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This year is Give!Guide’s 20th.
As the person who created this annual fundraising effort, I’m comfortable telling you I never expected G!G to become what it is today — a philanthropic juggernaut with its own staff that operates year-round.
What started with a couple dozen participating nonprofits and less than $30,000 in giving now supports 10 times as many organizations and drives more than 250 times as much giving each year. So here’s a huge thank-you to all of you Willamette Week readers who’ve made this happen.
When WW started this campaign, the idea was to instill the annual giving habit in younger Portlanders. That remains our focus today — and explains why we reward nonprofits that excel at attracting new donors under the age of 36, and created the Skidmore Prize.
Give!Guide shows the power of individual giving, supported by dozens of local partners. Last year, some 16,000 of you contributed more than $8 million. You have no idea what that means to the people served by the nonprofits you supported.
In the pages that follow, and at our website (giveguide.org), you’ll learn about 250 truly amazing — and equally worthy — nonprofits serving the greater Portland area. These wonderful organizations do so much for so many that we don’t know how our region could survive without them. As you read their stories, we hope you’ll be inspired to give early — and often — between now and midnight on Dec. 31, when the campaign closes for 2023.
You’ll also find profiles of this year’s four Skidmore Prize winners. The award celebrates Portlanders under the age of 36 who do amazing work for local nonprofits. Each of this year’s award winners more than fits the bill. (You can read about them here.)
Along the way, you’ll find information about our wonderful sponsors and business partners. A huge thank-you to all of them! And you’ll learn about Big Give Days, which add to the many fabulous incentives for giving provided by local businesses.
We hope Give!Guide offers one-stop shopping for your year-end giving — and is both easy and fun. A key ingredient is giveguide.org, the website created for us by the Roundhouse Agency. They’ve outdone themselves this year.
The past four years have not been kind to Portland. With a new form of city government in the offing and the beginnings of a downtown revival, we hope this year’s Give!Guide can add to the forward momentum.
That’s where you come in. We hope between now and the end of next month at least 17,000 of you will visit giveguide.org, whip out your credit or debit cards, and let them run wild for a bit. We’ll all benefit if you do.
Thanks so much,
Richard H. Meeker
Founder