Oregon non-profit announces $25 million initiative to invest in Black lives

Meyer Memorial Trust today announced the launch of a five-year initiative this week, “Justice Oregon for Black Lives."

With brian morton, alicia rubin, and stormwatch 12 weather with chief meteorologist matt hoffman."

The meyer memorial trust today announced the launch of a five year $25 million initiative aimed at making strategic investments in black lives matter in oregon, michelle jade, dupont, the president and ceo of the meyer memorial trust joins us now, lecturing with us.

Thank you.

Nice to be with you.

I'm a little bit about where this money will going and how you decide who gets such a generous donation.

Well, um, first of all, it's our opportunity, uh, to be able to be in partnership with if a black community in oregon.

And so we want to be very, um, diligent and, um, to move at the speed of trust with community.

So we wanted to start this out with the intent and to announce that we are making $25 million new dollars available to be able to work on issues of, uh, that.

Uh, our marrying with black lives in oregon.

Yeah.

And then to be able to build where the money would specifically go to with a black oregon, but we're thinking about three specific opportunities.

One is to be able to start or black leadership in black organizations, uh, in oregon, uh, too, who is to be able to support issues that are really much at the time before of this surge at thimoment in history and time as a.

The whole nation is really thinking about what black communities need instead of just policing.

Uh, as the answer to that question, what are some of the other things in terms of community wellbeing and supports the black communities need?

And third, to be able to, uh, imagine and dream, uh, some, uh, large supports or, or big bats for, um, the partnerships and initiatives that could move towards.

A lot more longterm and strategic, strategic, uh, support for black community and work.

So if an organization feels it can benefit from the money, do they apply to you or you go out and find organizations you feel could benefit from some of that funding.

Well, i can imagine that it would be a combination of both.

Um, we historically have done, uh, rfps.

Uh, so we have historically been able to put out, uh, opportunities to, uh, to put together and put forth a criteria.

And then.

Uh, institutions and organizations will then be able to, um, put forth their ideas and we would be able to support them.

But, uh, i'm really looking forward to, there's been being a opportunity to improve, imagine where the money would be spent with community.

So i think that we're going to be developing these opportunities with, uh, organizations and institutions and people and leadership, and not only that, but also being able to leverage.

Resources that, um, have already been and, uh, announced, and also being able to use these dollars to be able to bring forth new opportunities, uh, for black, oregon.

Specifically, would those be educational programs, micro business investments, social programs. how, how would, how would that sort of more formally be described?

Yeah, so, um, my memorial trust, if you don't know, has been, uh, about six years ago, we changed, uh, from being purely responsive grantmaking to, uh, working in several areas.

So those areas include, uh, housing, uh, environment and education and in a broader, a broader area, but we call building community.

And so we can imagine that we would be able to align these dollars with the areas that we've been working in over the course of those years.

But also i'm also open to being able to target the dollars to areas that.

Or it could be really, truly impactful in under resourced