Give!Guide 2012 Results

You are simply amazing.

In November and December, 5,450 of you gave $1,967,423 to local nonprofits through Willamette Week's Give!Guide. That's nearly 100 times the amount you donated through the first G!G nine years ago—and brings to more than $7 million the total you've given through this annual campaign.

Even more impressive is the spirit in which you do your giving. Many of us involved with G!G deliver gift packages to donors who give at certain levels, and when I arrive with these incentives, I am often greeted by expressions of joy and pleasure at the ability to participate. 

I've also heard wonderful tales of nonprofits helping each other—Oregon Tradeswomen, for example, performing free construction at North by Northeast Community Health Center and then holding a graduation ceremony there.

We are all simply wowed by the energy and determination shown by the participating nonprofits, as well as the spirit of friendly competition in which they do their great development work each fall. 

These organizations use social media to great benefit. They come up with an array of special incentives on their own. They show great creativity in their videos. And they hold fabulous parties—in one week in December, I got to attend an amazing display of circus skills in Northwest Portland, a huge martini event at the Ace Cleaners downtown a couple of nights later and a great evening of square dancing in North Portland the following Sunday evening. 

This says nothing of all the wonderful local businesses that chip in to help. See the box on this page for companies whose employees you should thank.

WW's annual G!G effort has become such a big project that we now have a full-time executive director, Nick Johnson, and about a quarter of our staff chips in to help in one way or another. 

Nick is a nut for statistics, so one of the new joys for me in this year's effort was poring over the sheets of data he produced. 

Here's a smattering of what Nick showed me: 

1. Total individual donors this year: 5,450, a 7 percent increase over last year.
2. The average donation increased from $313 last year to $361 this year.
3. The nonprofits received $305,617 of matching gifts made possible by their business partners.
4. Of the 110 nonprofits in this year’s Give!Guide, 74 returned from last year, and 48 of them exceeded their total from 2011. 
5. G!G’s special giving days (featuring goodies from Salt & Straw, Shwood, Holocene and Rogue Distillery, as well as Giving Tuesday) produced $249,485 in donations. And on Dec. 31 alone, you gave an incredible $360,872.
6. In terms of geography, Southwest Portland really stepped things up this year, nearly dethroning the perennial leader, Northeast Portland.

Not everything went according to plan, though. 

One of G!G's primary goals is to encourage giving by Portlanders under the age of 36. About midway through this year's effort, Nick noticed donations in this age group had dropped way off from 2011. Some of this could be attributed to the still-depressed economy, and some to the fall elections. 

So we quickly created the Stumptown Coffee Roasters Challenge, which provided $500 to the nonprofit in each of G!G's eight categories that received the greatest number of donations from young Portlanders. The response was immediate, and G!G ended up with 1,101 such donations. 

Of special note: The G!G model is spreading and growing.

Our new media company in North Carolina, INDY Week, initiated a G!G this year and will produce a full-blown effort in November and December. 

And three alternative-news media publishers—California's Monterey County Weekly, the Colorado Springs Independent, and Smiley Pete Publishing in Lexington, Ky.—raised an additional $2 million for their communities at the end of 2012.

G!G will return in the fall. If you know any local nonprofit you'd like to see involved in this effort, send their name and a contact for the organization to Nick Johnson (njohnson@wweek.com). We start accepting applications for the 2013 G!G in June.

In the meantime, this effort is guided by one fundamental principle—contained in the inscription at the base of the Skidmore Fountain in Old Town: “Good citizens are the riches of a city.” 

We are fortunate to be able to count so many of you as good citizens in this annual effort.

Thank you for all you do to support the health and well-being of our community. Your good works keep Portland a special place in which to live, work and play.

PUBLISHER

P.S. This week's paper contains a Volunteer Guide. It's designed to show you how to give something other than money to local nonprofits—your equally valuable sweat equity. Please give a look here.

Results, by Participating Nonprofit

1000 Friends of Oregon $19,303
Artichoke Community Music $3,350
Basic Rights Education Fund $13,933
Bicycle Transportation Alliance $37,061
Blue Sky $5,085
Bradley Angle $12,494
Camp Fire Columbia $8,725
CASA For Children $10,535
Cascadia $9,745
Cat Adoption Team $49,026
Children's Book Bank $9,240
Children's Healing Art Project $4,535
Circus Project $11,180
Classroom Law Project $14,195
Columbia Riverkeeper $5,005
Community Cycling Center $54,004
Community Warehouse $20,131
Depave $3,801
Dougy Center $7,965
Ethos Music Center $9,405
Farmers Ending Hunger $9,468
Farmers Market Fund $3,034
FearNoMusic $5,350
Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon $43,581
Forest Park Conservancy $17,281
Friends of Outdoor School $26,749
Friends of the Children $11,090
Friends of the Columbia Gorge $36,331
Friends of Trees $19,783
Giving Tree $5,494
Growing Gardens $18,582
Habitat for Humanity $34,469
Hacienda CDC $6,204
Hollywood Theatre $5,708
Hoyt Arboretum Friends $8,315
Human Solutions $10,032
I Have a Dream $7,496
Impact NW $9,040
In Other Words $1,495
IPRC $16,616
JOIN $36,646
Latino Network $2,826
Library Foundation $23,200
Literary Arts $11,890
Live Wire! Radio $12,039
Living Yoga $4,116
Meals on Wheels People $24,484
Mercy Corps Northwest $50,609
Miracle Theatre Group $2,485
Morrison Child & Family Services $10,330
My Voice Music $6,560
Neighborhood House $26,406
N and NE Portland Tool Libraries $2,845
N by NE Community Health Center $33,541
NE Emergency Food Program $6,825
NW Documentary Arts & Media $5,040
Northwest Film Center $4,209
Operation Nightwatch $5,066
Oregon Children's Theatre $2,053
Oregon Cultural Trust $195,058
Oregon Food Bank $109,841
Oregon Humane Society $40,651
Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. $8,941
Oregon Wild $18,461
p:ear $29,031
PDX Pop Now! $13,612
PHAME Academy $5,320
Planned Parenthood $106,784
PlayWrite Inc. $7,737
Pongo Fund Pet Food Bank $72,263
Portland A-S Tennis & Education $4,105
Portland Animal Welfare Team $16,263
Portland Art Museum $6,714
Portland Fruit Tree Project $18,511
Portland Gay Men's Chorus $4,720
Portland Homeless Family Solutions $9,850
PICA $2,945
Portland Kitchen $7,280
Portland Playhouse $6,821
Portland Women's Crisis Line $15,205
Portland YouthBuilders $19,584
Potluck in the Park $11,801
Pride Northwest $1,220
Project Access NOW $11,919
Project POOCH Inc. $20,301
Raphael House of Portland $15,458
ReFIT $1,194
Returning Veterans Project $9,841
Right Brain Initiative $14,891
Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls $9,150
Schoolhouse Supplies $7,700
Self Enhancement Inc. $9,125
Sexual Assault Resource Center $6,474
Shadow Project $17,186
Sisters of the Road $37,750
Start Making A Reader Today $11,997
Street Roots $21,698
Sunshine Division Inc. $7,657
Transition Projects $14,827
Urban Farm Collective $3,835
Urban Gleaners $16,936
Virginia Garcia Health Center $9,567
Voz $3,293
Wallace Medical Concern $33,588
West Women's & Children's Shelter $8,909
White Bird $5,580
Willamette Riverkeeper $18,225
Wordstock $11,707
Write Around Portland $15,222
Youth, Rights & Justice $7,579
Zenger Farm $7,090

TOTAL $1,967,423

Great Business Partners

(Please patronize them if you can.)

A to Z Wineworks

Bank of America

Bob's Red Mill

Chinook Book

Comcast

David Wright Tremaine

E & R Wine Shop

Food Front

Holocene

IKEA

Ken's Artisan Bakery

Morel Ink

Music Millennium

New Seasons Market

OakTree Digital

Oregon Community Foundation

Paloma Clothing

Pedal Bike Tours

¿Por Qué No? Taqueria

Portland Center Stage

Rogue Distillery

Rontoms

Rose City Mortgage

Salt & Straw

Shwood

Steven Smith Teamaker

Stumptown Coffee Roasters

Tender Loving Empire

Thompson Kessler Wiest & Borquist

Two Tarts Bakery

Umpqua Bank

Vertis Communications

Washman Car Wash

Whole Foods Market

Widmer Brothers Brewing

Give!Guide Donations by Year

2004: $22,000

2005: $78,000

2006: $248,397

2007: $534,084

2008: $806,582

2009: $918,094

2010: $1,163,688

2011: $1,588,689

2012: $1,967,423

total: $7,326,957

WWeek 2015