean for the day-to-day at Meyer Memorial Trust and the many organizations that rely on funds from its coffers?

After all, the trust — which opened in 1982 as the Fred Meyer Charitable Trust, with a purse of $120 million of the late retail magnate’s fortune — is one of the biggest in the state. It has awarded more than $814 million to more than 3,380 organizations around the Pacific Northwest since its doors opened. In 2022 Meyer’s endowment topped $1 billion, making it the fourth-wealthiest foundation in Oregon.

Fick can’t say precisely what these changes will look like yet; she’s not even willing to estimate a timeline for the change.

“We’re still in the listening phase. I’m taking a lot of meetings,” she says.

Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

She does, however, hint that the new direction will closely resemble Meyer Memorial Trust’s Justice Oregon for Black Lives initiative. This five-year, $25 million initiative — the Trust’s largest to date — takes a long view in its application and recording methods while engaging in participatory, trust-based grantmaking.

In plain terms, that means an easier-to-navigate application process and multi-year awards that ease the burden of filing yearly requests. It also means MMT staff engage in constant conversation with grantees, advisory committees and community roundtables. Small groups of community leaders can even make recommendations on funding allocations, though Fick and the Board of Trustees hold both the fiduciary responsibility and the final say.

Meyer is not making these changes in a vacuum. There’s a trend among foundations taking a hard look at the inherent power imbalance between themselves and the nonprofits they serve. The movement seems almost universal, reaching well past charitable foundations into all areas of modern society, according to a report by the Ford Foundation.

“During the past decade, all sectors of society have faced heightened demand for greater accountability and transparency,” the report reads. “People have become more distrustful of established institutions, they are demanding more information about issues and decisions affecting them and their families and communities, and they want more voice in decision-making processes.”

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For Fick, the move feels like a natural progression. Before she helped launch Justice Oregon for Black Lives, Fick served as Oregon executive director for Stand for Children, helping pass Measure 98, which granted funding for dropout prevention and college readiness. Fick was also a classroom teacher through Teach for America, and has served as a legislative aide for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and a lobbyist for Oregon Health & Science University.

“We want to be more nimble and get out of the way of grantees,” Fick says about the approach. “As a former executive director [of a nonprofit], I understand how deeply EDs know their work. As a grantor, I want to walk alongside them, create more profound relationships.”

What do these changes, including that move of looking through a justice lens when awarding grants, potentially mean for the nonprofits that rely on these funds?

“I love it!” exclaims Mellani Calvin, executive director for ASSIST, when informed of the coming shift. ASSIST helps disabled and homeless people navigate the byzantine process of securing disability and insurance benefits from the Social Security Administration. “Our organization fits that lens. We seek economic justice for our clients who are the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick.”

Mellani Calvin, executive director and founder of ASSIST, a nonprofit that helps people apply for federal benefits.  Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

Calvin is also enthusiastic about any steps grantors take to make the funding process easier for her to navigate. She estimates that in the last seven years, ASSIST has applied for 124 grants to cover half of their $500,000 annual operations budget — and has an overflowing, old-school file cabinet to prove it. “That averages to applying for about 17 grants a year. Phew! It’s discouraging really to think about the number of staff hours that have gone into these funding efforts for a service as valuable as ours to the most destitute out there,” she tells Oregon Business via email.

ASSIST has a long relationship with Meyer Memorial Trust, receiving its first-ever grant from the foundation in 2016. Calvin applied for the money because other executive directors told her about the doors a Meyer grant opens: “I heard that their grants were the hardest to get, but if you do win one, other money starts flowing in.”

Fick is well aware of the effects of an MMT “seal of approval” and the inherent power it holds.

“I’ve heard that many times before,” she says. “I want it to continue to be true as we shift to a social, racial and economic justice lens.”

Fick also understands that Meyer Memorial Trust’s shift comes during an unprecedented time of polarization and mistrust. A time when terms like “Critical Race Theory” are intentionally misused to create panic and resentment. A time when the U.S. Supreme Court looks to do away with affirmative action. A time when a little more than 44% of Oregonians voted no on Ballot Measure 112, which removes slavery as punishment for a crime in the state constitution.

“I don’t want anyone to shut down when we start talking about justice,” Fick says. “We need to build trust and get as many people as possible working toward that same end.”

So Fick starts her new job humbly and in deep-listening mode. She has been traveling throughout the state meeting with grantees, while paying special attention to organizations that serve rural and Indigenous needs. She is also meeting with other funders to learn how Meyer Memorial Trust can “show up differently and be more culturally responsive” for its grantees.

Fick also created a new position at the Trust: a director of learning. When hired, this person will process and synthesize the stories Fick and the rest of her team gathered and come up with a new way to quantify and measure success.

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“We still don’t know what that will look like, but asking for statistics and reports may not be the answer,” she says, explaining why these collected stories are so important. “As I like to say, ‘Stories are data with soul.’”

Toward the end of her Zoom interview with OB, Fick’s 9-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter came home from their day at school. That was Fick’s signal to shift into “momming” mode, a place she finds extremely comfortable.

“My life revolves around being a mom,” she says. In practice, that means waking extra early to get a jump on work so she can be present and available for her kids.

Toya Fick took the helm of Meyer Memorial Trust in September, 2022.  Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

With her successful track record, Fick looks ready to shepherd Meyer Memorial Trust through its new mission and focus. She knows the process will require time, patience and collaboration with other funders. Fick also knows she’ll be doing this work without Rukaiyah Adams, Meyer’s former chief investment officer. Adams, who led the trust’s investment portfolio to record returns during her eight-year tenure, exited the trust on Aug. 31.

“We’re trying to figure out who Meyer Memorial Trust is,” says Fick. “We’re still examining the theory of change process.”

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Cameron Whitten announced Thursday morning that he will be reinstated as active CEO of Brown Hope, the organization he founded in 2018. 

In a message released on his Facebook and Twitter accounts Thursday, Whitten wrote that the organization’s board had met and decided to reaffirm him as the organization’s CEO, which board president Gregory McKelvey confirmed.

“It is impossible to provide a detailed explanation to the recent media articles, as they involve confidential personnel matters. I can confirm that our third party legal and human resources staff is working with the Board of Directors to ensure a fair and thorough investigation process,” Whitten wrote.

The announcement comes less than 24 hours after board president Gregory McKelvey told Oregon Business he would be stepping in as interim CEO, and that Brown Hope will move forward with its plans for a basic income program.

Whitten was placed on paid administrative leave from his this role as CEO Dec. 8.

“Cameron Whitten is currently on paid leave, but Brown Hope is open and continues to serve our mission to nurture seeds for racial justice and healing. I cannot discuss details because it’s our policy not to share personnel issues publicly, regardless of their position. For now, I’ll be stepping in on an interim basis,” McKelvey wrote Wednesday.

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The news of Whitten’s removal came just two days after the organization announced it would be rolling out a monthly income guarantee to 25 Black families in Multnomah County over a three-year period.

The organization announced its plans for the program in June as a restructuring of the Black Resilience Fund, which was launched in June 2020 to provide direct assistance to Black Portlanders.

On Monday, OregonLive reported the Oregon Department of Justice is planning to investigate the organization.

It’s unclear what prompted Whitten’s removal or the investigation. McKelvey told Willamette Week the board had become aware of “serious allegations” that merited an independent investigation.

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A spokesperson for the DOJ gave few details, but said Brown Hope had failed to provide its 2021 tax filings by Nov. 15 as required by state law. The spokesperson said this was uncommon, but not that the action necessarily “raises any huge alarms.”

Whitten founded Brown Hope in 2018. Funding for the Black Resilience Fund reached $1 million less than a month after its 2020 launch, according to the nonprofit.

The nonprofit says more than 11,000 people applied for the guaranteed income program, slated to provide $2,000 a month to 25 Black residents.

The Black Resilience Fund’s launch follows other basic income experiments taking place around the country, including a basic income project managed by the homeless services organization Path Home, which offers $575 in cash assistance for families over two years.

The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) in California, which also has a racial justice component, released a study last year which found the program improved participants’ job prospects, financial stability and overall well-being during the program’s inaugural year. The Stockton Study had 125 participants receiving $500 dollars a month.

 Editor’s Note: This story has been updated from an earlier version.

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In June the Oregon Community Foundation announced it had hired Lisa Mensah as its new executive director.

Mensah was born in Oregon and spent most of her childhood here, though she also spent two years in Ghana, where her father is from. When Mensah left to attend college on the East Coast — she holds a B.A. from Harvard and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies — she says, “I almost felt like the whole city went to Portland airport with me and pushed me on the plane and said, ‘Go do well.’”

She planned to pursue a career in international development but instead has worked primarily in domestic economic development, most recently as CEO of Opportunity Finance Network, a network of community development loan funds, banks, venture capital funds and credit unions that provides financial services to populations that haven’t been served by traditional finance. Prior to that, she served as undersecretary for rural development in the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Obama administration, and also worked on rural poverty for the Ford Foundation.

Mensah didn’t start her job until September, but she spoke to Oregon Business in August to talk about the current state of philanthropy and her vision for OCF.

This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

Photo by Jason E. Kaplan

You have a background in rural development. What do you see as some of the biggest problems or the biggest needs in rural Oregon?

I think I’m going to be careful to speak about the biggest needs until I actually get to spend some time with rural Oregonians. I’ve been everywhere else in the country and only a little bit in reconnecting with rural Oregon. I have been in a lot of rural Oregon: My mother worked her summers in Molalla, and I’m an old strawberry picker, of that generation when you had to go make your summer money in the fields. But I’m going to really be listening.

I think I’m going to learn about areas where the economy is booming, where it is successful, but also areas where it’s hurting, and who is affected. I’ve always known that rural areas have a lot of diversity to them, in both economic gains, winners and losers — but also that they’re more complicated than we see.

Oregon has so much beauty in its rural areas. That is what people around the world know of. But I think I’ll be listening hard for what’s working and what isn’t.

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What is that outreach going to look like?

I think my outreach will be to a lot of folks who have already been working with the Oregon Community Foundation: donors, scholarship recipients, people who have received funds from things like Project Turnkey. A lot of the outreach will be connecting with the people and the work that has been happening.

I’m arriving kind of late in the fall, but I’m hoping the weather is on my side, to see many parts of the state firsthand. One thing I love about rural areas is that you have to spend some time driving to get there. There’s time to talk and time to hear some stories.

Do you have thoughts on what the state of philanthropy looks like right now?

This will be my first time inside of a community foundation. There are very few that are statewide, like the Oregon Community Foundation, where the donors and the recipients are coming from such a broad, diverse set of spaces. That, to me, is very exciting. I love being at a foundation that is both active in both urban and rural places, and has a diverse set of donors. That is different for me. With the Ford Foundation, Henry and Edsel — the original donors who made it all possible — have been gone for a long time. Here, this is a an active set of donors.

I like the way that philanthropy can stick with communities and stick with efforts that need a long haul; that’s quite powerful. I think I’m just very much intrigued by the statewide nature of this, that there are donors and recipients in every corner of Oregon who have dreams, who have aspirations. And there’s a foundation with nearly 50 years of experience, and [we’re] trying to match those together.

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This is all sort of forecasting. But do you have any thoughts on the direction of OCF in the coming years?

Well, I don’t have real directional thoughts. But I do have a sense that I’ve been asked to come with an open heart, open mind, and to take all of my experience and bring it here. I think I wouldn’t have been asked to lead if they weren’t interested in someone who’s been on this theme of economic opportunity her whole life, and who has lived experience of what it means to get a shot to go from Oregon to leading a big division of the Department of Agriculture.

I feel like the foundation has wanted to lean in to this theme of how to open opportunity for all Oregonians, and has chosen somebody who loves that very, very much and who is a living, breathing monument to what it looks like when somebody gives you a chance, and then you get to take it and run with it.

I do think this chapter of tragic times for the country and for the state — people who were lost in a deadly pandemic and fires, the great amount of homelessness, challenges of housing, and the fact that on questions of housing and on fires, this foundation was able to lean in and help — is one of the reasons that it points toward more to do in the future. It’s [attractive] to someone like me who’s been working on those questions at a national level.

What do you do when you’re not at work?

I am a bit of a foodie — I enjoy cooking and have a sneaking suspicion that the best food never gets exported all the way east. I’m going to really enjoy those morels and chanterelles and the things that are hard to find. I also love music and am looking forward to returning to live music. The arts and food are the things I most enjoy when I’m not working.

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Portland Rescue Mission has been accepting donations of cryptocurrency since February, a decision marketing director Mike Deckon says has already begun to reap rewards for the nonprofit.

“While we are still in our first year of receiving donations of cryptocurrency, the impact has been notable,” Deckon writes in an email to Oregon Business. “While the quantity of gifts is just starting to ramp up, the gifts of cryptocurrency that we’ve received have been very generous. This is especially appreciated given the steady increase in need that we’ve experienced in our community.”

In 2021, Bill Meadowcroft, the organization’s chief operating officer, was introduced to the concept of crypto-giving at a seminar hosted by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and featuring a presentation by the cryptocurrency donation platform Engiven.

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When Portland Rescue Mission began accepting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in February, the only nonprofit Deckon knew of that accepted such donations was the Salvation Army, which began accepting crypto donations in December of 2021.

The presentation by Engiven was enough to convince the organization it was time to board the crypto bandwagon. Deckon writes Portland’s propensity for innovation in the tech and blockchain space made the prospect more attractive.

“We always knew, with the growth of cryptocurrency and all the attention that it was getting, that it was a matter of when, not if. With Portland’s enthusiasm for new ideas and new technology, we were excited to introduce this giving platform as soon as possible,” Deckon writes.

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All-time crypto giving was estimated at roughly $200 million in 2019, according to charity foundation Giving Tuesday. Last year, crypto donations to charity increased over 1000% at Fidelity Charitable investors, according to a report from Money.com.

It’s not clear how many Oregon nonprofits accept crypto donations, according to Kirsten Saladow, director of membership communications and advancement at the Nonprofit Association of Oregon. But she suspects the numbers are going up.

According to Saladow, members started asking her about cryptocurrency in early 2021.

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Currently, the IRS treats donations of cryptocurrency similarly to gifts of stock: digital money is considered property and donating it is a nontaxable event. This means donors could deduct up to the fair market value of the donated asset when they file their taxes. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts also argue it’s the most secure way to give, because crypto donations are tracked and stored using Blockchain technology.

While buying and storing cryptocurrency is one side of the equation, getting crypto back into spendable funds is another challenge. Portland Rescue Mission immediately converts every gift into US dollars, with Engiven taking 4% of each donation. It means the charity can use the funds immediately, and is therefore not affected by the high market volatility and risk associated with crypto ownership.

“There is a risk when accepting crypto donation. The value of the asset fluctuates, but there are similar risks in accepting donations of stock as well,” says Saladow. “One thing that I always tell nonprofits looking into accepting crypto is to make sure they’re working with their CFO and their auditor, because there are financial rules around accepting cryptocurrency are still clarifying.”

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Saladow says larger nonprofits able to track and monitor cryptocurrencies may have an easier time accepting, tracking and protecting the asset than smaller organizations.

Smaller and midsize nonprofits may not have the resources and personnel to keep track of the changing rules and markets surrounding non-fungible tokens.

“The organizational risks of crypto are similar to the personal risks of crypto. If you have one person that has the password and they lose it, you might never be able to find it again. And in the way that nonprofits are audited, what is most important is working with your auditor and making sure you’re in compliance,” says Saladow. “The rules on crypto aren’t always clear, so you can’t always know if you’re in compliance or not. It’s just something nonprofits have to of pay attention to as they move forward. For a lot of nonprofits, crypto is still uncharted territory.”

Saladow also notes it’s difficult to predict what, if any, rules financial regulating bodies will place on crypto in the coming years.

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For some nonprofits, buying and storing cryptocurrency runs counter to the mission. “Mining” for cryptocurrency — the process by which the tokens are generated and audited — requires the use of enormously powerful computers solving complex equations.

According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, mining for Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, consumed an estimated 131.26 terawatt-hours this year — almost as much electricity as the entire country of Argentina. The study found that if crypto mining were a country, it would be in the top 30 energy consumers.

Columbia Riverkeeper began accepting cryptocurrency in 2021, but executive director Lauren Goldberg, executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper, tells Oregon Business says crypto is “not a large, or even a small source of funding” for the organization.

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“We’ve seen minimal interest from donors in cryptocurrency-based donations,” says Goldberg. “This isn’t surprising as more and more information emerges on the climate impacts of crypto.”

While the option to donate crypto is still available on the company’s website, Goldberg says Columbia Riverkeeper would evaluate any further donations of crypto on a “case-by-case basis.”

Saladow likened cryptocurrency to having oil companies in a nonprofit’s stock portfolio.

“I know that some of our environmental nonprofits won’t accept crypto for the same reason they wouldn’t accept stock in certain energy companies,” says Saladow. “From a mission standpoint, it comes down to what you’re willing to accept.”

Portland Homeless Family Solutions, a 15-year-old nonprofit that serves hundreds of families annually, announced a new name and rebrand Friday. The new name — Path Home — reflects an increased emphasis on preventing homelessness in addition to helping families that have already lost their housing, executive director Brandi Tuck tells Oregon Business.

“We started talking about changing our name really about a decade ago,” Tuck says. “In 2012 we first started helping families move directly from homelessness back into housing. When we started going out to appeal to landlords and would tell them, ‘We’re working with Portland Homeless Family Solutions,’ we automatically tell them that our clients don’t have homes. And we did experience a lot of discrimination as a result.”

The other factor in the name change was simply that Portland Homeless Family Solutions wasn’t the easiest name to remember or say, Tuck says. So the organization’s board went through a lengthy strategizing process with its public relations agency, Weinstein Public Relations, to come up with a more memorable name that reflects the breadth of the nonprofit’s work.

The nonprofit was founded in 2007 and started out overseeing the Goose Hollow Family Shelter, which provided shelter for eight families with children. PHFS’ budget that year was $78,000, and the organization employed four people, Tuck says. In 2022 the organization had an annual budget of $4.5 million and employed 53 people. More than half — 52% — of the organization’s employees identify as BIPOC, 48% identify as LGBTQ and 37% have a disability. In the past year, the nonprofit served about 450 families, or 1,400 people total.

The nonprofit still runs a shelter, but moved from Goose Hollow to Portland’s Lents neighborhood in 2020. The new shelter can house as many as 25 families.

In 2017 PHFS began a homelessness-prevention pilot project, providing financial assistance to families in danger of losing their housing. It’s since become a permanent program.

“These are families with children who have an income, they’re working, they have housing. They are living paycheck to paycheck a lot of times, but they are making ends meet,” Tuck says. “What happens is when there’s an emergency, they don’t have enough savings to be able to pay their rent. They’ll get a 72-hour eviction notice, and PHFS will step in to help families prevent that eviction and keep their housing long term.”

Generally, the organization provides cash assistance. PHFS also has a Rapid Rehousing program to help families get back into housing, but that program is much more expensive: Homelessness prevention costs, on average, $3,500 per family, where rehousing costs $10,000 per family.

That’s partly because of costs like security deposits, and for things like furniture and basic home supplies. It’s also because, very often, families that have lost housing have lost documents that can be critical for getting back into stable homes — like photo IDs and other things that can be costly and time consuming to replace.

In 2021 PHFS also launched a basic income program that provides $575 in cash to families, once per month, for two years — and has, so far, had encouraging results, according to Tuck.

“The goal is to show that giving cash is one of the most effective ways to end poverty — not just ending homelessness, but helping people actually end poverty,” Tuck says. “Some of the early results that we’ve seen through our pilot project are that parents are going back to community college to get associate’s degrees and trade degrees, and folks are moving from low-income, minimum-wage jobs into working through programs like Oregon Tradeswomen to get into flagging jobs and construction-trades jobs.

“I believe there is a solution to homelessness in our community. We have 40 years of worldwide data to show that rapid rehousing, helping people move from homelessness back into permanent housing, is the most effective way to address homelessness. While shelters can be very helpful as an intermediary step — as a pathway on someone’s journey from homelessness to housing — shelter doesn’t actually solve homelessness for anyone,” Tuck says.

Tuck spoke to Oregon Business before Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced plans to end homeless camping and instead relocate unsheltered residents to 500-person “campuses” around the city. But that announcement — which is not funded and about which few details have been announced — echoes other recent proposals that have not materialized, such as a plan for safe-rest villages announced last year.

“In our community, we’re putting a lot of resources into providing shelter without a pathway into housing,” Tuck says. “We have to be really conscious that the solution to homelessness is housing, and not just warehousing people in shelters and camps. I believe there is enough housing that if we reprioritized our dollars in the right way, I think we could provide housing for every single person that’s outside right now.”