How an Oregon Funder Is Moving Millions to Black-Led Groups Fighting Systemic Racism
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D’Artagnan Bernard Caliman, Director of Justice Oregon for Black Lives
Black-led organizations in Oregon working to mitigate systemic racism have received more than $3 million so far from a new funding initiative created specifically to support their work. And the effort is just getting started.
Justice Oregon for Black Lives was launched by the Meyer Memorial Trust just weeks after the murder of George Floyd, with an initial commitment from the Portland-based foundation of $25 million over five years, to “lift up Black Oregonians, leadership and organizations,” according to their announcement in July.
In December, Meyer announced the hiring of D’Artagnan Bernard Caliman—an Oregon native who had most recently been the executive director of Seattle’s Building Changes—as Justice Oregon’s first director.
While Caliman’s work with Justice Oregon is still very much in the listening and partnership-building stage as the initiative looks to broaden its reach, Meyer and the fund have been busy moving money since the summer. By the end of March, Justice Oregon had already awarded 36 grants totaling more than $3 million.
“We were really supporting the energy that was taking place in Portland at that time,” said Kaberi Banerjee Murthy, Meyer’s director of program strategy. Since the 2020 murder of George Floyd, Portland has been the scene of large, ongoing protests against police brutality and other forms of systemic racism.
In the face of the protests for racial justice and last year’s wildfires, Meyer and Justice Oregon “wanted to be able to move at the speed of trust.” During the initial round of funding, Meyer reduced the amount of paperwork required of grantees and worked with existing organizational and community partners to provide urgently needed funds as quickly as possible.
In addition to providing essential support with those initial funds, Banerjee Murthy said that Meyer started making grants so quickly because the funder wanted to “marry words with action” after announcing the creation of Justice Oregon.
Looking ahead to a statewide Justice Oregon for Black Lives
While Justice Oregon for Black Lives continues to move forward with its grantmaking, Banerjee Murthy and Caliman told Inside Philanthropy that they are now also broadening their focus. By foregoing open calls for proposals and instead concentrating on current partners, Banerjee Murthy said they missed an opportunity to get to know new organizations. In the heat of the initial crises, many of the fund’s early grants were Portland-specific.
Caliman added that, outside of responding to specific emergencies, as with the police brutality protests, the goal of the fund is to address the generational and systemic harm caused by a state originally founded as a whites-only utopia. Portland today remains one of the whitest large cities in the country, with a Black population of just 6.6% of the population, and just 2.2% in the state.
Now that Caliman is on board, Meyer and Justice Oregon are reaching out to leaders throughout the state. While the majority of his initial meetings have taken place with organizations based in Portland, the goal is for Justice Oregon to become a statewide endeavor.
“If you’re working in Eugene, if you’re working in Ashland, that looks very different than if you’re working within Portland,” Caliman said.
In just under three months, Caliman has met with about 40 individuals representing organizations such as the Urban League, Eugene Springfield NAACP, and the Portland Business Alliance, and includes outreach outside of the state’s Black communities. And while Justice Oregon isn’t seeking funding from outside sources, Caliman said the program is reaching out to philanthropic partners, the business community, and other public and private entities to coordinate their efforts.
“This is not just the work of Meyer Memorial Trust,” he said, but “the work of our entire state.”
Listening and learning
Caliman also emphasized that Justice Oregon’s work will be a partnership in which the funder will follow the lead of the organizations it supports. Through the work and conversations he’s taken part in so far, Caliman believes that Oregon’s Black communities already have the answers.
“For me, [the focus] is really to build upon the expertise and the brilliance that already exists within communities, and really not recreating wheels,” he said.
Caliman said that five main themes have emerged from his meetings so far. The first three themes address practical needs like economic justice, education, and public safety, with an emphasis on reforming the criminal justice system .
The final two themes speak to the heart, and to claiming and reclaiming power as Black Oregonians. One involves using the arts to shift the narrative and give Black people “ownership of our story,” and the other involves community healing and addressing “the trauma that Black communities have suffered throughout their time within Oregon.”
Caliman cited Reimagine Oregon as an example of the kind of work Justice Oregon wants to be a part of. Launched in July 2020 by a group of Black-led organizations and individual Black activists and organizers, the group has engaged state officials including Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. In a recent meeting with Reimagine Oregon and other state officials, Brown said she was “laying the groundwork” to pay reparations to Black Oregonians.
Reimagine Oregon, he said, “came out of the gate” with eight demands centered around the idea of “what do we want to divest from, and what do we want to invest into?”
Rooting equity into Meyer Memorial Trust’s DNA
Justice for Black Lives Oregon emerged from a previously scheduled board meeting the day after George Floyd’s murder, but Banerjee Murthy told Inside Philanthropy that the funder’s commitment to equity has become “deeply rooted in the DNA of the organization,” thanks to work Meyer started nearly a decade ago.
Banerjee Murthy, who wasn’t with Meyer at that time, said that the organization started working on equity in 2013, and on equity-focused grantmaking in 2015. (Inside Philanthropy first looked into this shift in 2016.)
Today, Meyer’s focus on equity in its funding is mirrored by the diversity of its leadership and its internal processes. Four of the philanthropy’s six trustees are people of color and four of them are women. Meyer also has an all-female executive team with Black and other women of color in four of the six positions, including President and CEO Michelle J. DePass.
“One of the things that attracted me to Meyer was to be able to lead with folks for whom this work is not an academic or an intellectual exercise, but it is really our life’s work and purpose that is driving us,” Banerjee Murthy said. “To me, it’s deeply personal.”
Meyer’s leadership is also aware that Black Oregonians aren’t the only targets of systemic racism and white nationalism. The trust also partners with organizations serving Native peoples and both Latinx and Asian communities, who have also struggled under two centuries of systemic racism. Meyer continued making grants to those communities in 2020.
As for Justice Oregon for Black Lives, Meyer is just getting the ball rolling.
The initial five-year, $25 million investment is “our floor and not our ceiling,” Banerjee Murthy said. “It’s our entry in, with a minimum of a five-year commitment, without the expectation that the challenges that we’re looking to have an influence upon will be solved within five years.”
