SVPP News

(From the March 2006 Newsletter)

SVPP Partners Celebrate Holiday Party
Once again, Jeff and Sandy Grubb opened their home in December for SVPP's annual holiday party where existing partners, new partners and friends had an opportunity to spend several hours together. Special thanks to partner and board member, Laurie Weiss, for contributing the wine for the annual holiday party. Vintner Bill Kelley, from ElvenGlade Vineyards, generously offered the wine to SVPP at a significant discount.

CASH Opens First Tax-Aide Supersite
CASH (Creating Assets, Savings and Hope) opened its first "Supersite" at Lloyd Center on Friday February 10. During the Supersite's first three days of operation (Friday, February 10 through Sunday, February 12), 25 tax-aide volunteers prepared a total of 95 returns for low-income families. CASH estimates that these returns generated about $150,000 of refunds, including over $54,000 of earned income tax credits.

A number of prominent individuals attended the grand opening including Sam Adams (City of Portland Commissioner), Lou Savage (representing the Governor's Office from the Department of Consumer & Business Services), and Jerry Cohen (Director of Oregon AARP). A number of SVPP Partners also attended, including Bob McKean, President of Albina Community Bank, an early supporter of the CASH program, and Jeff Grubb (Chairman of SVPP).

A number of businesses have made substantial in-kind contributions that will permit CASH to operate the Supersite for a very small cost. Of special note, Lloyd Center donated the use of a large office suite (third floor above the food court) for the entire tax season at no cost. Other contributors include: IRS (computers and tax software), Culligan (bottled water), Starbucks (coffee), Paradise Bakery (cookies), Doubletree Hotel (podium) and AARP (volunteer training, posters and more coffee).

Enlightening Session on Global Warming
On February 15, Lisa Adatto from Climate Solutions, a non-profit organization working on solutions to global warming, led a discussion on this important environmental topic with a number of SVPP partners and guests. The session included some basic education on global warming and was followed by a very lively discussion by all the participants who attended this SVPP Partner Conversation event. To learn more about this topic, you can refer to the Climate Solutions website, www.climatesolutions.org (click).

Education Survey Results
Many of you recently completed a survey aimed at helping SVPP focus its programs and efforts in educating SVPP partners. We had a very strong response with 37 partners providing feedback.

The key messages received were:
• Confirmation that providing quality programs and educating our partnership on philanthropy and community needs are important elements of your satisfaction with SVPP.
• You particularly want SVPP to continue to offer interesting and topical speakers at quarterly partner meetings. You not only want SVPP to offer speakers and topics that focus on children-at-risk and early childhood education, but many of you have asked us to branch out and occasionally offer events that deal with other pressing community issues such as the environment and affordable housing. SVPP is listening and there are plans to expand the scope and variety of programs offered to our partners.
• In addition, you want to limit the number of educational events and keep the quality high. There are plans to offer or to partner with other organizations such as Grantmakers and Oregon Community Foundation, to bring you one to two programs per quarter.
• When SVPP can offer an interesting program that may incur a nominal cost to deliver, most of you have indicated that you would be willing to pay up to $25 to attend. SVPP also plans to expand on the idea of having several more intimate/limited participation events either in partner homes or at a local eating establishment. The idea is to create opportunities to gather a smaller number of partners where SVPP can foster high social interaction.

New Monthly Installment Option
In light of SVPP's new status as a 501(c)(3) corporation, and as an added benefit to partners, SVPP will now be able to accept your partnership contributions in monthly installments rather than a single annual payment. This can be accomplished through automatic debits to the partners' checking accounts. If you are interested in pursuing this arrangement, please contact our Executive Director, Jean Hart, who can provide detailed instructions to accommodate this.