2022 Year in Review
At SVP Portland, we mobilize skills, money, and influence to collectively build community capacity for solving problems together. We invest in nonprofits, collaborations, and initiatives, with the shared goal of ensuring that all children—regardless of ethnicity, wealth, religion, gender, or zip code—have access to high-quality, culturally-relevant early learning experiences. We collect data to understand the impact of our investments, and hold ourselves accountable for continuous learning and improvement.
By the Numbers
Talent – 5,433 Skilled Volunteer Hours
SVP Partners leverage decades of expertise to build the capacity and resilience of our Community Partners as well as our internal operations.
This year, 64 Partners invested more than 5,000 hours. The average engaged Partner volunteered 85 hours and 14 had more than 100 hours each in total.
Partner hours have been valued at a conservative $100 per hour to date, although the market value of our skilled-based volunteerism is closer to $250 per hour. As such, the Partnership contributed more than $1,250,000 in volunteer talent last year.
Money – $389,825 in Grants to Community Partners
Community Partners are the organizations, collaborations, and initiatives in which we invest our resources, from whom we learn deeply, and with whom we work toward the shared goal of ensuring that all children have access to preschool.
This year, we granted a total of $389,825 to our Community Partners. Of that total, $162,400 were direct general operating grants from SVP, and $227,425 were passthru grants we facilitated as fiscal coordinator and capacity builder for the Equity Collaborative and Child Care Facilities Initiative. We also served as fiscal coordinator for the TASTE for Equity event, which granted an additional $22,500 each to three Community Partners.
In addition to grants, we made $250,000 in bridge funding available throughout the year.
Influence – Leveraged Funds Totaling $920,586
We are more than grantmakers. Our networks, relationships, and influence help attract additional financial resources for our Community Partners. These resources are what we term leveraged funds — the sum total of indirect dollars that flowed to our Community Partners due to our connections, fundraising help, and/or direct donations from Partners. This is the multiplier effect of our venture philanthropy model, and is part of what makes SVP’s impact so significant.
For every dollar SVP Portland invested as an organization in direct financial grants to our Community Partners, when combined with our talent hours and influence, means we helped realize at least $14 in total impact. This is an exceptionally high return on investment!
Encore Fellows – 27 Professionals at Nonprofits
As part of SVP Portland, the CoGenerate Encore Fellows program provides a source of expertise for nonprofit organizations, helps individuals (Fellows) transition from their careers into social-purpose work, and gives corporations a new way to positively impact their communities. Encore Fellows who have retired from a career are matched with host nonprofit organizations based on their passions, talents, and experience.
In 2022, 14 new Fellows joined 13 whose fellowships were in progress. Each helped to build the capacity of organizations throughout Oregon over the course of a 1000-hour engagement.
Impact Highlights
Amplifying Systems Change
We advocated for additional funding for our Community Partners, which resulted in securing $110,500 for the Equity Collaborative alone (along with helping secure $225,000 in multi-year grants).
We supported the launch of the Child Care Facilities Initiative, which stemmed from the facilities needs assessment completed on behalf of Preschool for All. The initiative’s goal is to shift the Portland-metro child care facilities market to more efficiently and effectively connect supply and demand with minimal subsidies and interventions. Direct stipends of $9,925 were paid to consulting childcare providers from historically marginalized communities.
“I was excited to learn that SVP was lifting up the childcare facilities work as part of Preschool for All, as it is particularly challenging and will benefit from the focused attention this important initiative brings. What differentiates this effort is that we don't want to institutionalize band-aids and workarounds for a dysfunctional system -- we are seeking meaningful systems change!” - Rachel Langford, Child Care Facilities Initiative Lead
Building Capacity of Organizations
We matched dozens of SVP Partners to community-based organizations and initiatives in order to strengthen financial systems, HR, marketing/communications, as well as provided expert coaching to enhance their leadership and capacity.
We started a new partnership with Community Action Washington County, working to ensure their families experience stable and inclusive access to the information, coaching, child care and education, and early childhood resources needed to thrive.
Partners worked hand-in-hand with the leadership of the Center for African Immigrant and Refugee Organization (CAIRO) to build the financial, HR, IT, operations, and governance systems necessary to enable growth while working toward greater financial health. In turn, since this work together began three years ago, CAIRO has increased the number of children in its preschool by 75%, and now has the foundation to grow by 250% in 2023!
We supported the launch of Threads of Justice Collective’s new anti-bias curriculum and website, which includes a marketplace for their justice and inclusion toolkits.
Our Portfolio Management Team made several reinvestments to extend our impact with current Community Partners:
With Alliance for Equity in Montessori Education (AEME) to include and a $25,000 grant. AEME provides a free preschool program that serves children and families living in a historically under-resourced area disproportionately impacted by systemic racism.
With Latino Network to include Partner time and a $25,000 grant. A Partner team exceeded $1 million raised for Latino Network’s first capital campaign, Sonando Juntos (Dreaming Together), which will include a preschool within La Plaza Esperanza.
With CAIRO to include Partner time and a $50,000 grant.
With Threads of Justice Collective to include Partner time.
With Hacienda CDC to include Partner time and a $25,000 grant, to continue to support their educational goals. Hacienda CDC serves approximately 360 youth through three major programs that offer a variety of important education and social support services to children from birth to 8th grade.
“We’ve gotten a lot of help from SVP Portland, and we actively collaborate a lot. There’s been so much support that I feel that I have almost an operations team! Together, we wrote the employee handbook, did financial modeling, and learned to use tools that have been hugely impactful and saves me a lot of time.” - Liora Berry, AEME Executive Director
Listening & Evolving
We updated and refined our mission, vision, and purpose.
Our Board affirmed the cross-team recommendation that we redefine what it means to be a member of our Partnership, intentionally shifting from being traditionally exclusive to being actively inclusive.
We evolved our governance structure to decentralize our decision-making, be inclusive of diverse lived experiences, and share power with community leadership in meaningful ways. It also distributes power to Teams that engage subject-matter experts relevant to the issue. This allows our Teams to be collaborative, nimble, and responsive to both organizational and Community Partner needs.
We refreshed our strategic framework with updated context for our work and strategic priorities.
Our first Dynamic Team learned about the current advocacy landscape based on interviews with key organizations that engage in this work. After a thorough and thoughtful process, the team unanimously recommended that SVP’s advocacy and influence priorities should be resourcing coalitions/collaboratives (focused on aligned early childhood advocacy) and supporting Washington County Preschool for All efforts.
We were nimble and responsive to Community Partner needs – our Finance Team fast-tracked a Bridge Funding framework that allowed us to advance money to cover an organization’s immediate cash needs.
“SVP Portland's bridge funding to CAIRO was an absolute lifesaver. Most of our revenue comes from government grants and contracts, and so we are at their mercy if they decide to take eight months to pay us. The funding provided the liquidity we needed to make payroll and keep our programs open and uninterrupted.” - Mark Chapman, CAIRO Director of Finance & Operations
As we look back on 2022, we are inspired by our Community Partners who remain resilient and creative as they expand their programs and advocate for greater equity in our early childhood system. We are proud that our Partners and staff are dedicated to being positive changemakers, and are steadfast in fulfilling our mission. We look forward to continuing our journey together, as a partnership, in 2023 and beyond.
