Black Communities in Oregon Resources Page
Resources for further exploration
Thank you for your interest in Oregon Community Foundation’s August 31 virtual event “Community Connections: Black Communities in Oregon.” We are especially grateful to Walidah Imarisha, Ann Curry-Stevens, Eric Ward, and our moderator and OCF colleague Marcy Bradley for the time they spent helping us understand the way race shapes opportunity and the role philanthropy can play in addressing challenges.
We are pleased to offer this list of resources to help you explore nonprofit organizations and projects that specifically focus on the needs of the Black community. Please consider how you—how we all—can play a role in elevating awareness and driving investment in the issues that uniquely or disproportionately impact Oregon’s Black residents.
Oregon Community Recovery Fund
The Oregon Community Recovery Fund has enabled nonprofit organizations to share their most pressing needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. We have made the applications available to generous community members like you to help inform your response to challenges in your community. If you are interested in organizations that specifically serve Black populations, use the link below and, under step #2, check the box next to “Black/African American.” You can follow the prompts to view each organization’s application; immediately recommend a contribution through an OCF donor-advised fund; or make a personal gift to support work that resonates with you.
If you have questions about how to navigate this site or would like more information on any of the organizations listed, please reach out to philanthropicservices@oregoncf.org.
Black Student Success
Black students in Oregon continue to experience gaps in educational access and opportunity that appear in early childhood, widen during the K-12 years, and continue to play out in higher education settings. Black students experience higher rates of poverty and exclusionary discipline, and lower rates of graduation, than White students. Responding to calls from the community to address racial disparities, OCF launched the Black Student Success initiative to support an improved culture of learning for our state’s Black children and youth.
To learn more, click HERE. To support this vital work, click HERE.
The Black Student Success Community Network
Twenty culturally led nonprofit organizations around the state have been chosen to pilot an advisory think tank, the Oregon Black Student Success Community Network (OBSSCN). This network will bring grassroots educational leaders together to provide direction to funders on the best practices that will advance Black children toward success from early childhood through post-secondary education.
Each of the 20 nonprofits invited to be a part of OBSSCN received $20,000 from a targeted OCF fund created with additional contributions from numerous Oregon-based philanthropic foundations, including the Meyer Memorial Trust and the Collins Foundation.
If you would like to learn more about these 20 nonprofits and ways you can help, please click HERE.
Further Reading and Resources
- OCF recently published an interview with Dr. Yvette Alex-Assensoh, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion at the University of Oregon and an OCF Leadership Council Member, about Black Philanthropy Month and the search for a more equitable society. Click here to read the interview.
- Portland African American Leadership Forum has created the PAALF People’s Plan, a visioning/planning document focused on the question, “What does Portland’s Black Community want, and what does it propose to move forward?” Read the Plan here.
- Explore reports on the needs of Oregon’s Black communities and the intersection of race and philanthropy:
- Walidah Imarisha's "Oregon Black History Timeline"
- Dr. Karen J. Gibson’s 2007 monograph “Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940–2000”
- The Urban League of Portland’s 2015 report on the “State of Black Oregon” and its 2009 predecessor
- Coalition of Communities of Color’s recent series of papers addressing challenges in the African American Community in Multnomah County, the African Immigrant & Refugee Community in Multnomah County, and Philanthropy and Communities of Color in Oregon
- An August 2020 report commissioned by ABFE: A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities entitled “Guiding a Giving Response to Anti-Black Injustice” that proposes a framework for how philanthropy can influence long-term, structural change
- A May 2020 essay from the New York Times headlined “In Philanthropy, Race is Still a Factor”
- Marcy Bradley, the event’s moderator, recommends a series of short videos that further explore racial inequity through storytelling.
Are you looking for more information about how you can help address the needs of Black communities? Do you work with an organization that supports the Black population in ways OCF donors might want to know more about?
Please contact us at philanthropicservices@oregoncf.org – we would like to hear from you.
Thank you again for partnering with OCF to help improve the lives of all Oregonians.