The Oregon Community Foundation recently received high marks for its work in rural areas, but low grades for efforts to help marginalized communities.
The Oregon Community Foundation is the State's largest charitable organization. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy recently reported the OCF needs to focus more efforts to help racial, ethnic, and LGBT communities. Joan Vallejo is a spokesperson for OCF. She says funding complexities create red-tape issues which may prevent certain groups from receiving aid, but they are working to correct the problem.
Vallejo: "We really have, in the last couple of years, changed our grant-making application process and our priorities to ensure that underserved communities and communities of color have access to our grant-making in the same way that everyone else has."
The OCF did form the Latino Engagement Initiative about 10 years ago to address that growing demographic. The charity is the eighth largest of its kind in the country, and distributed 103 million dollars in 2015.