Central Oregonian

Partnership to End Poverty coming to an end

The organization will dissolve at the end of this year due to the loss of its primary funding

Jason Chaney

January 31, 2013

After serving Central Oregon for about a decade, the Partnership to End Poverty is calling it quits at the end of this year.

Partnership leaders announced plans to dissolve the organization last week, although they had made the decision several months ago.

“This is not a surprise to myself or the board,” said Jason Carr, a former board member who took over as executive director this past September. “Essentially, the funding that Partnership to End Poverty has been receiving from Northwest Area Foundation (based out of Minnesota) ends at the end of this year.”

The Partnership does not provide any direct services like a food bank or an energy assistance program to combat poverty. Instead, they concentrate on investing in projects and initiatives.

“The focus has always been to fund programs that are going to have an impact on breaking the cycle of poverty for the long-term,” Carr explained.

The Partnership has consequently created such programs as Volunteer Connect and Project Connect and they funded the start-up of Mosaic Medical, which has grown substantially in the past 10 years. Carr said that Mosaic initially employed 12 people and served 150 patients. They now employ 150 and serve about 17,000.

Faced with losing their primary funding source, Partnership leaders decided to dissolve the company rather than seek local dollars to keep the organization going.

“We had been receiving money outside of Oregon over the life of the organization to help support nonprofits in Central Oregon,” Carr said. “With that funding going away, unless there was another funding mechanism that was outside the area that helps support nonprofits, the board really came to a moral decision that the best route for us to take was to dissolve so we weren’t competing for the scarce resources that other nonprofits are competing for right now in this economic climate.”

Because the Partnership is funded for the rest of 2013, they will continue business as usual. During the last two months, however, they will devote their time to the legal and financial aspects of dissolving the organization.

While they have a plan for the coming year, the future beyond that remains less certain. At this point, nobody knows for sure who will continue Partnership services once they close their doors. However, Carr said that the board and staff are trying to figure that out.

“We are looking at some things right now to try to continue some of the work we have been doing,” he said. “But, right now, the Partnership is the only organization in the region that does what it does.”