The importance of meaningful, long-term investment in culturally-specific and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)-led community organizations in Oregon

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in and recognition of the value of human services provided by BIPOC-led, culturally-specific/culturally-agile organizations (CSOs). CSOs are understood to more effectively serve communities of color than mainstream organizations, which are typically led and staffed by White individuals, and organized around White-centric understandings, values, practices and programming (Lambarth, Cross-Hemmer, Mitchell, Green & Normand, 2019; Curry-Stevens & Muthanna, 2016). Unfortunately, however, BIPOC-led organizations also tend to be smaller and chronically under-resourced, as compared to mainstream organizations. For example, only about 8% of all philanthropic funding is currently directed toward CSOs (Nishimura, Sampath, Le, Mahar Sheikh & Valenzuela, 2020). And many smaller BIPOC-led orgs are challenged to meet the administrative and reporting requirements of managing government contracts. Without additional investments in CSOs, it is unlikely that society will realize the full benefits of the expertise offered by BIPOC-led organizations