I returned to the question a couple of times in my conversation with Richard Meeker: “Why do you do this?" I was curious about why Meeker, as the former Willamette Week publisher, devoted the last two decades to getting money to nonprofits through Willamette Week’s Give!Guide.
After working in newspapers for the past four decades, Meeker was not about to lob me a pithy anecdote or a childhood memory about a lesson in giving.
Instead, he somewhat inconveniently pointed out that his dedication comes from “a continuing appreciation for the work of the nonprofit community.” The work people do “produces results, and that's the thing that's most meaningful to me.”
Of course, that’s a satisfying answer to hear, but I report it abashedly since we are one of those nonprofits. But I do know firsthand the outsized impact that we, and other nonprofits, have.
He also saw the Give!Guide as a way Willamette Week could give back to Portland.
“Much of our journalism is so hard and legitimately causes people trouble,” Meeker said. “I had this worry that people perceive us as a bunch of kids up on the third floor throwing bricks out the window to see who we could hit.
“And I really wanted to have the newspaper do something to counteract that impression.”
Meeker began as a reporter at Willamette Week. He and Mark Zusman purchased it from the Eugene Register-Guard in 1983 through their City of Roses Newspaper Company. Meeker served as publisher until 2015.
Ideas have histories, and by understanding those, we create fertile soil for both maintaining good work and growing new ideas. That’s why I sought Meeker out.
This idea for Give!Guide, Meeker explained, came from data. As publisher of Willamette Week, he learned that they had the largest slice of readers aged 18-35 in town.
Struck by Willamette Week’s younger readership, he wondered what impacts, in addition to journalism, Willamette Week could make. He studied four areas — leadership, volunteerism, voting and philanthropy — and shared his findings with Zusman.
“He and I have an arrangement where we assiduously talk to each other regularly but we stay out at each other's business,” Meeker explained. “So I said ‘Would you like to do one of these?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but I'd probably like to do the same one you do.’ And I said, ‘Don't worry about that. What do you want to do?’”
Zusman responded that he’d like to pursue voting, Meeker told me, creating Candidates Gone Wild. I’ll defer to Willamette Week copy for an explanation of this intermittent Portland event — “a variety show that lets office-seekers slip out of their khakis and unknot their bow ties to compete in a talent show and pretend to laugh at their own foibles.” Candidates last staged Candidates Gone Wild in 2022.
Deciding there were strong local initiatives for supporting young leadership and postponing working on volunteerism for a later date, Meeker pursued philanthropy.
Meeker sought out a series of advisors who informed what now makes up the Give!Guide approach.
His first stop was Colorado Springs to study a now-defunct philanthropy guide. Meeker took the model and flipped it on its head. Rather than a money maker for the publication that modestly supports nonprofits, which is the usual structure for such guides, he tilted it all toward nonprofits.
His assorted advisers led him to add a prize for people under 35 who’ve helped the community (the Skidmore Prize); ask nonprofits to put “skin in the game” by paying $250 with the guarantee that they will raise that back and more; create a $1,000 award for each nonprofit that had the most donors under 35 in each category (Street Roots won this the past two years); create categories of nonprofits (currently these are Animal, Civil & Human Rights, Community, Creative Expression, Education, Environment, Health, Home, Human Services and Hunger); and develop a number of incentives for donors called “Big Give Days.”
The first year, Meeker paid half of each nonprofit’s entry fee. He recalls 24 nonprofits participated, and Give!Guide brought in about $28,000.
“I had the view that this was a huge success,” Meeker told me.
The following year, Give!Guide doubled the haul divided among nonprofits. Fast forward to last year when the Give!Guide raised more than $8 million for 235 nonprofits.
“And when you have 17,000 people giving eight million bucks, it's huge,” he said.
Of the almost 17,000 donors, 3,329 of those donors were aged 35 or under.
While Give!Guide matters to keep nonprofits operating — about 7% of Street Roots’ annual budget comes from donors who contribute through Give!Guide — it also matters for morale.
Nonprofit work involves meaningful hustle — working hard and looking for money to keep working hard. Give!Guide collectivizes this.
“I figured out that the nonprofit community in this town didn't know each other,” Meeker said. “So we just bought coffee and bagels and one October afternoon, probably in about (2007 or 2008) because we were in the new offices, and we had everybody meet for coffee.”
Now partnerships are emphasized in the Give!Guide. Street Roots community partnerships coordinator Kodee Zarnke has linked Street Roots fundraising efforts with ACLU Oregon, Animal Aid, Hygiene 4 All, Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland Street Medicine, Sisters of the Road, Open Signal, Stone Soup, Street Books, The Lund Report, The Street Trust and XRay FM.
Additionally, Laughing Planet will donate meals to the first 100 Street Roots donors, and will donate 10% of its sales to Street Roots on Tuesday, Nov. 28. NewsMatch will match $13,000 in individual donations from Nov. 26-Dec. 2, with all proceeds supporting Street Roots journalism.
Visit giveguide.org through Dec. 31 to give to area nonprofits. Find Street Roots under the Civil & Human Rights category.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2023 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404