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While springtime for most Portlanders means cherry blossoms and the first hints of sunshine, for interest groups funded by the city, it’s panic time as the City Council prepares to slash its way out of a $90 million budget hole.
One group sounding the alarm is the nonprofit Venture Portland, which for almost 40 years has provided small grants, training and assistance to business districts—the commercial blocks that pepper Portland neighborhoods from Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard to North Mississippi Avenue.
In a series of emails last month, Venture’s leaders asked supporters to lobby the city to keep the money flowing.
“Did you hear the awful news? Just as small businesses in Portland are struggling more than ever, the only organization focusing on supporting business districts, Venture Portland, could be losing critical funding from the city of Portland,” the organization wrote in a March 21 mailer. “We were told that this decision was due to City Council’s lack of interest in small business.”
The reality is more complicated. Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, has for 35 years bankrolled Venture Portland. And, in recent years, Venture tripled in size as Prosper supplied it with federal pandemic relief dollars—providing $1.2 million of Venture’s $1.3 million in revenue for fiscal 2022–23. Of the $995,000 spent by the organization that fiscal year, $744,000 went to salaries, wages and benefits for Venture Portland staff and management. Just $95,000 went directly to 11 districts in the form of grants.
In March, Prosper decided to pull the plug. The agency’s interim director, Andrew Fitzpatrick, wrote to business associations in a March 3 email that Venture Portland would likely be axed from the city’s payroll. He said Prosper Portland would internalize the services Venture Portland provided, effectively bringing them in house and more closely under the city’s watch.
In some ways, Venture Portland’s fate is emblematic of a larger phenomenon at play in Portland’s budget crunch. A flood of one-time federal relief dollars propped up the city’s budget, expanded services and, in some cases, fattened the nonprofits that it contracted. But now that those funds have dried up, the city must make difficult decisions about which of those groups are integral to Portland’s recovery. Venture doesn’t appear to have made the cut.
WW spoke to 12 people inside and outside of the organization and reviewed recent tax filings from Venture and its contracts with Prosper Portland. What emerged is a cautionary tale of a long-standing nonprofit to which the city regularly outsourced its business district outreach even, as some allege, its results slipped.
Joy Church, Venture’s executive director, says that’s not the case. In fact, Church says, Venture’s importance has only deepened over the past five years as small businesses have sought to regain their footing after the pandemic gutted them of patrons.
“Losing funding to Venture Portland would have a significant impact on Portland’s business districts,” Church says. “The organization is the only resource for training, technical assistance, and support for business district associations.”
Venture Portland was founded in 1986 to help support the city’s 50 business districts wade through the bureaucratic tangle that was the city of Portland’s government.
Nancy Chapin ran the organization—in its first years a bootstrap operation with one employee, Chapin herself, and a budget of $55,000—from 1990 to 2005. Roughly half of the $50,000 that Prosper Portland awarded to Venture Portland during those early years went directly to business districts across the city, Chapin says.
And for years, that’s how it stayed. But over the past decade, Venture’s model changed significantly. As its budget ballooned, from $361,000 in fiscal year 2015 to $1.3 million in fiscal year 2023, the organization tripled its staff from five to 17.
While it continued to distribute about $100,000 in grants across 10 business districts annually, it rapidly grew its other programs—and spending.
Over the past five years, Venture Portland has provided mostly nonmonetary supports for business districts, such as informational webinars, monthly “Lunch and Learn” training sessions (the next such event in April will teach “techniques to recruit and retain board members, run effective meetings and increase board efficiency”), and advertising for small businesses through Venture Portland’s social media accounts. Venture also produces a podcast, but the newest episode dates to June 2024.
Chapin, who remained involved with Venture for many years after she left its helm, says the organization has changed significantly since she left it. “It was much more active and vibrant than it appears to have become in the last few years,” she says.
Today, Venture now also offers its paying district members (membership fees range from $450 to $1,650 annually) “fee for service” programs. A district can pay $480 for an annual “checkup” by Venture; $650 for Venture to write up a strategy for how to increase district membership; $1,300 for Venture to host a board orientation; and $2,600 to have Venture recruit and find a staffer for a district.
Church, its current executive director, was paid a salary of $117,000 in fiscal year 2023—up from her starting salary of $88,000 in 2020. That number shocks Chapin. “It surprised me to hear that the current executive was paid at a city level, and not at a community level,” she says.
Jon Isaacs, executive vice president of public affairs for the Portland Metro Chamber, says dissolving Venture, which he calls an “antiquated” model, is the prudent decision.
“It makes complete sense, especially in the face of historic budget deficit, to dissolve Venture Portland to consolidate all small business supports in a single department,” Isaacs says.
Michael Schlieski formerly served as treasurer of the Multnomah Village Business Association. He recalls attending Venture’s monthly catered lunches.
“The meetings were sort of a gab fest,” Schlieski recalls. “There are 50 business associations across the city, and four business associations that came to those meetings. It wasn’t anything that I got any value out of.”
Schlieski says Venture’s essence was good: providing information for business districts that didn’t necessarily have the time to find it on their own. “What they do makes sense, and it’s necessary and helpful,” Schlieski says, “but it wasn’t very efficient in doing it.”
Still, the business districts regularly funded by Venture Portland see it as a critical partner.
Thanks to federal American Rescue Plan Act funding funneled through Prosper, Venture Portland hired five liaisons to work directly with five separate business districts to help them enlarge their footprint. The five liaisons each worked 36 hours a week from mid-2021 to the end of 2024 and, according to the business districts, were a huge asset.
Chris Correnti is a board member of the Foster Area Business Association. His district was one of five to get a Venture-funded liaison through ARPA. Correnti says the liaison was invaluable, running the district’s social media and connecting with businesses.
“[Our district liaison] was in and out of the businesses connecting with people and knew what needed to be done on the street,” Correnti says. “He was basically just our mayor.”
But three of those liaisons, who spoke to WW on condition of anonymity, and former and current city officials who worked closely with Venture say the district liaisons did good work in spite of the leadership of the organization—not because of it.
Three Venture Portland staffers who spoke to WW said Church was rarely seen in Venture’s office on the Central Eastside. Former City Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who oversaw Prosper, says Church was not a regular advocate to her on “matters of import to the small business community.”
Prosper leaders also say working with Church hasn’t been easy.
“Communication with Venture Portland has been challenging over recent years, with leadership regularly not showing up to meetings and, in one critical instance, entirely missing a pre-scheduled panel discussion without notice,” says Shea Flaherty Betin, Prosper’s interim executive director.
Church defends her absence at that specific panel. “I was ill,” Church says. “I emailed the panel prior, sending my regrets.”
Venture says it currently has nine employees, who work the equivalent of 4.5 full-time positions. It had to pare down staff, it said, because federal pandemic relief funds expired.
Venture Portland did not respond to detailed questions regarding its expenditures in fiscal year 2022–23, including some line items that raised eyebrows, such as $9,655 spent on travel, $30,858 spent on “office expenses,” and $22,871 spent on “events and meeting.”
Venture did provide limited financials to WW and maintains that in the latter half of 2023 and again in 2024, Venture distributed an additional $250,000 annually in grants to business districts using ARPA dollars for specific projects.
“Venture Portland’s Executive Committee (and our bookkeeper) would happily schedule a meeting with you,” Church wrote at 2 pm March 31, one day before press deadline, and 10 days after WW initially requested the financials, March 21. “The collective work each [business district association] does is paramount to the success of each district: advocating, empowering, marketing, and highlighting the efforts of small business.”
Data provided by Prosper shows the agency gave a total of $2.2 million in ARPA funds to Venture over a span of three years. Venture, Prosper says, had “significant” unspent funds from fiscal year 2023–24 that it rolled into the following fiscal year. Though Venture did not provide full financials to WW for 2023–24, Prosper says it disbursed $1 million to Venture in the 2023–24 fiscal year and $1.1 million in 2024–25.
Venture board members WW reached by phone declined to answer questions or say anything about the organization, saying they were not authorized to do so.
“One of our vows is to unite in anything that we put out into the media,” Venture board member Beth Dillight said when reached by phone. Another board member said that he had “no insight” into the travel and office expenses.
Even the reason for Prosper’s decision to sever ties with Venture Portland is shrouded in mystery. Church told WW last month that Flaherty Betin informed her in a one-on-one phone call that “Venture Portland was selected for defunding due to the disinterest by the new City Council to support small business.”
Flaherty Betin says that’s inaccurate. “While we did speak about the change in city government resulting in Venture Portland no longer having a dedicated councilor liaison and champion,” he says, “City Council has been unequivocally supportive towards many small business efforts in recent years.”
Stephen Green, executive director of the business organization Better Portland, says Prosper’s move to internalize the work of supporting the business districts is the right one.
“No one knows the city better than the city,” Green says. “When it comes to helping businesses navigate the city and resources at different bureaus, no one is situated better to do that work than the city itself.”