As we look back at 2022 and ahead to 2023, we have a lot to celebrate, and none of it could have happened without you! Read Executive Director Randy Gragg’s year-end letter to learn more about the difference we’ve made—and can continue to make—together.
Hello, friends, and happy holidays. Thank you for taking a few minutes to read this note at such a busy time of year. Even more importantly, thank you for making 2022 an incredible year for Portland’s parks, and for Portland Parks Foundation.
Here at PPF, our mission is to help people help parks. Whether you’ve given your time, your treasure, or your talent—or maybe even all three—your exceptional generosity in 2022 has empowered us to provide that help in so many ways.
This year, we expanded key programs like Green Dreams lectures, our Friends & Allies Summits, and our Small Grants. We started new traditions with the Joey Pope Award for Parks Leadership and Paseo, our first festival. And we started new projects like the Rose City Park Playground and critical design work for the Thompson Elk Fountain restoration.
The most important ingredient in our work is partnerships. Your support allowed us to build and strengthen them with dozens of Portland communities, volunteer groups, organizations, and leaders that Portland Parks Foundation collaborates with year-round. In short, your support makes an immediate difference, not only for Portland Parks Foundation, but for all our partners, as well as the millions of people who benefit from their work in Portland’s parks every year.
Portland’s parks are places of beauty, and of potential.
The last three years of constant challenges and uncertainties have taught us that Portland’s parks are critical infrastructure for our physical, mental, and cultural well-being. By listening to communities and by elevating the voices of partners across the city, the Portland Parks Foundation works every day to make sure Portland’s parks can serve all our communities.
That’s why, as we wrap up the year, I want to share a few more details about the successes of 2022:
● Honoring Pamela Slaughter with our first-ever Joey Pope Award for Parks Leadership: a $10,000 grant and technical assistance for the next year. Pamela is the founder and Executive Director of People of Color in the Outdoors (POCO). In her own words: “The Joey Pope Award means a lot to us. The most important thing is that it is a recognition of our work, that we should keep going and doing things the way we’re doing them because it’s making a difference.”
● Reaching our fundraising goal for a new Rose City Park Playground. Our collaboration with Rose City Park Playground Project, Parks Commissioner Carmen Rubio’s office, and Portland Parks & Recreation, raised $260,000 to install a new playground spring, 2023 that will serve more than 1,200 Portland children, 53% of whom come from families of color.
● Rewarding the work of dozens of grassroots volunteers and leaders. From 28 fantastic nominees, our community-led committees selected Bookmobile Babe’s Christie Quinn as well as Native American Elder, tribal activist, and community organizer Laura Campos for this year’s Parks Champions Awards. From 45 applications—each an inspiration and, again, selected by a community-led committee—we supported new and ongoing work by 13 organizations this spring with our Small Grants Program. Our fall awardees were announced earlier this month.
● Going live with Green Dreams lectures and Friends & Allies Summits. After two years of canceled, postponed, and online events, we re-introduced in-person and hybrid programming in 2022, reaching a combined total audience of nearly 1000 people, including more than 80 partner organizations. You can even watch some of the recordings on our YouTube channel.
● Bringing together 4,000 people for the inaugural year of Paseo. For three days in the South Park Blocks and Director Park, this BIPOC-led festival—produced by Portland Parks Foundation—brought out the best in our city, our communities, and our parks. One hundred percent of those surveyed said we should do it again, and so we are!
Those are five big examples of the difference you’ve already made with your donations to Portland Parks Foundation. Again, thank you. Because of these successes, we’re already poised for another great year.
These are some highlights of projects and programs we’ll be working on through 2023 that your contributions can support:
● Continuing our work to fully restore and reinstall the Thompson Elk Fountain to its home on SW Main.
● Following the Rose City Park Playground’s completion with more new playgrounds.
● Completing the $500,000 campaign to endow the Joey Pope Award for Parks Leadership in perpetuity.
● Selecting the next recipients of the Joey Pope Award and the US Bank Parks Champions Awards.
● Holding our spring and fall Friends & Allies Summits and the adjacent Volunteer Days of Service in Portland parks.
● Expanding our Small Grants Program to assist even more community groups and organizations.
● Planning and hosting the second year of Paseo.
● Presenting partners and thought leaders for Green Dreams and Friends & Allies Summits.
● Convening national experts and local stakeholders to reopen—and rethink—the long-fenced downtown plaza known as O’Bryant Square.
● Growing our staff and board to build even more partnerships and work for Portland’s parks.
● Creating impact in our parks that can continue to be experienced and enjoyed by millions of people every year.
Portland has long been a leader when it comes to parks and public spaces. For more than two decades, the Portland Parks Foundation has provided pathways for individuals and community groups to be part of that that leadership by building a movement of donors, sponsors, and doers to realize new possibilities in our parks system.
As Joey Pope, who chaired our first board of directors twenty-one years ago, once put it: “The privilege of being outside in the air is all part of being human.”
Joey worked to expand that privilege to everyone. She saw the beauty of our parks and the potential. So do we. And I’m betting you do, too.
Let’s work together to transform the countless potentials of our parks into realities. You helped us make a difference in 2022. Click the button below to help make a difference in 2023, too!
On behalf of the staff and the board of the Portland Parks Foundation, of our parks system, and of the millions of people who enjoy our parks every year, thank you for your support.
With gratitude and best wishes for the very happiest of holidays,
Randy Gragg
Executive Director
Portland Parks Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Our EIN is 93-1319970.
Images courtesy Celeste Noches, Cacophany, and Portland Parks Foundation staff. Thank you, photographers and photo participants!