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While our community always faces big challenges, this year feels especially fraught, as we in the Portland metro area address the continuing realities of housing shortages, economic strain, and food insecurity—to say nothing of the climate crisis, concerns about social justice, a growing mental health crisis—especially among our young people, and all manner of additional post-pandemic stressors.
But we are far from helpless, especially when we acknowledge the great work Portland-area nonprofits do, day in and day out, to address these serious, ongoing challenges.
Willamette Week’s Give!Guide exists to ensure our nonprofit community is not in this alone—which is where you come in. We are now in year 21 of this annual call to action to shine a light on—and raise funds for—251 nonprofits doing incredible work close to home.
Think of Give!Guide as an anti-NIMBY movement. Let’s fix the problems in our backyards—and yours, too!
Give!Guide is a solution anyone can join, between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31. Our website, giveguide.org, is chock-full of bite-sized info—featuring engaging profiles of each of the participating nonprofits. Discovery is half the fun as you find groups doing work you can love and causes you can get behind.
Most important, G!G offers one-stop shopping for your year-end giving. Offering a curated list you can trust, we feature nonprofits headquartered and doing work in Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties. They range in size and mission, and each and every organization has been vetted through the IRS, Oregon Secretary of State, and Oregon Department of Justice. Funds are sequestered in a special Give!Guide account and reviewed each year by independent auditors.
Giving is its own reward, but on Big Give Days our partners have incredible prizes you can enter to win by donating $10 or more. Prizes like: a private flight over Mount Hood; a shopping spree at Powell’s Books; Billie Eilish tickets; an incredible electric bicycle; a cultural tour of Oregon; and many more. There’s one Big Give Day each week to sweeten the deal. If that’s not enough, every donor gets a few goodies from us simply for pitching in. And many of the nonprofits add their own incentives to give. Check out the prizes and goodies being offered by Willamette Week at here.
This year’s Give!Guide goal is ambitious—$8.5 million by Dec. 31. (Last year, we raised $8.35 million.) The vault opens at 12:01 am Nov. 1. If every WW reader gave $10 to five organizations, we’d blow our goal totally out of the water. Of course, if some of you were to add a zero or two to your totals, participating nonprofits would be in even better shape!
It’s no secret one of Give!Guide’s objectives is to instill the annual giving habit in younger Portlanders. That’s why donors under 36 have several Big Give Day prizes designated just for them—and why we reward nonprofits for excelling at attracting new young donors. (See here for 35 & Under Challenge details.) It’s also why we created the Skidmore Prize to honor young professionals doing extraordinary work for local nonprofits. (Profiles of this year’s four winners begin here.)
Of course, a project this big would be impossible without readers like you and hundreds and hundreds of local businesses rallying together to help move the needle for our community. Partnerships like these are essential to Give!Guide’s success in supporting so many great, local nonprofit organizations. (See the bottom of the giveguide.org site for a list of Give!Guide’s sponsors and business partners.)
Please join us at least once over the next 61 days. As we say every year in this space: When it comes to WW’s Give!Guide, let your credit or debit card roam free a time or two between now and midnight on New Year’s Eve. Both you and Portland will be much the better for it.
Thank YOU!
Richard H. Meeker - Founder
Toni Tringolo - Executive Director
Molly Rodrigano - Campaign Assistant