PORTLAND, Ore. — A grassroots fundraising campaign that started less three months ago has already raised more than $1.5 million for Portland's Black community.
The Black Resilience Fund was started amid ongoing, nationwide protests and civil uprising following the death of George Floyd.
More than $700,000 of the funds have already been disbursed, and organizer Cameron Whitten says more than 10,000 applicants are waiting in the pipeline for a share of the money. Applicants go through thorough screening process, where they have to explain exactly how they will use the money to help Portland's Black community.
And Whitten says organizers were proactive in holding the organization accountable and transparent for every dollar spent.
"From day one, even before we knew we were gonna raise a million dollars, we went onto our GoFundMe and posted daily updates, showing people exactly where the money was going in real time," Whitten explained. "And as the fund has continued to grow over the last two months, we've actually established a working relationship with a nonprofit called Brown Hope so that if you go to the BlackResilienceFund.com website, every donation that you make through the black resilience fund is made through a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We have a bookkeeper, we submit reports to the IRS. And so we have built-in transparency and accountability methods so that we can address any questions people have about how do we leverage these dollars to support our neighbors."
This week, the Black Resilience Fund launched a new effort called #WeDoHeal with a goal to give each Black Portlander in need $300.
Whitten said he hopes the money is spent on the most pressing needs Portlanders may have, whether that's buying food or paying utilities.
"We already deliver 300 food boxes a week, and that's still not enough to help all the people who have immediate food needs," Whitten said. "So that's where most of the dollars are going. They're going to food, but they go to utilities. They go to medical expenses, they go to paying off credit cards and more. There's a lot of need in our community, and we're trying to help raise the resources that we know that are in Portland so that our neighbors can live easier."
BACKGROUND: Black Resilience Fund raises over $1 million