Ninety-nine news (cont.)

OCTOber 2020

Consider supporting the nonprofits who have been ninety-nine girlfriends grantee partners and finalists during our first 5 years – all worthy organizations doing impressive work!

Grantee Partners

Adelante Mujeres | Bienestar | Black Parent Initiative | Black United Fund of Oregon | CARES NW | Community Energy Project | Ecology in Classrooms | Free Clinic of Southwest Washington | Kairos PDX | North by Northeast Clinic | Open Signal | Oregon Tradeswomen | PDX Bridge | Portland Homeless Family Solutions | Rafael House | Red Door Project | Red Lodge Transition Services | Rose Haven | Street Roots | Urban Gleaners | Write Around Portland

Learn more on our Grantee Partner page.

Finalists

Bark | Bravo Youth Orchestra | CASA for Children | Cascade AIDS Project | Climate Solutions Family Forward | Friends of the Columbia Gorge | Friends of Zenger Farm | Green Energy Initiative | Independent Publishing Resource Center | Metro East | Milagro | My Voice Music | New Avenues for Youth | Passin Art | Soul River | The Circus Project | Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center | Xerces Society | Youth, Rights, and Justice

Liaisons make sure that we share success stories, volunteer needs, and other information from our grantee partners and take the lead in supporting our grantee partners in other ways that may emerge. We are pleased to welcome our new Liaisons for 2020:

• Adelante Mujeres: Trish Bowcock, Karen Stratton

• Bienestar: Wendy Wray, Michelle Duran

• Black Parent Initiative: Karen Rich

• Black United Fund: Kate McPhearson

• Cares NW: Stacy Hankin, Kathleen Perkins

• Community Energy Project: Diane McCartney, Atiya Mansour

• Free Clinic of SW Washington: Kerstin Anderson, Amy Richter

• North by Northeast Community Health Center: April Hasson

• Open Signal: Andra Georges, Ara Vallaster

• Raphael House: Monica Weitzel, Kayley Cook

• Rose Haven: Susan Feldman, Lyn Terry

• Street Roots: Heidi Yorkshire, Francie Royce

• Write Around Portland: Susan Rinker

AUGUST 2020

Did you know that the women of Red Lodge Transition Services began making  masks as soon as COVID-19 took hold in our community, learning new skills and making money? Have you seen how Rose Haven has adapted their work to provide supplies, tents, meals, showers—even voter registration—to their guests who are predominantly women living outside? There wasn’t a dry eye on Zoom when Kali Ladd shared with us how Kairos and other schools are weathering the storms of social distancing and racial inequities, all while keeping their eyes on the sun shining through rain and wind.  

At our Grantee Partner Showcase on Aug 23, members got a deeper look into how our eight grantee partners have navigated these unusual times and continue to provide strong, creative, compassionate, and critical services and support to our community. Partners shared their stories and members were able to connect and discuss what they learned and what each of us looks for as we consider the impact of our funds on our community. Our nonprofit grantee partners have been amazing! We are so glad to know about their recent work, the obstacles they face, and the hope and energy they bring as they continue to advance their missions.

You can find the stories of our 2018 & 2019 grantee partners below.

Special thanks to Sika Stanton and KC Cory, our video production team, and to the program team: Deborah Edward, Van Pham, and Molly Gray. Our 2020 Liaison Teams have been incredible in their support this year as well - hats off to Andra Georges, Ara Vallaster, Averil Paskow, Debbie Elliott, Diana Velene, Holly Smithwick, Holly Vaughn-Edmonds, Kathleen Perkins, Kerstin Anderson, Leah Reznick, Lyn Terry, Michelle McHugh, Renee Rutz, Stacy Hankin, Susan Feldman, Susie Trocolo, and Tiffany Nemer Rosenfeld.

It began as an idea to replace a spreadsheet. A desire to make intake work a little less clunky, and a lot more efficient. A year and a grant cycle later, our new submission management software, Reviewr, has taken us smoothly from grant application through intake, grant review teams, financial review, and the final stretch of the finalist selection. No more uploading to Dropbox, renaming attachments, moving files, or feeling frustrated. It’s all organized by tabs in Reviewr. 

Feedback from this year’s applicants has been very positive. Reports of a clear and simple process were especially gratifying given the challenges our applicants have faced this spring and summer. For those of us who are involved in the grantmaking process on the ninety-nine girlfriends side, the new system came at just the right time. With more submissions than ever before—223!—having all the sorting done internally by the software was an incredible improvement.

Erin Zollenkopf, Lead of the Financial Review Team, shared, “the Financial Review Team is tasked with reviewing the semi-finalists to determine their capacity to manage a large grant and to look for any other risks that might arise. Throughout our work, we are using many large documents. Receiving these from the semi-finalists, downloading them, storing them, and making them accessible to our team has not always been easy and has involved significant work on my end. This year’s implementation of Reviewr made our process so much simpler. Our team can now easily navigate to find these documents and view them within the browser. It’s also made it very easy to switch between semi-finalists with a click of a button. I’m thrilled with how Reviewr has worked and so glad we invested in it.”

We’ve learned a lot in these last few months of implementing our new software, and are looking forward to taking advantage of its full potential in the coming years.

If you’ve ever wondered how that extra $100 in your membership dues gets spent, this is just one example and it’s been a boon to our grantmaking process, so thank you all!

– Gretchen Hall, Intake Team Lead

Usually our summer is all about getting together with girlfriends and fun. Because many of our members travel or are busy with family, we deliberately limit our educational programming and focus on social connections. But 2020 had something different in mind, so this summer we took on the challenge of providing our members with some food for thought during our stay-at-home months. 

Enter our “Let’s Talk About…” series, inviting members with special expertise to share their experiences and knowledge with other members. During these Thursday evening programs members learned about life in prison, activism in gun violence, COVID-19 effects on students, allyship, the race paradigm, and sustainability. Special thanks to our speakers and participants.

A new virtual format for members gave us the chance to share our personal passions and interests with one another. Our “Unconference” hosted collaborative art projects, sessions to share and learn about topics such as habits, plastics, power tools, cemeteries, and gluten-free baking. A series of “shout-outs” where participants shared something that inspired them, whether it was a book, experience, resource or action. Thanks to Chip and Kathy Masarie for making their Unconference technology available to us. It was a fun afternoon!

We appreciate everyone who presented, shared, facilitated, and participated. It was a summer of learning, sharing and fun! And we now have some new tools to use as we enter the colder season. Review the recordings of the “Let’s Talk About…” series programs below.