Caroline McDonald

Exciting New Learning Resource and a Friendly Invitation

Your Racial Equity Committee is excited to begin our second year working together and we welcome Girlfriends interested in this work to join us as we continue our journey of embedding racial equity in all that we do. We meet virtually on the first Monday of the month for 60-90 minutes. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Barbara Hilyer.

We are pleased to share a compilation of Racial Equity Resources that we have curated for you on our website under the Education tab and linked here. We hope you find this material interesting and valuable. This offers great information at your fingertips, including the Reducing Racial Disparities Spotlight Report which is focused on our local community.

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Volunteer Opportunities Abound

It’s a new year at ninety-nine girlfriends and that means lots of volunteer opportunities are opening up as Girlfriends move around or move on. There are one-time opportunities and short-term task forces, and longer-term team and committee positions available. Ready to pitch in and want to learn more about what might be the right fit for you? Schedule a call or coffee date with Tammy and she’ll help you learn about the options.

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Volunteer Spotlight: Kaye O'Kearny

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?  

Linda Williams, a dear friend and amazing human, introduced me to ninety-nine girlfriends. At the time, I was working with the Intel Foundation and had become curious about approaches to giving. I also wanted to learn more about the Portland non-profit ecosystem and meet people, particularly women, who were outside the tech industry. I had been talking to Linda about all of that and she said “I think you’d really like ninety-nine girlfriends. She was right.

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Grantee Partner Update: Adelante Mujeres

Congratulations to past Impact Partner Adelante Mujeres’ staff member, Itzel Chávez Gómez, who was awarded the Give!Guide’s Skidmore Prize! The prize is an annual award from the Willamette Week that honors four young Portlanders who work every day to make Portland a better place. Check out the Give!Guide for more information on Itzel and the other awesome recipients of the Skidmore Prize, as well as the many organizations seeking your support this holiday season! You can check out a list of past impact partners and finalists featured in the Give!Guide here! 

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Grantee Partner Update: BRAVO Youth Orchestra

BRAVO Youth Orchestra had their first choir performance December 9 at PSU for their Community Sing event. They reported that their students did a fantastic job that garnered a standing ovation! BRAVO’s in-school Preschool Program is up and running at Clarendon Learning Center, and going well. The organization is serving around 60 preschool-aged children by teaching them general music education. Up next is the BRAVO Community Orchestra concert at University of Portland's Buckley Auditorium TODAY, Friday, December 16th at 7PM (ninety-nine girlfriends Liaison, Anne Castleton has joined their ranks and will be performing with them!).

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News from Grants Steering Committee

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We are so grateful to you, our members, our volunteers, and our nonprofit community for countless hours of hard work and endless amount of grace it takes to get to this point each year.

We're streamlining our grantmaking process for 2023 to make it easier for our non-profit community and ourselves, and so that more of our members can engage and learn through our work in the future. We are centering trust-based philanthropy as we retool and reimagine how best to bring funds to our community, and to learn while we do it. We can't wait to show you what we come up with - stay tuned!

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A Wonderful Time was had by All

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It was such a gift to be able to gather together to celebrate our Impact Partners and our 2022 work. The music was lively, the food was yummy, and the opportunity to be together in real life was wonderful. Here is the link to the photos from the event for your enjoyment.  The password is Greatroom.  
Please credit Andrea Lonas Photography if you choose to share them on social media.

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Join Us For 2023

We know many members want to contribute before the end of the year for tax purposes or for employee matching programs. If that is you, or you just want to get it done, you can renew here. Employer matching programs have helped us increase our grant pool and have funded important educational opportunities. We encourage you to select ninety-nine girlfriends as your match recipient and we appreciate your generosity. If you need any help with receipts, please let us know.

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Volunteer Spotlight: Pip Meagher (Copy)

Briana Babbit

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

I first learned of ninety-nine girlfriends several years ago when a nonprofit I worked for applied for a grant. I am interested in systems change and collective impact work and so it seemed like a natural fit to get involved. I was particularly drawn to the Fellows program to have a space to connect with other young women and nonbinary folks and carve out a sense of community.

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Volunteer Spotlight: Pip Meagher

Pip Meagher

What brought you to ninety-nine girlfriends?

I was invited to join by my amazing mother-in-law, Gun Denhart. Gun has connected me with many wonderful, community based organizations over the last few decades so I always pay attention when she recommends anything new. Being involved in a volunteer capacity within the community is not new to me so I was immediately curious to learn more as I didn’t know much at all about the model of collective giving that ninety-nine girlfriends was focused on. I met with co-founder Eileen Brady shortly thereafter and before you knew it I was co-leading a grant review team with Maura Koehler-Hanlon. That was in 2016 and I have never looked back.

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Urban Gleaners

One of our 2017 Impact Partners, Urban Gleaners, is seeking a new Executive Director! In their own words, “​​Urban Gleaners has a 16-year history of feeding children and families who are food-insecure in Multnomah and Washington Counties. Our mission is to collect delicious, fresh food before it can go to waste and get it to food-insecure children and families. Pure and simple. We see healthy food as a fundamental right in a just society.” They prefer to receive applications by 5p on Wednesday, November 30, 2022, and will start
scheduling interviews soon after that (position will remain open until filled). Learn More

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Membership for 2023 Opens December 1!

Girlfriends will be able to renew or join for 2023 beginning December 1, 2022!

Start thinking about who you know that might want to learn more about ninety-nine girlfriends and invite them to the Awards Celebration happening on Tuesday, December 13. This event is a great way - on a fun and celebratory evening - to learn about our incredible Impact Partners and to meet some of the amazing Girlfriends who fuel this community.

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The Girlfriends will Test a Hybrid Model at the Awards Celebration

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In the interest of inclusion and taking what we’ve learned in the pandemic and carrying that forward, while honoring the wonderful live event experiences we enjoy sharing, we will be testing the hybrid event model at our Awards Celebration on Tuesday, December 13. The event will be in-person and we encourage you to register and join us for a wonderful evening of celebration of our new Impact Partners and the work we’ve done over the past year, while we welcome new friends and colleagues who want to learn more about ninety-nine girlfriends by attending this event. If it doesn’t work for you to attend in person, please register for the virtual event and you can log onto zoom and watch the event from home. The virtual option will be free and the in-person option will offer a sliding scale that will help us recoup a small portion of the cost of the event. Be sure to register for the option that works best for you HERE.

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Become a Liaison for our 2022 Impact Partners!

Would you like to learn more about our Impact Partners throughout the year and play a vital role in helping ninety-nine girlfriends in supporting them beyond the award? We are currently recruiting members to serve as liaisons for the incoming cohort of impact partners. Liaisons play a critical role as ambassadors, advocates, and allies to the organizations we support. This is a great role for someone who loves being in conversation with new people, building connections, and gathering and sharing information. For more information, contact Van, Impact Team Lead.

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Help Keep Us Organized!

Do you know your way around a 10-key? Are you tech-savvy? The Operations & Finance Committee is looking for a couple of Girlfriends to help with data entry and information management!

Data entry would be mainly within QuickBooks. If this is a new program for you, no worries! If you have a strong attention to detail, Operations & Finance Co-Chair, Lan, can teach you the needed basics. Our all-volunteer run organization utilizes a variety of programs to keep ninety-nine girlfriends running. We're looking for a member that can organize and update the access info to these programs and help with onboarding new volunteers who will use them. Programs include: Google Drive, Zoom, Stripe, and more.If either of these volunteer roles spark your interest, send Lan an email to learn more.

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