The Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation prioritizes support in service to education and mentorship, arts and creativity, and health and well-being in Oregon and Washington state.
The Foundation is doing BIG things. Since January 2021, it relaunched with a relationship-driven funding model, awarded more than $10.7 million to nonprofits (compared with approximately $2 million the year before), hired new partnership officers and employees, and approved a 2022 grant budget of more than $16 million. Incredible.
One of the questions on its grant application caught our eye as we had never seen it before. It asks applicants to nominate another Pacific Northwest nonprofit that the foundation might not know about or work with yet. We love this idea! It’s a great example of a community-centric fundraising practice. We recommended Children’s Public Private Partnership (CP3), whose mission is to mobilize local communities, in partnership with the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), to safely reduce the number of children and youth in foster care in Oregon. Our own board chair, Ken Thrasher, was instrumental in developing this partnership and also sits on CP3’s board of directors. We believe in this important work for our communities and wanted to show support for an up-and-coming organization. A new partnership was formed and CP3 was able to receive funding from the Foundation this year!
The Foundation has also made helpful changes to its grant making process, including taking time to give direct feedback when organizations don’t receive funding, streamlining the application process to make it as easy as possible on organizations, welcoming feedback and ideas for improvement, and using a preliminary application to help save time if organizations or projects aren’t a good fit for funding. We appreciate their approach to grantmaking and adopting a trust-based philanthropy-model, acting as a partner alongside the organizations they support.
When asked about this partnership, Tyler Hobbs, Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Director, shared:
Our partnership with College Possible Oregon is a testament to the tremendous service being provided to students across Oregon. At Marie Lamfrom, we believe that to freely pursue an education without obstacle or resistance is among the most important rights due to young people. Through our partnership with College Possible, many barriers to continued learning will be lifted, and the dreams and aspirations of these students can be further realized and embraced. We are grateful for the work of College Possible, and proud to support the extraordinary young people they serve.”
College Possible Oregon is proud to partner with the Foundation and grateful to receive an investment of $25,000 this year to support our work to make college admission and success possible for students from low-income backgrounds. To find out more about the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation, please visit the website at https://www.marielamfrom.org/.
