On November 19th, our Portfolio Management Team approved a partnership proposal that was collaboratively developed by an SVP Investment Team and Hacienda Community Development Corporation (Hacienda CDC), making the organization our 12th Community Partner this year.

On the path of equity and anti-racism, I am happy to report that SVP Portland is deeply engaged in advancing self-work.  Building on commitment at the Board and staff levels, our Partnership formed an Equity Team (E-Team) and under facilitation by the Center for Equity and Inclusion (CEI) embarked on four afternoons of intact training.  The extended team gained an understanding of racism’s cultural and institutional frameworks, critically reflected on assumptions of white privilege, and enthusiastically dove into media coverage of the socio-political landscape.  We have committed our feet to move on the journey.

"Based on my Encore Fellow experience, I learned that my corporate skillset can be beneficial to working with nonprofits. I was drawn to the SVP model that enables working with a variety of Community Partners. I also like the concept of venture philanthropy, connecting monetary investments with the even more valuable investment of professional experience."

As we close out the year, I’m incredibly proud of how SVP Partners, Board, and staff alike have demonstrated their dedication to our mission and Preschool for All (P4A) goal. The tenacity, resourcefulness, nimbleness, and collaboration in face of adversity has been remarkable. So far in 2020, we have grown our resources -- human and financial -- by successfully recruiting 19 new Partners. (The vast majority are already engaged on SVP teams and with Community Partners!)

We are excited to report that the impact of SVP Portland’s Encore Fellows Program has continued at a steady beat despite the pandemic. We recently hit our 2020 goal of placing 16 new Encore Fellows! Throughout the year, we have consistently had more than 25 active Fellows working with nonprofits, including four SVP Community Partners, on their capacity building projects. 

"In the past, I have volunteered and I have donated money, but I haven’t found a place where I really did both together. Nor have I found a lot of places where your volunteer work is using what I think of as higher level business or life experiences, as opposed to what my father might call “grunt work”. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with grunt work and I strangely like some of that too, but I also like the idea of using my Master’s degree and the experiences I have as a consultant and small business owner."

It would be more than an understatement to say that 2020 has been a difficult year. Globally we’ve experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession that quickly followed. Nationally, and acutely locally, we have seen demonstrations in response to racial injustice and political turmoil. And here at SVP Portland we were blindsided by unimaginable loss when Sarah left us too soon.While it would be easy to dwell on the negative, the holiday season now upon us presents a simple challenge: appreciate and give thanks.

"SVP Portland has invested $2.3 million in direct grants to 34 nonprofits in the Portland metro area since the organization was formed in 2001. That may sound like small change, but SVP has leveraged those funds exponentially through free strategic advice to help those organizations scale and build capacity."

The Preschool for All victory is really a victory for partnership. SVP Portland has developed deeper and broader trust and relationships than we ever imagined in those first conversations nine years ago. Parents, grassroots advocates, and grasstop leaders partnered to develop comprehensive policy that encouraged going beyond what we thought was possible. In this newsletter, Lauren Johnson and Mark Holloway reflect on the long journey to this extraordinary victory.

Child Care Shared Services Alliance Vision: A relationship-driven alliance of providers working together to support sustainable business practices, increase program profits, and protect/support provider well-being. Our ultimate goal is to save providers time so they can focus on meaningful relationships with teachers, children and families and earn a financially secure living doing the work they love.

We are pleased to report that as a result of persistent efforts, resourcefulness, nimbleness, and an all-hands-on-deck attitude, we can look back on these last six months with enormous pride in what we accomplished. Our resilience and tenacity in the face of multiple challenges has left us optimistic about the future as well. Twenty-one new Partners have joined this year, and more than 80% are already engaged!

"Part of the joy of being in a new city is the chance to build one's community. During this time of isolation, where so many things feel upside down, I found myself really craving ways to make a meaningful local impact and build my network. SVP Portland turns out to be the perfect solution."

The Portfolio Management Team just announced two new approved investments, and interestingly, these new MOUs are with one of our newest Community Partners and with our longest ongoing relationship. These two partnerships are great examples of how SVP works with community organizations throughout their life cycles.

In May 2020, a group of SVP Partners came together with a diverse group of child care advocates to create the Oregon Child Care Provider Relief Guide for Oregon’s child care providers struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. After the relief guide launched, the coalition continued meeting and asked: What more can we do? How can we help small providers survive and thrive, not just through the pandemic, but for the long-term? The answer was shared services.

As many of you know, the SVP Portland board of directors gathers each summer, typically in August, for an all-day retreat, where we evaluate goal progress, consider shifts in landscape, and determine strategic priorities moving forward. In the gazillionth example of how 2020 is very different, this year’s retreat was a three-part series of Zoom calls. Each call was two and a half hours, and each focused on a single significant topic that will inform the board’s strategic thinking and planning going forward.

"What I’ve really been struck by is the Partners. SVP boasts many highly-successful, highly-knowledgeable Partners. The collective influence and intellectual capital is, not surprisingly, exceptional. The way Partners support, respect, and value one another and the Community Partners is exceptional as well."

After years of preparation and coalition building, the Multnomah County Preschool for All campaign is off and running – YES on Measure 26-214!  Helping the P4A broad coalition secure victory will be a major milestone toward our Access to Preschool goal and will improve generations of lives in our community – a game changer for kids and working families!

With more than half of 2020 behind us, we want to share an update with our Partnership on SVP Portland’s accomplishments, challenges, and impact so far this year. In the midst of the massive impact of the pandemic and a long overdue national awakening to the need for fighting systemic racism, we want to circle back to our 2019-2021 Strategic Vision and share progress toward our three Strategic Priorities.

“We are incredibly grateful for our long-standing partnership with SVP Portland,” says Terri Sorensen. “The work we’ve done with SVP has been critical to our scaling efforts. We had a lot of work to do so we had the internal capacity to scale our model, and to ensure the organization was sustainable. SVP was able to look at every aspect of our organization and invest in our leadership and infrastructure so that we could scale.”

"I already knew something about SVP through my fellowship, and the concept of venture philanthropy appealed to me from the start. In my mind it is not unlike the venture capital firms that operate in the technology industry. These firms not only provide a timely investment, they also understand that they need to provide expert advice and support to help the entrepreneurs succeed. It has been a very successful model in enabling innovation in the for-profit world and seemed to me to be well suited for helping young and innovative nonprofits as well."