25 Years of NWHF - The Stars of the Show, Our Grantees
This year, Northwest Health Foundation hits a huge milestone: 25 years of grantmaking and advancing health in Oregon and SW Washington. In honor of that milestone, we are celebrating some of the people and organizations who have been most influential on this journey. This is the fourth in a series of blog posts. Read the third blog about NWHF’s board.
At Northwest Health Foundation, we prioritize investing in and building relationships with organizations and coalitions led by those closest to the problems they seek to address. We make grants to BIPOC-led and culturally specific organizations that are embedded in and trusted by their communities. To us, our grantees are the stars of the show, and we strive to follow their lead.
Here are just a few of the phenomenal grantees that have marked milestones in our grantmaking.
Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center
Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center (VGMHC) was Northwest Health Foundation’s first grantee back in 1999. The largest nonprofit federally qualified health center in the state, serving Oregon and Washington, Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center today serves over 47,000 people. After starting in a garage in 1975 in response to a community tragedy, VGMHC opened its dental and vision clinic in Cornelius in the 1990s. Since then, VGMHC has grown to include 18 clinics. VGMHC serves Oregonians and Washingtonians facing barriers to health care, including children, undocumented individuals and farmworkers. While our giving priorities have changed over the last 25 years, NWHF continues to provide sponsorship dollars for Virginia Garcia’s annual health care symposium.
Coalition of Communities of Color
The Coalition of Communities of Color was formed in 2001, five years after NWHF. (They celebrated their 20th anniversary this year!) Former NWHF President & CEO Nichole June Maher was one of the Coalition’s co-founders. The Coalition has long been an NWHF grantee, as well as a long-time thought partner. An alliance of culturally specific community-based organizations, the Coalition has had a huge impact on not just the Foundation, but our whole region. Their Bridges leadership development programs, research and data justice work, and political advocacy have built political power for African, African American, Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern and North African, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Slavic communities in Oregon. More recently, they have built out their 501(c)(4), Building Power for Communities of Color, through which they endorse candidates and ballot measures. They are even tenants of The Center for Philanthropy and wonderful office mates!
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste
Although Northwest Health Foundation has consisted of both a 501(c)(4) and a 501(c)(3) since it was founded in 1997, we haven’t always taken the best advantage of our 501(c)(4) resources. Through our Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities initiative, we began to recognize and shift our focus to the critical importance of building BIPOC political power. We started this shift by making a 501(c)(4) grant to Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) in 2016. PCUN fights for the rights of Oregon’s Latinx working families as a union, a 501(c)(4) and a 501(c)(3). Since that pivotal grant to PCUN, we’ve increased our 501(c)(4) giving to around 60% of our total grant dollars each year, and PCUN is now part of our Civic Health Initiative!
Oregon Child Care Project
The largest grant we ever made was to the Oregon Childcare Project in 2019 as part of our Health & Education Fund. We awarded $1 million to a campaign led by six organizations—PCUN, Oregon Futures Lab, Unite Oregon Action, APANO, Imagine Black and Family Forward Action—working to build an affordable childcare system in Oregon. These predominantly BIPOC-led organizations knew that communities of color care about childcare and wanted to organize around this issue. In years previous, we would likely have made several small grants, but funding this work at a larger scale was something we hadn’t tried, and we wanted to try this approach with Oregon Childcare Project first. A majority of the grant was 501(c)(4) dollars, which ensured they could engage with candidates during the critical 2020 election year. They endorsed pro-child care candidates and worked on Multnomah County’s successful Preschool for All ballot measure.