Community Partners

Connecting organizations to skills and resources

Every day, SVP Portland works hand-in-hand with Partners on initiatives that drive our mission forward. These organizations and collaborators—known as Community Partners—are working on the ground and in the community to make real, actionable change that impacts the lives of children and families in the region.


But, sometimes, they need a little help. That’s where we come in. By connecting with SVP Portland, we’re able to amplify their work, bridge the gap to needed skill sets, and provide them additional support to scale and grow. Through our network of Investor & Business Partners, we’re able to sustain transformative change.

“The partnership with SVP was instrumental [in our success]. We had leadership, but not the capacity. We had to build on a shoestring. When you have time and expertise from SVP in the early stage, you build a foundation for an organization to be successful and sustainable. That’s game-changing.”

- Kali Ladd, former Executive Director of Kairos

Community Partners

Community Partners are the organizations, collaborations, and initiatives with whom we have established a trusted partnership. They share our goal of ensuring that all children have access to high-quality, culturally-relevant early learning experiences. 

SVP nurtures partnerships amongst key community, government, business, and philanthropy organizations. The focus for community leaders is serving kids and families. Ours is collaborating with them, trusting their proximity to the needs and solutions of their communities, and offering our professional skills and networks.

How We Help

SVP Portland supports our Community Partners in a range of ways. Each Community Partner is different, which is why we tailor our assistance to match the needs and requirements of their organization. Here’s just some of the ways we help.

Skilled Volunteer Hours

SVP Partners leverage decades of expertise to team up with our Community Partners to help strengthen their capacity for impact, as well as our internal operations. Capacity building goals are often focused on organizational development, business planning, financial health, fundraising, human resources, board governance, leadership development, impact evaluation and marketing/communications.

SVP Direct Financial Investment

We offer general operating grants of up to $25,000 to our Community Partners as a cash investment to represent our interest in their success.

Leveraged Funds

We are more than grantmakers. Engaging our social capital in concert with funding multiplies our impact. Our networks, relationships, and influence help attract additional financial resources for our Community Partners. These resources are what we term leveraged funds — the sum total of indirect dollars that flowed to our Community Partners due to our connections, fundraising help, and/or direct donations from Partners. This is the multiplier effect of our venture philanthropy model.

Encore Fellow Hours

As part of SVP Portland, the CoGenerate Encore Fellowship program provides a source of expertise for nonprofit organizations, helps individuals (Fellows) transition from their careers into social-purpose work, and gives corporations a new way to positively impact their communities. Encore Fellows are matched with host nonprofit organizations based on their passions, skills, and experience.

  • We do not operate on grant cycles and do not issue requests for proposals. If an SVP prospective Community Partner offers possibilities for advancing our early learning goal, is eager to build organizational capacity, and is ripe for growth, we host a series of conversations with their leadership team to explore how they could achieve broader or deeper impact with SVP’s resources. If we mutually agree there is strong potential by working together, we co-create a partnership proposal. This is designed intentionally, based on our trust-based philanthropy approach.

    SVP’s grant-making approach is based on key values aligned with our venture philanthropy model:

    Trust: We invest in strong leaders and defer to their judgment of how grant funds will be most effectively used to drive the work of their organization or initiative forward.

    Collaboration: We seek input from all stakeholders, including SVP investor partners and community partners, when making grant determinations.

    Transparency: We engage in open and honest communication.

    Respect: We aim to minimize the burden on community partners by streamlining paperwork and utilizing existing and/or publicly available information wherever possible.

    We invest in:

    • Early Learning Programs

      • Organizations that create more culturally-specific and responsive models

      • Programs aligned with SVP’s focused goal of working toward greater equity in early learning

    • Workforce Development

      • Professional development and early childhood teacher training

      • Development for other early childhood caretakers (i.e. volunteers, home visitors, program managers, etc.)

    • Finance & Infrastructure

      • Creating capacity of innovative financing

      • Influencing corporate investments in early learning

      • Investing in facilities and equipment

    • Policy

      • Increasing visibility of culturally-specific and responsive organizations

      • Supporting aligned advocacy strategy among organizations

    If you meet these criteria and want to talk more about partnering with us, contact us and tell us more about your organization, initiative, or idea.