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Rosalie Sheehy Cates | It’s magic to watch impact investing happen in a small town. In June, a group of local people met in Missoula, Montana for 90 minutes and crafted a $300,000 loan enabling a nonprofit organization to buy land for an innovative affordable housing development. Their transaction paves the way for Homeword to develop up to 72 new homes and support services that are sorely needed in Missoula.
I love seeing how impact investing plays to the strengths of small communities. For starters, everyone involved is familiar with the neighborhood and the property involved. But the real magic is that the investors have long-time relationships as professionals and friends. They trust each other. They can be open and transparent, and frankly, they can work pretty fast. more »
Lyn Hunter | “Have a great day and let your sun shine!” These are my departing words for my 8-year-old daughter every morning at drop off. It’s my rally cry hoping she unleashes her true self on the world (well, ok, her second-grade classroom) in everything she does.
The 2019 COF Career Pathways cohort has been a tremendous learning opportunity for me. For the last 13 years, I’ve been at Philanthropy Northwest steadily progressing in my responsibility in a variety of programmatic roles. Last year, I was promoted to the first-ever director of regional strategies and networks. What would it mean to move into a leadership position and remain my authentic self? A lot was at stake. more »
Nancy Sanabria | As we continue to explore strategies to support the field in incorporating equity in their practices, we are excited to announce that we are partnering with several other philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs) to advance the learning and practice of equitable evaluation among our members. This new collaborative, known as Associations Advancing Equitable Evaluation Practices (AAEEP), supports the important equity-focused work to which many of our members are already committed and striving to implement. Our joint agreement as AAEEP partners states our commitment to helping our networks understand equitable evaluation and to digging deeper into how to create change in our own organizations. more »
Dana Miller | Guest Contributor, Senior Program Director, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust | It’s an exciting day at the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. As part of our Founder’s Day celebration marking our 44th anniversary, we announced that, since opening our doors in 1975, we have awarded more than $1 billion in grants to nonprofits that serve the Pacific Northwest.
Preparing for this announcement has allowed our team to reflect on the thousands of nonprofits we have had the opportunity to partner with over the years and the myriad projects that we have helped bring to fruition in some small way. more »