BEND — Ken Wilhelm came to Bend in 1988 to be the director of Deschutes County United Way at a time when Oregon was in the throes of an economic crisis. On top of a nationwide recession, the timber industry was in peril, affecting all manners of business and school enrollment.

The subsequent unemployment took its toll on existing services. When the economy started to grow in the 1990s, Wilhelm said the human services needs didn’t decrease — they grew as well.

“When the economy started to boom in the 1990s the community began a pattern of consistently being one of the larger growth areas and that translated into increased demand for services like hunger and homelessness,” he said.

Programs to address domestic violence and child abuse started in the early 1990s, as well, and a number of other agencies got their start in Central Oregon like the Boys and Girls Club and a program for early childhood development called “Healthy Beginnings.”

While the needs continued to increase with Central Oregon’s steady growth, Wilhelm said United Way tried to balance its support of organizations that provide prevention, intervention and remediation. He likened intervention to meeting immediate needs like hunger and homelessness, prevention to keeping people from falling into homelessness or food insecurity and remediation — work that helps people live their lives to the fullest.

“The challenges of the growth pressures were so strong that it was really hard to invest in prevention. When you have so many people in immediate need for food, shelter and getting out of dangerous situations, we leaned toward intervention,” Wilhelm said.

Eventually the organization was able to move out of strictly funding intervention. Wilhelm said Oregon Community Foundation’s nonprofit endowment program allowed his United Way chapter to start an endowment, providing long-term stability, services and infrastructure.

In more recent times, Wilhelm said OCF helped fund the Traces Program to deal with childhood trauma.

“We had come to the conclusion that childhood trauma was linked to poor health and education,” he said. “Our goal became to try and intervene to prevent more trauma and focus on those who had been traumatized and mitigate negative outcomes.”

In addition to the growing human service needs, Wilhelm said the Deschutes County United Way workplace campaigns were stagnating, so in 1992 he applied for funds from OCF to leverage donations.

“The challenge grant’s intent was to bring in donations of $1,000 or more — we called it ‘Leadership Giving,’” Wilhelm said. “When I came in 1988, we only had four donors at that level and our sense, at that time, was that our growth would be there.”

Initially, OCF kicked in $50,000 to support the program. Kathleen Cornett, formerly of the Foundation, said OCF gave money to United Way in Lane County in 1992 for the same type of leveraging as was enacted in Central Oregon.

“The idea was to attract Eugene’s people of wealth,” she said. “Larger gifts to United Way were underperforming and with the economic downturn, the human services needs were great, so we matched every new donor’s gift of $1,000 or more, to United Way.”

The money didn’t just go into a United Way pool, Cornett said, but was used for special grant making outside of the organization’s usual nonprofit operating support.

The Leadership challenge brought in $153,000 for the Lane County United Way, Cornett said, with $85,000 of that total coming from new contributors.

“We thought, ‘Wow — that was pretty good. Their volunteers shook the trees for that money and really embraced the challenge,” Cornett said. “They made it successful with their enthusiasm.”

OCF provided the same opportunity in Salem, Albany, Medford and on the coast, Cornett said. In fact, most of the United Ways outside of Portland increased their charitable giving.

“We targeted the smaller communities because we felt there was more capacity for giving,” Cornett said.

The partnership wasn’t just a combination of funds but volunteers from both OCF and United Way reviewed the grant proposals that supported what Cornett called “significant human service needs.”

Today, one of the most significant human service needs in Central Oregon is caring for the Latino population moving in to fill job openings. Wilhelm said it is the fastest growing demographic in that part of the state, providing new challenges. He said OCF is a big supporter of diversity issues and together the organizations are funding leadership and education programs.

“Part of the empowerment education and skills training helps Latinos earn better wages and helps them navigate systems they don’t know how to operate,” Wilhelm said.

Whitney Swander, the interim executive director at United Way of Central Oregon, said the partnership with OCF helps meet both immediate needs as well as establishing a legacy of giving.

“United Way works responsively, supporting needs on a basic level to restore dignity,” she said. “Our donors value our ability to be nimble and provide an immediate pulse of funding.”

While a lot of United Way money is distributed in January of each year to local organizations, it can also address immediate needs like COVID-19 and wildfire relief.

A long-term need that United Way of Central Oregon and OCF is addressing together is the foster care system. Swander said the two organizations convene foster care stakeholders to better serve the children in the system.

OCF also benefits United Way and other smaller nonprofits by funding research used for programs, like foster care, so that these organizations can provide the best practices available and stay up-to-date on issues like trauma care and treatment.

And finally, Swander said, both organizations are community-connected with a culture of community-centered philanthropy.

“A lot of people become philanthropic through giving to the United Way,” she said. “When their giving gets to a certain level and they understand how philanthropy works, many of the United Way donors become OCF donors.”

“We had come to the conclusion that childhood trauma was linked to poor health and education. Our goal became to try and intervene to prevent more trauma and focus on those who had been traumatized and mitigate negative outcomes.”

— Ken Wilhelm, former director of Deschutes County United Way