TWST Blog

We are in Cottage Grove today, a community of about 10,000 residents, meeting in the City’s fabulous library. Normally, I would have a photo to share but I forgot - sorry. Anyway, the library space is amazing and it has several meeting rooms that are in constant use. The library overbooked and we had to wait for another group to finish their meeting before we began ours. It also houses the Chamber of Commerce, a therapy pool, the Senior Center, and a Business Resource Center. 

Attending this TWST were 16 folks representing a range of services for youth and adults, the local theatre and art center, recreation, parenting education, mentoring, mental health, and emergency food and shelter services. We were also pleased to welcome Tyson Woodard from the Woodard Family Foundation of Cottage Grove. His family’s foundation focuses their philanthropic investments on organizational capacity building.  

This was a small enough group that we could discuss specific projects and organizational needs during the meeting whereas I usually do this one-on-one after the meeting. We learned about Planned Parenthood of Southwest Oregon’s $8.5 million capital campaign for a new facility. They have $1 million left to raise after only about 12 months of this project, and they asked if MMT would consider a grant that they could use to boost their local fundraising campaign to match the grant funds. We love it when groups can use a MMT grant to leverage more dollars for their projects.

The group wanted to know if foundation boards and trustees talked to one another to increase their impact in a community or field of work. MMT takes advantage of these opportunities when we can – an example would be our support of the Chalkboard Project, which is funded by six Oregon foundations including Meyer Memorial Trust. The discussion turned to questions about how MMT and other foundations make decisions when a number of groups from one area apply at the same time. I encouraged the nonprofits to communicate with each other about their plans to apply for grants so that they minimize competition with each other. They agreed this was a good idea, but they also felt they had no bandwidth to convene the area’s nonprofits in addition to the work they already do. Several options came up, from forming an entity whose role is to coordinate these types of collaborative activities – creating another nonprofit didn’t get a lot of support, to having one agency take lead on this, to communicating informally in small groups and then more broadly via email. The question also came up if this could be the role that philanthropy plays. My opinion is that local philanthropy, perhaps family foundations, would be best positioned within the community to do this. This was another great session with one more incredible community.

So, now I am on the hunt for some food. I found this wonderful restaurant in Sutherlin called Si, Casa Flores and ordered the Pescado Mojo De Ajo - halibut sautéed with onions, mushrooms, butter, garlic, and spices – yum! I hope the photo isn’t too blurry I was excited to share this with you and my hands were shaky.

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