Papé Family Foundation

End of Year 2017 Grants!

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In honor of our 20th Anniversary, my grandmother made a generous gift to our family foundation during our annual meeting in July.  20 years ago, she had a vision of philanthropy as a teaching tool and also as a way to ensure her family gets together once a year (all 38 of us!)  I’m thrilled to say we all showed up this past July to celebrate together and go about the business of running our foundation.

One piece of business was that the gift meant that we needed to make additional grants before the end of the year – what a terrific problem!  Our Adjunct Board (fourth generation) and our Grant Committee reviewed our grant applications and selected additional projects to support.  Below is a rundown – thanks to all of these amazing organizations for building and sustaining vibrant communities!

Compass Family Services (San Francisco, CA)

With a grant from PFF, Compass Family Services will make courtyard repairs to the building at Compass Clara House to ensure a safe and welcoming environment for families transitioning from homelessness to self-sufficiency and independence. Compass Clara House is an intensive two-year transitional housing program in San Francisco that provides supportive services to thirteen families at a time, as they live in private, furnished apartments and parents pursue their education, employment and housing goals. Compass Clara House is unique in San Francisco in that it is the only program of its kind that offers full-time licensed childcare for children 0-5, making it all the more convenient for parents to attend school, work, or vocational training.

Eugene Education Foundation (Eugene, OR)

The Kids In Transition to School (KITS) Program is an evidence-based school readiness program developed at the Oregon Social Learning Center, that offers a unique two generational approach designed to boost to children’s literacy, self-regulation, and social skills just prior to kindergarten entry and provide support to families as their children transition into kindergarten.  PFF joins other community partners to support this program.

Marist High School (Eugene, OR)

The Papé Family Foundation will assist Marist with a project to keep students and staff safe in the event of an active shooter on campus. The grant will enable the school to upgrade campus security with a system server to remotely lock down the school. This new system, of which the server is an integral part, will give Marist’s principal, president, facilities director or other key personnel the ability to remotely lock down every outside door in all seven buildings by phone or computer.  Once installed, the school will more quickly attain complete lockdown, improving the safety and security of our campus and making progress toward the next goals of a surveillance system and strategic fencing.

Positive Community Kitchen (Eugene, OR)

Our Adjunct Board selected Positive Community Kitchen to receive their discretionary grant in 2017.  Positive Community Kitchen’s mission is to inspire community wellness through food.  PCK provides local teens with the opportunities and skills to develop an abiding trust in their own abilities to shape a healthier tomorrow.

Science Factory (Eugene, OR)

This grant will expand and enhance Science Factory’s Early Childhood Education Space (Tot Spot).  Tot Spot will serve the youngest visitors with space and exhibits designed specifically for their early cognitive development stages. By selecting age-appropriate educational activities while offering them in a friendly and welcoming environment just for preschoolers, Science Factory aims to instill a love of learning about science and technology that will continue throughout their childhood and stay with them for life. The new exhibit plans include an interactive water table, interactive pneumatic tubes, engineering with geometry zones, and a fossil excavation pit. These new experiences will foster creativity, curiosity, and collaboration in an open exploration format. The exhibit will also feature a padded infant play zone surrounded by a circular bench for protection and parent seating.

Doernbecher Children’s Hospital at OHSU (Portland, OR)

We make an annual grant to the Papé Pediatric Research Institute to support their work. The institute is dedicated to building a state-of-the-art research facility with a focus on studying numerous childhood diseases, such as diabetes, neurological disorders, hemophilia, pediatric cancer and metabolic disorders.

Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children (Dallas, TX)

Our Adjunct Board grant to TSRHC will be used to purchase one infusion pump to upgrade care for 50 children each year. The hospital’s Inpatient Nursing Unit provides round-the-clock care for children who are admitted for surgery or a medical procedure. One of the crucial responsibilities of the nursing staff is to provide patients with supportive care, including monitoring of respiratory status, blood oxygenation levels, hydration and secretion levels both before surgery and during the post-operative, recovery period. An IV infusion pump is a vital piece of equipment that allows nurses to infuse IV fluids at a precise rate to ensure that the patient receives an appropriate amount of fluid replenishment, nutrition, and pharmaceutical support before and after surgery. Keeping hydration levels in check, nutritional needs met, and pain and infection managed helps the patient recover more quickly, thereby decreasing the overall length of the hospital stay.

iLeap (Seattle, WA)

PFF’s grant will provide capital support for a significant update of iLeap’s 5,000 square foot community and teaching space located in the historic Good Shepherd Center in Seattle, Washington. Their public training space in Seattle is known for its beauty, warmth, and versatility. Each year iLeap gifts about $10,000 in discounted rental fees to local community organizations who use the space and this brings close to 2,000 people annually into the training facility. Capital improvements to the space will enable iLEAP to grow their programming and expand community partnerships.

Announcing 2017 PFF Community Grants!

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Thanks to all the organizations that took the time to participate in our grant making process and share their visions for opportunity and inclusiveness within our communities!  Philanthropy often looks like a top-down, one way street, but in truth it’s a collaborative partnership.  We wouldn’t, couldn’t, exist without you!

As always, our grant committee had a tough job to make a recommendation for annual grants to our Board of Trustees.  This year they selected six organizations in California, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest.  You can learn more about the organizations and projects below!

Berkely, CA Waterside Workshops – Richmond Boathouse Expansion Project.  Grant will contribute to funding needed to expand the youth boat building program to Richmond. Richmond has miles of beautiful, underused Bay Shore that will allow Waterside Workshops to take their boatbuilding program to the next level and expand the on-water and environmental education aspects of the program. The Richmond Boathouse project will operate as a satellite program to the established Berkeley Boathouse program.

Boise, ID
All Saints Episcopal Church – Grant will enable a Parish Hall Roof Repair.  Serious leaks have developed in the building, affecting offices and conference rooms including those used by Boise Valley Habitat for Humanity, the Parish Hall kitchen, and the rooms housing The Friendship Clinic. Multiple organizations rely upon All Saints as their home and meeting place to carry out their separate missions of support for the Bench Community including Foster Grandparents, Alcoholic Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, the Angel Tree program, Pridefest, Boy Scouts of America Troop 123, St. Vincent de Paul Thanksgiving Box Program, Crop Walk, and the monthly Friendship Meal.  The Parish Hall serves as the emergency meeting center for both nearby Monroe Elementary and Jefferson Elementary Schools.

Corvallis, OR
Team Dirt – Grant will help fun the Corvallis Pump Track.  Pump tracks are a relatively new kind of riding structure consisting of perfectly shaped banked turns and rolling straightaways that allow riders to use a pumping motion of the hips and legs to propel their bicycles, skate boards, skates, and scooters around the track. Team Dirt envisions a facility and destination which will inspire kids and families to get outside and exercise. The proposed community facility will help combat the growing obesity problem so prevalent in our nation’s population. Moreover, the location of the pump track, under the bridge on the downtown riverfront, will allow for year around utilization.

Girls on the Run – Grant will fund County Coordination Team Implementation, a new program start-up. Girls on the Run is designed to meet girls in late childhood and arm them with positive emotional, social, mental, and physical developmental experiences to carry with them into adolescence. Girls on the Run has been shown to effectively increase in physical activity and participation in sports teams, commitment to physical activity, self-esteem, and body size satisfaction among participating girls . The County Coordination Team Project will enable Girls on the Run to better serve girls, identify low–income at-risk youth for program expansion, recruit high quality volunteers, and fundraise to support scholarships.

Dallas, TX
Birthday Party Project – The Dallas warehouse is HOT. HOT. HOT! Grant will cover costs to add an air conditioning unit to this warehouse.  The Birthday Party Project serves families living in homeless shelters by celebrating birthdays for children ages 1-18 of all genders and races.  A special cake and birthday gift is given to the children celebrating a birthday that month. Since 2012, The Birthday Party Project has celebrated over 3,500 birthdays with over 24,000 kids in attendance! Most of the kids have never before had a birthday party.

Seattle, WA
BAYFEST Youth Theater – Grant will fund digital media and office equipment purchases for Dramatic and Active Arts, providing staff with tools and equipment critical to operations and program delivery. BAYFEST serves an average of 300 participants annually, reaching another 700 audience members through public performances. These programs use dramatic and active arts to foster empathetic and cooperative learning environments that provide students and young performers with improved cognitive abilities, language skills, physical awareness, concentration, imagination, and self-confidence.

Grant Proposals Under Consideration

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Thanks to all the organizations that took the time to submit a Letter of Inquiry and share their visions for opportunity and inclusiveness within our communities!  Philanthropy often looks like a top-down, one way street, but in truth it’s a collaborative partnership.  We wouldn’t, couldn’t, exist without you!

One of the best parts of my job as Executive Director of the Papé Family Foundation happens now, when I get to sit down and read through the array project proposals and requests for funding we receive each autumn.  I’m always impressed by the different approaches being taken -from music and education to sports and healthcare – to offer hope to those most affected by systemic inequality.  I’ll send these ideas on to our Grant Committee, who will have very hard choices to make over the next few months to help turn projects from ideas on paper into reality.

Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

2015 Grant Decisions

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Summer is always a little bittersweet for me here at the foundation.  We traditionally hold our annual meeting early to mid summer and I always look forward to reconnecting with extended family.  The trustees gather to share committee reports, debate how best to manage foundation assets, make funding decisions, and hear updates on previous grants.  And after the whirlwind weekend I return to to my desk and get to write big checks to help support amazing programs throughout the communities our family call home. This is the best part of my job.

But I also have to send emails, quite a lot this year, that let organizations know we aren’t able to fund their equally important projects.  Those emails always break my heart just a little.  Sometimes I hear back with questions about how they can better their chances next time around.  I often don’t have a good answer.  We simply have to make impossible choices.  We are a small foundation with relatively little to give away each year (we’re required by law to give a certain amount, and of course we could exceed that, but we have to balance our grant-making with the future financial health and growth of the foundation so we can give more and more each year). In 2015 we are giving $78,000, bringing our total gifts since 1997 to just shy of $750,000.  To put this in perspective, we started in 1996 with assets of just under $1 million.  At some point in the near future we’ll hopefully have granted more than the funds we started with.

We received 50 eligible and worthy applications this year, a record for us by far.  The grant committee worked hard to bring a proposal to the full board that attempted to honor the amounts requested, spread our funding among a variety of cities, and find balance between honoring previously established relationships and starting new ones.  They selected nine organizations from California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Texas.  I’m delighted we’re partnering with the following organizations over the next  9-10 months and look forward to sharing their stories:

New Door Ventures, San Francisco

FC Nova, Boise

Buena Vista Parent Organization, Eugene

Serenity Lane Health Services, Eugene

Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, Dallas

Bike Works, Seattle

Solid Ground , Seattle

Ranch Hand Rescue, Argyle (Dallas)

Papé Pediatric Research Institute, Portland

I can’t say thank you enough to all the organizations who applied and especially to those individuals who put time and energy into gathering the necessary information and working through our first-ever online application.  I say this often, because it’s true.  We could not exist without our grant-making and we are so grateful to everyone who participates.  Even when we have to say “no, not this year,” we thoroughly enjoy reading about all of the projects taking place in the cities where we live.  You all inspire us.

Site Visit to FEEST

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Grant-making has always been my favorite part of our family foundation so when the grant committee needed someone in Seattle to make a site-visit to one of our applicants, I jumped at the chance.  FEEST (Food Empowerment Education and Sustainability Team) is an awesome organization that I’ve written about before.  They are doing work that I am deeply passionate about – building community through shared meal experiences.

I was invited to join students, FEEST staff and other community members at Evergreen High School to prepare and eat dinner together.  Arriving mid-afternoon at the Home Economics room took me right back to middle school memories.  I joined the circle around a table of ingredients as one of the students explained the FEEST community agreements and safety tips.  We started with introductions – name, rate of your day from 1-10, and one food you can’t live without for the rest of life.  I guessed my day was about a six and offered eggs as my food.  Some people were having amazing days, some not so much.  Favorite foods around the circle included chocolate and berries – I started to feel I was in the right place!  Next we discussed the ingredients in front of us and options for preparing them.  And then the meal planning began.  Using a method I’m familiar with from grad school called “Yes, and…” we built a menu from the items on the table.  One student got us started by naming chicken and pasta as our first dish.  The next student built on that with “yes, and… spinach for the chicken and pasta.”   The next person in the circle offered “yes, and…smoothies.”  The collaboration was inspiring.  A few times around the group with contributions from all, we had our dishes:

Menu Board
Menu Board

 

I got to be on a team with Mariam, to create the stir fry.  Everyone got to work chopping, mixing and cooking to a groovy teenage playlist.  The space was perfect – plenty of stoves, sinks and counterspace to go around.  Staff worked with students to offer tips and creativity filled the room.  In about an hour we had a lovely table and more than enough food.  We sat down together and I learned about other traditions the FEEST community has developed.  Before eating, we shared in several rituals: we each offered one thing we were thankful for, teams introduced their dish and the ingredients used, and finally we took turns serving each other before diving in.  What a meal!

After enjoying the fruits of our labor, we all pitched in to clean up. Soon I was in my car on my way home, my day having climbed to a perfect 10.  Funny how community and cooking can do that.

Team Stir Fry!
Team Stir Fry!

 

 

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