firstbookportland

Thank You for Supporting First Book Portland in 2023!

January 2023

Thanks to all who contributed to our year-end fundraising drive. We raised $2,110 during the campaign, for a total of nearly $31,000 in 2022, our second-highest total ever! That’s enough to provide 10,290 books to children served by local organizations such as Healthy Families Washington County, HOLLA Mentors, and Mount Hood Community College (MHCC) Early Head Start.

Thank you to our partners at Migration Brewing Co., ¿Por Qué No? Taqueria, Dove Vivi Pizza, The Factor Building, and Rational Unicorn Legal Services for being great fundraising partners in 2022!

Because of your generosity, we are well-positioned to fulfill more of our current requests from recipient groups as well as start from a strong financial foundation for our 2023 books grants. We look forward to supporting literacy together in 2023!

Thank You for Wine-ing with Us

October 2022

For the eleventh year in a row, we had a wonderful time hosting our Wine-ing for Literacy fundraiser. Thanks to our sponsors, donors, volunteers, and attendees, we raised $8,900, which translates to nearly 3,000 books in the homes of low-income youth in our community! 100% of the funds we raise go toward our mission of serving Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties.

Thank you Rational Unicorn Legal Services and the Factor Building! We appreciate your generous donation of this unique space. It was great to be back in person for this event! Thank you to our donors, check them out here and our sponsors: Mark L. Busch, P.C., Barran Liebman, Front Porch Properties PDX, iQ Credit Union, Miller Nash LLP, The Standard and Bullard Law!

If you couldn’t make the event this year, check out one of our other upcoming events and donate here! Otherwise, we will see you next year!

Thank You for Supporting First Book Portland in 2021!

Thanks to all who contributed to our year-end fundraising drive! We raised $1,095 during the campaign, for a total of over $26,000 in 2021. That’s enough to provide 8,800 books to children served by local organizations such as Latino Network, LifeWorks Healthy Families Hillsboro, and Mount Hood Community College (MHCC) Early Head Start.

Because of your generosity, we are well-positioned to fulfill more of our current requests from recipient groups as well as start from a strong financial foundation for our 2022 books grants!

As the pandemic continues, your support is vitally important to help children across our community build home libraries. Please stay tuned for upcoming events and news as we look forward to a new year, together supporting our community’s children by helping them have access to books and to grow as lifelong readers.

Wine-ing For Literacy

October 2021

Thank you!

For the tenth year in a row, we had a wonderful time hosting our Wine-ing for Literacy fundraiser. Thanks to our sponsors, donors, and attendees, we raised nearly $9,000, which translates to 3,000 books in the homes of low-income youth in our community! The funds we raise go toward our mission of serving Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties.

An extra thanks to our generous Auction Donors, to Sunday School Wine and Rose City Book Pub, and to our Sponsors: Malcolm’s Grandparents, Mark L. Busch, Barran Liebman Attorneys, Ball Janik LLP, iQ Credit Union, and Front Porch Properties PDX.

If you couldn’t join us at the event, you can still donate to us directly by clicking here. Otherwise, see you next year!

2020 by the Numbers

Succeeding Against the Odds

As we round out the first quarter of 2021, it seems like a good time to look back at what we achieved in 2020. Thanks to community support, we raised nearly $27,000 over the course of 2020, despite the many unusual challenges posed to all of us by the global pandemic.

We would particularly like to note the generosity of funders who awarded grants in response to applications by our volunteer grantwriters:

Autzen Foundation
iQ Credit Union / iQ for Kids
Pacific Power Foundation

We also received funds from area businesses who support charitable giving as part of their operations:

Bottle Drop
Fred Meyer—Community Rewards
New Seasons Market—Bag It Forward @ Woodstock
¿Por Que No?

And, of course, we extend our gratitude to every person who attended our virtual fundraisers and made individual donations throughout the year, including during our armchair giving campaigns.

With these funds, we made book grants to local organizations who selected children’s books to suit their needs and distributed them to children who participate in their programs:

Albina Head Start
David Douglas Educational Foundation (DDEF)
Family of Friends Mentoring
Healthy Families Washington County
HOLLA Mentors
Human Solutions
IRCO
John Wetten Elementary
Latino Network
LifeWorks Healthy Families Beaverton
LifeWorks Healthy Families Hillsboro
MHCC Early Head Start
TLC-TNT

As the effects of the pandemic continue to be felt, your support remains vitally important to help children across our community build home libraries. No matter what is going on in the world around us, we want to keep planting the seeds of lifelong learning!

Please stay tuned for upcoming events as we look forward to warmer weather and the chance to be together in person someday soon.

StudioX Class for a Cause

Start 2020 right in more ways than one.

StudioX Fitness is ready to help you sweat out any holiday excesses and benefit Team First Book Portland at the same time. Class for a Cause tickets are $23 and 100% of the proceeds will go to us, and that means more books for kids.

The class takes place at noon on January 11—but register now, because it’s sure to sell out!

Visit their site to sign up. (If you don’t already have a MindBody account, you’ll need to create one to complete the booking.)

Spring for Some Books ;)

From April 15 through April 29, we are teaming up with Anna Lorensen, an independent Norwex consultant who supports our mission. Norwex works to effect change by reducing the chemicals and waste that challenge the health of our environment.

During these two weeks, a portion of the proceeds from the purchase of Norwex products will be donated to Team First Book Portland, helping us raise money for new books!

To participate, visit the Facebook event page to learn more about these earth-friendly products, and then place your orders. Thanks for your support, Anna!

2018 by the Numbers

We’re hard at work planning fundraising events for the year ahead, but here’s a quick recap of 2018. It was our 20th year as a team, and we are thrilled to confirm that thanks to donors, funders, and profit sharers, we raised just over $20,000! That means more than 6,500 new books for literacy programs run by these local organizations:

We are so happy to support these crucial programs for children in the Portland metro area. And if you join us for our upcoming events and fundraisers, you’ll be part of this success story for 2019!

Fundraising into Fall

There’s a lot going on for the rest of the year, and we wanted to make sure you know about everything!

August 31, 2018: Garden Bar Giveback Friday

A week from today, we’ll be the Giveback Friday partner for Garden Bar as part of their mission to invest deeply into the community. (They’ve raised more than $5,000 for local nonprofits this way!) For every Classic salad or Summer bowl sold that day, they’ll donate $1 to us—three salads at your table puts a new book in the hands of a local child in need. While you work up an appetite, check for you nearest location.

If you go, we’d love for you to share about it on social media to thank Garden Bar for their support: tag @gardenbarpdx on Instagram or Twitter.

October 25, 2019: Wine-ing for Literacy

Our signature fundraising event returns for its seventh year. We have several wonderful sponsors lined up and many donors have already contributed to our silent auction. Visit our Events page for all the details. Registration is live!

Through January 2019: Bag it Forward

We were so pleased to return as an education partner with New Seasons Market for the Bag It Forward program this year — and that was before we found out we’d been chosen by five locations. Wow! If you bring your own bag to shop at the following New Seasons locations, you can donate your refund to us. Just drop a bean in our jar.

• Cedar Hills, 3495 Southwest Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton
• Hawthorne, 4034 Southeast Hawthorne Blvd, Portland
• Progress Ridge, 14805 Southwest Barrows Rd, Beaverton
• Slabtown, 2170 Northwest Raleigh St, Portland
• Woodstock, 4500 Southeast Woodstock Blvd, Portland

p.s.

If you are a Fred Meyer shopper, we are still registered with their Community Rewards program. They have updated their system, so we have a new number (#LN701). Visit our Give page for the complete how-to.

2017 by the Numbers

We’ve already hit the ground running for 2018, but we can’t say a final goodbye to 2017 without sharing news of our fundraising success. Last year, thanks to our donors, we raised just over $14,880! That means nearly 5,000 new books for literacy programs run by these local organizations:

We are so happy to support these crucial programs for children in the Portland metro area. And if you join us for our upcoming events and fundraisers, you’ll be part of this success story for 2018!

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash