‘Our youth can't wait': Portland City Council approves $65 million in Children's Levy grants
On June 4, councilors voted 7-5 to reject the Portland Children's Levy's nearly $65 million in grant requests. Then councilors passed an emergency ordinance to extend all current grants for a year, even to groups that the PCL Allocation Committee had decided not to recommend for funding.
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Councilor Steve Novick was one of the five who voted against rejecting the requests. On Wednesday, he introduced an ordinance to revoke the extension and go back to pass the recommended grants. He called the Children's Levy citizen involvement on steroids.
'Dozens of volunteers going through an elaborate process to come up with recommendations,' he said. 'And I would like anybody who votes against returning the recommendations of those advisory committees and of the staff to say nothing about citizen involvement in the future.'
Since the ordinance was added to the agenda on Wednesday, that opened the door for public testimony. Many, like Triple Threat Mentoring Founder and CEO Nike Greene, jumped on the opportunity to voice their concerns.
'Our youth can't wait,' she said. 'We are the leaders on the front lines, mentoring, guiding and protecting Black and brown youth across Portland. The PCL funding is not a luxury, it's a lifeline. You said you wanted to hear from Community Center our voices even now, you heard from our community when we said we wanted new, small and emerging organizations to access PCL funding.'
Others highlighted the diversity of the PLC Allocation Committee, urging the City Council to change its mind.
'We helped shape the recommendations to ensure that the widest variety of communities and the widest possible amount of supports could be provided to communities that need it,' Deian Salazar with the PLC Advisory Council said. 'This portfolio extended to college-age youth for the first time. Even with less funding, we were getting out to more organizations than ever before in an equitable way.'
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After even more testimony, and much discussion between councilors, the ordinance passed unanimously.
'I have something of a reputation for making mistakes and then apologizing repeatedly until I'm blue in the face, sometimes over a period of years,' Novick said. 'And I don't think that– I don't think that doing that is essential to being a good public official, but being willing to change your mind and make mistakes is so. I really appreciate serving in a body where there are people willing to do that.'
Novick also took time to thank community members who came out to testify without knowing if they would get the chance to. Other councilors apologized to those in the audience, saying they got the first vote wrong but were glad to change it today.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Under Philpart's leadership, the California Black Freedom Fund started the Legal Education, Advocacy, and Defense for Racial Justice Initiative, which provides pro bono legal consulting and training for nonprofits. The program operates on the premise that there isn't anything illegal about racial justice funding. But the 2023 Supreme Court ruling against considering race in college admissions, in a pair of cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, was viewed by some as an indication that private philanthropies could not legally engage in race-based grant making — and the issue is far from settled. While Philpart's fundraising pitch might resonate with some donors, others are sure to be nervous, given the scrutiny placed on race-based grant making by the White House, said Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, a litigation and advocacy nonprofit that has challenged affirmative action programs. The White House has directed the Department of Justice to root out instances of race-based grantmaking, which it considers discriminatory. 'You don't want to be on their radar because they are fervently looking for people to make examples of at this point,' Morenoff said. While some corporations and philanthropies, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an early supporter of the California Black Freedom Fund, have retreated from supporting racial justice, Philpart is counting on securing support from donors who want to stay with the cause even as the issue is argued in various court cases stemming from Trump's anti-DEI executive orders. The attacks from the administration, Philpart said, have been a 'clarifying moment' for many donors and have generated interest in the fund. 'People have rallied to us and really doubled down on their commitments to support Black freedom and Black power,' he said. 'That is the most telling thing coming out of this moment — that there is a critical mass of leaders throughout the country who care very deeply about the community.' 70 financial supporters One grantmaker that has doubled down is the California Wellness Foundation. The foundation made an initial grant of $500,000 when the fund was first launched, then made a $200,000 commitment to a separate fund created by the California Black Freedom Fund in response to the January Los Angeles fires, and recently added $500,000 to support the spin-off. Richard Tate, president of the California Wellness Fund, said the new fund is 'needed now more than ever' because of attempts by the administration to roll back equity efforts. 'The fact that we are talking about a Black Freedom Fund is an acknowledgment that not everyone has equal standing in the culture,' he said. 'Whatever headwinds that may exist because of this political moment, now is the time for us to continue to be explicit about our intentions of supporting a community.' Philanthropy needs to act quickly by unleashing more money in grants to support areas like litigation, public advocacy, and the replacement of lost federal funds, said Glenn Harris, president of Race Forward, a nonprofit racial justice advocacy group. But, he said, lasting institutions that can respond to future challenges are also needed. 'There's a balancing act,' Harris said. 'It's really clear that struggles for liberation and justice are going to be with us for a minute.' Among the two dozen grant makers that chipped in to start the fund are the Akonadi, Conrad Hilton and San Francisco foundations as well as the Emerson Collective, Crankstart, the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The total of institutional funders to the effort since 2020 now exceeds 70. Why endowments Among the groups the fund has supported are the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, a community-owned cooperative that 'removes land and housing from the speculative market and places it into permanent community stewardship,' according to the fund. A late 2023 survey of nearly 300 foundations conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy found that more than two thirds of grantmakers did not offer endowment grants. Half of those that did so made them to arts organizations and museums. Nonprofits led by Black people receive endowment grants even more rarely, according to a 2022 analysis of social change organizations by the Bridgespan Group, a philanthropy consultancy, which found that nonprofits led by Black people had endowments that were only a fourth as big as those led by white people. Since then, some grant makers have stepped forward to support endowments at organizations serving members of Black communities, said Darren Isom, a partner at Bridgespan. For instance, in 2022 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation made grants of $5 million each to three racial justice organizations led by people of color: UnidosUS, the NAACP, and Faith in Action. 'Endowments are transfer of power from philanthropic organizations to the organizations that are closest to the work,' he said. 'From an impact perspective, the work is more high impact, more beneficial, and more durable if it's owned by and led by those that are the closest to issues and closest to the communities.' Philpart is confident that despite the blow-back against diversity and racial justice, the fund can raise enough money to meet its goal. 'We're drawing people out who want to prove we are greater than divisiveness, we are greater than bigotry, and we are a greater than racism,' he said. 'We are better than all the things that pull us apart and don't fundamentally improve anyone's well-being.' ______ Alex Daniels is a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit