Member Spotlight

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Andrea Duflon (pronounced Ahn-DRAY-uhh)

I joined ninety-nine girlfriends in May of this year. We moved to Portland in 2017 after 45 years in the SF Bay Area. I've wanted to find a philanthropic women's organization here in Portland, and it seems I've found it! In keeping with my decades-long social activism and feminism, I'm also a member of several other organizations working in the arts and the environment.

Recently, I retired from my psychotherapy practice, but I'm still open to doing pro bono work. I'm also a fiber artist, creating three-dimensional sculptures using mostly natural materials. My love of working with natural materials comes from my love of being in nature, hiking and gardening. My husband and I enjoy live music and the arts, and we also travel quite often.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Marcia Danab

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

I learned about ninety-nine girlfriends from family and friends, and I was impressed with the positive impact of the organization. 

What keeps you engaged/interested/connected?  

I like learning about the work of nonprofits in our community. I enjoyed working on the environmental grant review team with dedicated, caring women who are now my friends. I am retired from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality so this team's work was particularly meaningful for me.

I appreciate the thoughtful leadership of ninety-nine girlfriends guiding us on how to respond to the changing needs of the greater Portland community and our Girlfriend community. The summer socials and small-group gatherings are fun and a good way to get to know our members.

What else would you like to share?

I am inspired by the passionate, compassionate women of ninety-nine girlfriends and the organizations we support.  

Members! We’d love to spotlight you. Please contact Andra to learn more.

Member Spotlight: Shantara Grace

I’m excited to be a member of ninety-nine girlfriends. I know how much our grants are helping the important missions of local non-profits, and love that I can contribute. Non-profits are doing such important work in our communities. I have become so passionate about them since I started to volunteer.

This year, I began offering sound healing as a volunteer at Hopewell House. Hopewell House offers compassionate, personal, and beautiful end-of-life residential care for people in their last days. I have been offering sound healing meditation concerts and private sessions professionally for more than three decades in many venues. It is truly an honor to bring this work to the dying and all the kind and compassionate volunteers and staff that keep it all happening every day. 

Hopewell House re-opened in January 2023 as a non-profit after Legacy Health made the decision to sell it. A group of ambitious visionaries, including many whose loved ones had died at Hopewell House, got together to raise funds to buy the property. Hopewell House relies on donations for daily expenses, and to sponsor residents who don’t have the funds for their stay. 

I also donate my services to A Village for One, a non-profit that provides outpatient and residential services, care, and love to youth who have been sex-trafficked or exploited in Oregon. Also founded by a few ambitious visionaries, they recently built a residential home and are continuing to expand services. 

All this to say that I understand how precious the grants we give can be to local non-profits, and how crucial their work is. I joined ninety-nine girlfriends to support these important organizations. I’m a new member and don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing in the organization, but I’m so happy to be a

Members! We’d love to spotlight you. Please contact Andra to learn more.

Volunteer Spotlight: April Hasson

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

I found out about ninety-nine girlfriends while perusing another member's website bio, and ended up going down a rabbithole reading more about the organization. That was back in 2016, and I joined as soon as membership opened in 2017. After years of grant writing in my professional life, it has been exciting being on the grant making side. I joined a Grant Review Team and loved getting to learn about organizations in our area that I'd never heard of before, and about all the great work they do. Plus, being on a Grant Review Team was a fun way to meet fellow members and get to the heart of what ninety-nine girlfriends does, which is getting impactful funds out into the community.

What keeps you engaged/interested/connected?

I've appreciated every ninety-nine girlfriends event I've ever been to. I always find them to be a thoughtful mix of connecting, learning, sharing and becoming more inspired. The member education events are definitely worth checking out, and it's exciting that we've gotten back to some in-person events as well. There are also volunteer opportunities, big and small. While I wasn't able to commit to being on a Grant Review Team last year, I have been able to help with some event planning tasks and other fun things that worked for my schedule.

What else would you like to share?

I've heard from some people that they can't commit time, and that's OK! Being able to leverage our collective giving and voting are key. Inviting friends to join our membership and spreading the word are also really helpful. We are an amazing group of women (as an encompassing term), that is hundreds strong. Use our membership directory to connect with other members. Have coffee or go on a walk with someone new. There's always wisdom to impart and learn, and everyone I've ever connected with has been very friendly!

Members! We’d love to spotlight you. Please contact Andra to learn more.

Volunteer Spotlight: Linda Williams

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?  

Linda Williams

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?  

I joined shortly after I retired from Intel in 2016. I was looking for a way to “do good” in the community, learn about the nonprofit world and grow my network outside of Intel. I found all of that with ninety-nine girlfriends. I’ve attended events where I’ve met a wide range of women, but all with the common goal of wanting to positively impact our community. I’ve listened to the proposals of our grantees and each time I am amazed at the work being done to improve the environment, social justice issues and our community. 

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Impact Partner Highlight: Rose Haven

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International Women’s Day (March 8) is a special day for impact partner Rose Haven. It’s the one-year anniversary of the grand opening for their new space, and the date they welcomed guests back indoors after two long pandemic years. Celebrate with Rose Haven on the evening of March 8 – either at their beautiful NW Portland space or the 10 Barrel Brewing after-party featuring a special-release pale ale. Bonus: It’s an opportunity to congratulate ninety-nine girlfriends Fellow Liz Starke, Rose Haven’s Development Director. Free to attend. RSVP here! 

Volunteer Spotlight: Kaye O'Kearny

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?  

Linda Williams, a dear friend and amazing human, introduced me to ninety-nine girlfriends. At the time, I was working with the Intel Foundation and had become curious about approaches to giving. I also wanted to learn more about the Portland non-profit ecosystem and meet people, particularly women, who were outside the tech industry. I had been talking to Linda about all of that and she said “I think you’d really like ninety-nine girlfriends. She was right.

Volunteer Spotlight: Pip Meagher (Copy)

Briana Babbit

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

I first learned of ninety-nine girlfriends several years ago when a nonprofit I worked for applied for a grant. I am interested in systems change and collective impact work and so it seemed like a natural fit to get involved. I was particularly drawn to the Fellows program to have a space to connect with other young women and nonbinary folks and carve out a sense of community.

Volunteer Spotlight: Pip Meagher

Pip Meagher

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

I was invited to join by my amazing mother-in-law, Gun Denhart. Gun has connected me with many wonderful, community based organizations over the last few decades so I always pay attention when she recommends anything new. Being involved in a volunteer capacity within the community is not new to me so I was immediately curious to learn more as I didn’t know much at all about the model of collective giving that ninety-nine girlfriends was focused on. I met with co-founder Eileen Brady shortly thereafter and before you knew it I was co-leading a grant review team with Maura Koehler-Hanlon. That was in 2016 and I have never looked back.

Volunteer Spotlight: Josie Greer

Josie Greer

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

Like ninety-nine girlfriends, I believe in the power of collective giving and have witnessed its immense impact on the community. As someone who works for a local nonprofit, it’s inspiring to see how caring the community can be. I heard ninety-nine girlfriends is a compassionate organization with members who want to make a difference, which is why I wanted to become involved. Also, as a young professional focusing on nonprofit communications and development, I’m interested in learning more about philanthropy and connecting with others who care about the community!

Volunteer Spotlight: Tina Romine

Tina Romine

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

My interest in learning more about the non-profit community in Portland and the opportunity to make an impact locally with my time, talent and treasure is what brought me to 99GF. I followed 99GF for at least a year online prior to joining and was always impressed by member education offerings and the concept of collective giving with a group of like-minded women interested in making a positive difference. It also helped that a few volunteer friends of mine were members and spoke very positively about the organization and their experiences as members.

Volunteer Spotlight: Barbara Hilyer

Barbara Hilyer

I joined ninety-nine girlfriends in the first year, 2016. I was invited by an old friend who had recently moved to Portland; I had not heard of it and did not know anyone else involved. Since I moved to Portland after having retired, I didn’t know many people in town and was looking to make more connections, as well as learn more about the needs of the community. Having spent my career in public education, I had always been involved in direct service and had never considered being involved in philanthropy. That seemed like something out of my league.

Volunteer Spotlight: Nicole Bennett

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

They knew I had been searching for an organization where I might find connection to like-minded people, make a difference in the community, and could offer my time and energy toward systems change that would move the dial toward racial equity in our community. I jumped in right away on a Grant Review Team and the training and engagement as a racial equity facilitator last year. I have been excited to discover this incredible group of women who are so intentional in their commitment to the work of philanthropy and to the open and thoughtful examination of the potential systems within the organization that may inadvertently be keeping the giving process from being fully equitable. I have thoroughly enjoyed the engagement and honest conversations with other members in structured groups, break-out-groups as part of racial equity presentations, and during the work of the Racial Equity Committee.

Volunteer Spotlight: Holly Cook & Sara Daley

Holly Cook

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

A neighbor told me about ninety-nine girlfriends one evening as we were walking home from a get-together. She said something like "I wonder if you would be interested in this group I'm in. It's a group of women. We each put in $1,100 and....". I zoned out thinking that she was going to say something about getting a list of women's names, you send each woman on the list a pair of underwear and then, when your name gets to the top of the list, you get eleventy thousand pairs of new underwear! But then I heard her say, "...and then we give all the money away." What?! Please say that again. I had never heard of a collective giving circle. The idea of pooling resources, learning about the needs of our community and participatory philanthropy all alongside women who were interested in similar goals...well now that is exciting! You can keep your underwear. I was hooked.

Volunteer Spotlight: Heidi Sobol

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

In 2016, I met Halle Sadle, one of the original girlfriends, as her husband was an actor in a play that my husband was directing. She saw that I was new to Portland and working part-time from home, so I hadn’t met many people, and invited me to the first award dinner which was the following week. It was quickly clear to me that this was a way for me to meet people, learn more about my new home city, and learn about philanthropy and the non-profit world as well.

Volunteer Spotlight: Karen A. Rich

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?
Molly Cliff Hilts. Molly was the first friend I made in 1994, when I moved from Manhattan to Portland. We met in a water aerobics class, were both pregnant, and we became fast friends. We lived in different parts of the city, started a very eclectic book club, each had two sons, and lived our lives meeting here and there over the years. Then, we reconnected in 2016, when she invited me to the home of Jinx Faulkner to learn about a new all women’s nonprofit called ninety-nine girlfriends. That group of smart, funny, kind, and accomplished women was inspirational. I joined to learn more.

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Volunteer Spotlight

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JEANETTE SWAFFORD

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

Five years ago I was getting my hair cut by Fahti and began chatting about a small giving circle that I was participating in. Fahti shared that she had just joined this amazing group of women who were also experimenting with giving, but on a larger scale with transformative amounts. I used to work in tech start-ups and that fresh energy of building something new was exciting to me. I didn’t know anyone aside from Fahti, but I loved the idea of change-makers out there stirring it up. These were women that I wanted to know!

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Volunteer Spotlight

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KATHLEEN PORCELLO

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

I was volunteering as a grant writer for NAMI Clackamas when I first discovered ninety-nine girlfriends and the annual Impact Awards program. Months later, I saw a LinkedIn post about the young adult Fellows program, and I immediately applied for an interview! I was drawn to the opportunity to learn firsthand about trust-based philanthropy, grantmaking, and the diverse nonprofits doing incredible work in our region. Plus, I wanted to get to know the many amazing members of ninety-nine girlfriends!

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Volunteer Spotlight

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JEAN MALARKEY

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

In the first or second year of ninety-nine girlfriends’ existence, my cousin-in-law, Jinx Faulkner, invited me to an educational event on philanthropy, and I was immediately intrigued by the group and all the great women I met there. I missed the window to join the next year, but was excited to do so in 2018.