Skip to main content
To all who gave to local nonprofits through WW’s Give!Guide in November and December: You never cease to wow us.
In a year in which local giving had been down across the board, you supported Give!Guide’s nonprofits as never before: 16,702 of you gave $7,845,497 to 203 worthy local nonprofits.
That’s almost a 20% increase over last year.
On top of that, 3,227 of you are under the age of 36. With a little luck, Give!Guide will be the beginning of a lifetime of personal philanthropy. That, at least, was the original purpose behind this annual campaign—and remains our guiding light to this day.
It’s also why we celebrate four outstanding nonprofit professionals with Skidmore Prizes. Congratulations again to Kendra Johnson, cameron whitten, Lue Lé and Gerard Rodriguez.
Give!Guide takes more than a village to function. For starters, we had more sponsors, business partners and participants this year than ever before. You can read about all of them (and see donation totals by nonprofit) at giveguide.org.
Two sponsors stand out: Morel Ink as the lead sponsor for the second year in a row—and Ken and Annie Edwards, who first helped fund the website rebuild (see more in the next paragraph) and then contributed $500 to each of Give!Guide’s nonprofits.
Then there’s that website rebuild. The folks at Roundhouse Agency (especially Tim and Vadim) repurposed giveguide.org pretty much from scratch. This made giving ever so much easier—and faster—and added important features for participants.
Everyone at WW pitched in, especially executive director Toni Tringolo and campaign assistant Josh Rentschler.
Then there’s you. We hear all manner of reports about the Give!Guide experience each year—from families who work with their children to decide on recipients of their generosity to folks who can barely scrape together $10 donations but give anyway to folks who’ve made Give!Guide an annual event.
We aspire to be the easiest—and most enjoyable—way to do year-end giving in the Portland metro area. But we simply cannot do this without all the help we get from this amazing community. In a year of frustration for us all, WW’s Give!Guide offered a nice beacon of hope.
Thank you all. And may 2022 be better—way better—on all fronts.
Richard H. Meeker
Founder, Willamette Week’s Give!Guide
President, City of Roses Media Company
P.S. If you have ideas for how we can improve WW’s Give!Guide in 2022, please email our executive director: ttringolo@wweek.com.
The Bottom Line
For the second year in a row, Give!Guide broke records in every corner. At $7.8 million, this is the most we’ve ever raised. It’s also the most donors, nonprofits and community partners we’ve ever had.
Goal: $6.5 million. Final results: $7,840,472 from 16,701 donors.
On the money side, that’s 121% of this year’s goal and an increase of more than 19% from 2020. And the number of donors increased by 5%.
More people chipped in with $10 donations this year than ever before: 12,198 donations at that level.
Average donations were close to pre-pandemic levels: $120 in 2021, $104 in 2020, $122 in 2019.
The median donation held steady at $50 for the third year in a row.
The largest donation was $101,000. It was shared equally with all the nonprofits.
Donors gave to an average of four nonprofits. This added up to 64,992 total donations.
There was a significant increase in matching gifts from business partners and foundations that gave a dollar or more for every dollar donated by the public. This year, $759,725 was matched 1 to 1. That’s up from $575,900 in 2020 and $363,000 in 2019.
Top 10 Nonprofits Across All Categories
1. Oregon Cultural Trust $611,671
2. Oregon Food Bank $246,295
3. The Pongo Fund $243,718
4. Friends of the Columbia Gorge $233,035
5. Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette $139,145
6. Blanchet House of Hospitality $117,053
7. Transition Projects $103,952
8. Central City Concern $101,275
9. Outside In $98,899
10. Adelante Mujeres $97,320
The 35 & Under Challenge
The nonprofits with the most individual donors age 35 and under in each category are being awarded an extra $1,000 from our friends at Tandem Property Management.
Congratulations to the following winners!
Animals: Portland Animal Welfare Team (97)
Civil & Human Rights: Street Roots (128)
Community: Native American Youth and Family Center (169)
Creative Expression: Friends of Noise (102)
Education: Children’s Book Bank (90)
Environment: Wild Diversity (161)
Health: Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette (123)
Home: JOIN (86)
Human Services: Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (74)
Hunger: Blanchet House of Hospitality (166)