THE CONTINGENT
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Mission Statement
The Contingent (formerly, Portland Leadership Foundation) operates as a venture non-profit focused on empowering leaders and mobilizing community for the common good. Practically, this involves creating on-ramps for community members to get involved in complex social issues and empowering rising leaders to direct these efforts.
About This Cause
The Contingent’s initiatives are organized under two divisions of service—Empowering Leaders and Mobilizing Community—that work together to increase opportunities for emotional, educational, and economic success among marginalized population groups across Oregon, Arkansas, Indiana, and additional states as we expand across the United States. To directly involve historically disadvantaged communities into leadership and decision-making process, The Contingent’s prioritizes direct services that are run by leaders who represent the actual lived experience. For example, we have emerging leaders of color driving The Script initiative, and our efforts to wrap around different states' foster care systems are led by certified foster parents and others with related child welfare experiences. These individuals provide extraordinary insight, authenticity, and credibility as they engage with the organization’s target populations and contribute to a culture that places equity at the center. Convening others is one of our primary methodologies for mobilizing communities and empowering leaders. We prioritize partnership development, understanding that marginalized communities face complex challenges that can only be mitigated or removed when addressed through a collective impact approach. With this in mind, we’ve developed strong communication strategies that span various formats and languages, we initiate opportunities for collaboration, and provide both agency and accountability for the leaders and communities we invest in. We believe that it is critical for the integrity and efficacy of our work that we maintain a posture of learning; displaying humility and traveling upstream when necessary. Some of our most notable and far-reaching work is tied to our partnership with Oregon’s Department of Human Services' (ODHS) foster care system and our The Script internship program, which is the largest paid internship program in Oregon with 88% of participants self-identifying as a person of color. Every Child has recruited and converted 1,450+ households into certified foster placements (accounting for 76.5% of the state’s non-relative foster family inventory). Today, the agency regards Every Child Oregon as its greatest investment in the recruitment and retention of foster families, and in 2019 it appointed Every Child as the formal liaison for all foster and adoptive inquiries statewide.