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Info Sessions and Q&A

Info sessions

PCL held two virtual pre-application information sessions via Zoom on Sept. 19 and 24. Attending an information session is not mandatory. If you were unable to attend an info session, we highly encourage potential applicants to view a recording of the presentation below for an overview of the application requirements and WebGrants registration process.

The Grant Applications webpage features WebGrants user guides, including a video on how to fill out an application in WebGrants.

Q&A

PCL welcomes all potential applicants to submit questions to info@portlandchildrenslevy.org. PCL will respond individually via email to answer questions within 3 business days.

Submitted questions are also posted anonymously in the Q&A below. PCL staff will post questions verbatim as received via email. If the question itself names the organization or program, PCL staff will not remove that reference before posting the question. 

Applicants may submit questions until 5 p.m. on Nov. 20, 2025.

Click the arrow next to each question to see the full question and/or response.

Week of October 20 Q&A

You generally cannot include in-kind volunteer time as revenues per Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Certain types of in-kind donations may count under GAAP such as goods or services that you would have otherwise needed to purchase. This website offers more information. PCL cannot advise you on preparing your organization’s financial statements and we expect that you follow GAAP and IRS regulations. 

These grants must be used to directly serve children and/or their parents/caregivers. If the program does not provide services to children and/or their parents/caregivers, then it is not eligible for PCL funding. Services provided only to staff such childcare providers, teachers, or adult volunteers are not direct services for children and/or their parents/caregivers. If the proposed program will directly serve children and families, you may include costs for staff professional development in your grant budget. 

Please remember that organizations eligible for PCL grants must be non-profit 501(c)(3). For-profit childcare providers are not eligible for PCL grant funds. 

PCL is not accepting applications that offer financial assistance to families for childcare, such as providing childcare scholarships or subsidies. PCL invests $2 million annually in the Community Childcare Initiative to address its funding priority of financial assistance for childcare. The Community Childcare Initiative is administered by Childcare Resource and Referral, and childcare providers (including for-profit childcare providers) may participate in the Community Childcare Initiative to serve eligible families. 

PCL is not accepting applications for programs that provide preschool classroom services or that function as free childcare for children ages birth- 5. If you’re a preschool provider, you may be eligible for Multnomah County’s Preschool for All. 

Programs offering services that meet PCL’s other early childhood funding priorities are eligible to apply. 

Yes, there’s one on our website. (Link is for a Word document that will trigger a download prompt.) 

Yes. Our website describes all the requirements, including the video submission. We encourage you to read this page carefully, especially the section about video requirements.  

Last year we made just under $80k and this year we have already made around $300k (we are happy to provide financial records of this). We are the only org in Oregon that has focused on postpartum doula care for the last several years while paying doulas a living wage.  We believe postpartum doula care is a large and central piece of the maternal health crisis and can prevent children from entering many things including foster care, homelessness, food insecurity, help prevent relapse in parents struggling with SUD and give children a healthy start in ways no other intervention can.  Please note there are several orgs who provide birth doula care but not postpartum doula care, which are two completely different professions (like the difference between an OB and pediatrician).   

Is there any wiggle room on the last annual income so we can apply since we are so close?  I know a lot of this money will go to orgs who make interventions later in a child’s life and would love to be considered as a preventative measure.   

PCL response:   

To be eligible for a PCL small grant, the organization must have had a minimum of $90,000 in revenue in its last closed fiscal year. PCL is not using an organization’s current fiscal year revenue for that basis. We understand the compelling needs your organization serves. Still, we have firm eligibility for PCL grants.  

Recipients of PCL large grants are not eligible to apply for PCL small grants. One of the purposes of PCL’s small grants fund is to increase access to PCL funds for small organizations that have not had access to PCL funds. Going Home II could apply as a fiscal sponsor for another small organization, but not for Triple Threat Mentoring because that program receives a PCL large grant.   

It sounds like your organization provides services for “students in Washington County.” PCL funds support services for children and families in the city of Portland. You can find more information about eligibility and city boundaries on our website.

As a commitment to fairness and transparency for all applicants, PCL staff do not meet individually with applicants during a funding round. We encourage you to email your questions directly to info@portlandchildrenslevy.org, and we’ll respond. We also encourage you to attend one of the upcoming info sessions next week (10/27 or 10/29). On that same web page, we also publish a weekly digest of the questions we receive from applicants and our responses. 

Week of October 27 Q&A

PCL uses the organization’s revenues from their last closed fiscal year to determine eligibility. If your organization had revenues between $90,000 and $750,000 during your last closed fiscal year, not your current fiscal year, then you are eligible to apply. We ask for this year’s organization budget as part of our due diligence on organizational financial health, but we don’t use this year’s revenue to determine applicant eligibility. Based on what you shared, it sounds like you may be eligible. Please clarify your fiscal years start and end for FY23, FY24, and FY25. That will help us finalize the answer to your question. 

Based on what you shared, your last closed fiscal year of January 1, 2024- December 31, 2024, your organization’s revenue was over $750,000 and is not eligible for a PCL small grant. 

PCL uses the organization’s revenues from their last closed fiscal year to determine eligibility. If your organization had revenues between $90,000 and $750,000 during your last closed fiscal year, not your current fiscal year, then you are eligible to apply. We also ask for current fiscal year’s organization budget as part of our due diligence on organizational financial health, but we don’t use current fiscal year’s revenue to determine applicant eligibility. 

We encourage you to check your organization’s financial statements and revenue for the last closed fiscal year to determine your small grants eligibility. PCL is not offering small grants for organizations with revenues over $750,000 in their last closed fiscal year. 

PCL offers large grants for organizations with revenues of more than $750,000. However, all large grants funds were allocated to 3-year grants in last year’s competitive large grant funding round. Consider joining the PCL mailing list to stay apprised of future funding rounds for large grants. 

You are eligible to apply without current partnerships. Here is some information we’d like to share as you consider whether to apply: This grant round will be highly competitive. We’ve seen many programs struggle to establish partnerships with Portland schools due to limited resources at the building level, including space availability and bandwidth of SUN programs. In our experience, applications have been more successful when they demonstrate successful partnerships at Portland locations and serving children in Portland. Similarly, programs that receive grants for new services have often struggled to get them up and running in the first year and sometimes longer. This results in few children receiving services from that grant, which reflects negatively on the program’s performance with the grant. 

Congratulations on the property donation! You are correct that the donation is considered an asset and counts toward revenue in your last closed fiscal year. Since your organization’s revenues exceed $750,000 in your last closed fiscal year, it is not eligible for PCL small grants. Below we’ve included a list of other local grant opportunities.  

I’m the founder of a new community-based organization launched in 2024 that supports youth through mentoring, tutoring, and enrichment programs. I recently attended part of the Children’s Levy Small Grants Information Session and was very eager to learn more about the process. However, I was disappointed to find that my organization may not qualify for the small grants program due to the annual revenue requirement of $90,000–$750,000. As a new organization, we are still in the early stages of development — currently operating through volunteer support and in-kind donations valued at approximately $1,500 per month. I had hoped this grant might be a first breakthrough to help us establish a more stable foundation and begin building measurable impact in our community. I completely understand the importance of the eligibility criteria, but I wanted to ask if there might be other Children’s Levy opportunities or partner funding sources that support emerging nonprofits like ours. Any guidance or referrals you could provide would mean a great deal as we continue working toward sustainability and growth. 

PCL response:  

We understand the challenges with grant eligibility. We’re doing our best to balance reaching community-based organizations and the capacity organizations need to successful manage a city of Portland grant. PCL does not have any other grant funding opportunities. We offer $500 event sponsorships twice per year.  

Below we’ve included a list of other local grantmaking programs that may have opportunities for your organization. 

Oct. 27 info session

We encourage you to read the 3 questions for the video component and review the scoring criteria, page 22-23 of the small grants application. The video can be up to 5 minutes long, but not over 5 minutes. We recommend you use that time to answer the 3 questions and try to address the scoring criteria as best you can.  

It’s up to you to decide whether you can include more than one success story in your video and to determine who will speak in the video to answer the questions. The scoring criteria for the videos focus on the quality of answers to the 3 questions. The scoring criteria do not include any points related to who answers the questions or how many people speak in the video. We understand that not all programs could easily or reasonably feature clients, so there is no advantage to including clients or not in your video. 

We want applicants to submit basic videos that answer the 3 questions and address the video scoring criteria (application, pages 22-23). 

The scoring criteria for the video focus on the quality of your answers and not the quality of the video production. The video and written application each have separate scoring criteria and different reviewers. This was done intentionally to try to give applicants different score opportunities on the application. 

PCL staff will read and score the written application, and not the videos. The score on a written application will be the median of staff’s review scores for that application. Scoring criteria for the written application are on pages 18- 21 of the small grant application. PCL’s Community Council members will score the videos, and they are not reading/scoring the application. The score on the video will be the median of all review scores on that video. The application will have a total score that is the sum of the written application score and the video score.  

PCL created the video component to give applicants an alternative way to express themselves since written-only processes can create barriers, too. We also tried to create the written and video questions to work together so that some of what you prepare for the written application could help you answer the video questions, too. The questions are intended to complement each other and give two different sets of reviewers unique perspective on the services you want PCL to fund. 

We encourage you to keep your video simple and to avoid highly-produced videos. We are training reviewers to focus on the quality of answers in the video, and to avoid bias around video production.  

Here are some easy, simple tools that have been suggested to us to share: 

  • Smart phone video apps; Loom; or Zoom all have video options. Loom allows speaker to share screen. Users can download videos from Loom or Zoom, upload them to a video-sharing platform like Vimeo or YouTube. 
  • Applicants can record their video in one take if they prefer, and avoid any need for editing. If you prefer options to edit, Apple or Android offer free apps, including Shotcut which is open-source and reviewed as easy-to-use. Most Apple products come with iMovie for free and PC users may find Clipchamp free included in their Windows apps.
  • Vimeo and YouTube: upload your videos to platforms like these to create a link for your PCL small grant application in WebGrants.  

Yes! You can use Loom or any other platform that works for you. The main thing is that you create a link to your video that you can paste into the application field in WebGrants, and we can click on the link to watch it. You just want to be sure that the link to your video can be easily clicked and viewed by others. 

In the past PCL applicants have had the opportunity to provide written, video, or audio testimony to PCL’s Allocation Committee in support of their application. This is our first time using videos as part of the grant application. 

After school programs that occur at a school, that have relationships with schools or youth, or that occur at a community-based location where youth already engage and spend time tend to have greater chances of successful programming. We’ve seen many organizations struggle to establish new programs, especially after school with competing demands and opportunities for children and youth; with schools having limited resources at the building level including space availability and bandwidth of SUN programs. In our experience, programs that receive grants for new services have often struggled to get them up and running in the first year and sometimes longer. This results in few children receiving services from that grant, which reflects negatively on the program’s performance with the grant.

Yes, for a budget narrative example, see question 4 on our Info Sessions and Q&A webpage.

We have a small grants outreach list that we use to periodically share with small organizations about funding opportunities from grantmakers. We can add folks who are interested to our list (please email info@portlandchildrenslevy.org). In addition, here’s a list of fellow local grantmakers: 

Yes, garden access and education are funding priorities in hunger relief. 

If the program activities occur directly after school, approximately 3pm – 5pm and if the program addresses one of the after school funding priorities, then you can select after school as your program areas. If the program activities occur at different times throughout the week or weekend, and the program addresses one of the mentoring funding priorities, then you can select mentoring as your program area. In addition, mentoring can serve children and youth across the age spectrum from age 5 – 24. Be sure to check the funding priorities for the program areas. 

Examples may include specific activities you’ve done with the population you plan to serve. Examples may help explain your experience working with the population you plan to serve. If you may be working with a new population, you may want to use examples that show transferable skills and experience to serve that new population. It also helps if your examples can show how well the population you serve has engaged and attended the activities you offered. 

During PCL’s first small grants round in 2020, PCL had $1 million to grant over 2.5 years. The total funding requested by applicants was $4 million, resulting in $4 requested for every $1 that PCL had available. This time PCL has $1.5 million to grant over 3 years, and we project making 6-10 grants total depending on the size of the grant. Minimum 3-year grant is $80,000 and maximum 3-year grant is $240,000.  

Oct. 29 info session

The application form in WebGrants is designed to have you post a link to a video. In your video, you are welcome to use only still photographs and do voiceover to answer the questions. You are not required to show the speaker in the video, and you are not required to have a video that has someone visually on camera speaking. 

Yes, you may use photos with children younger than middle school ages, videos must not include young children as speakers in the video. For any child/youth you want to include in your video, in a still photo or as a speaker, you must have received photo release written permission photo from the child’s parents/guardians. Parents/guardians must have provided photo release to you to include their child in your video. You need consent from adults in your videos as well.

Please send any WebGrants questions to info@portlandchildrenslevy.org and we’ll help you with WebGrants challenges.  

Yes. PCL grants can cover costs for program time spent on data collection, data entry, writing and reading reports. In addition, PCL grants can cover costs related to program’s staff use of databases, internet or other costs associated with program reporting. In addition, PCL grants may include up to 15% for administrative expenses. For a full list of allowable costs, you can go to our website to review our PCL Grant Budget Guidance. 

Budget can include staff costs for recruiting, supporting, and managing volunteers. PCL budgets have 4 main cost categories: personnel for the program services, contracted services used for program services, other program expenses (for example supplies and materials, food for events with youth/families, staff mileage for program activities, etc.) and administrative costs. For a full list of allowable costs, you can go to our website to review our PCL Grant Budget Guidance. 

We’re looking for feedback about whether it’s right time for us to apply or if we should wait until next year. Our organization is a collective of artists focused on arts & culture social emotional wellness. We have worked together before and we’re building our program. Are programs that are developing eligible for these grants? Also, due to the historical displacement of Native/Indigenous people, we have Native/Indigenous artists who don’t live in Portland but who would be coming to Portland, for example from Warm Springs, as part of this program. Is that ok?  

PCL response:  

The organization must be a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt community-based nonprofits and incorporated in Oregon. The artists can reside out of Portland as long as the children, youth, and families to be served reside or attend school in Portland. If the artists are the ones doing the direct service with children/youth or families and they are not employees of the organization, the grant can be used toward their costs as contractors for the program services.  

Overall, we’ve seen many organizations struggle to establish new programs, unless they have established partnerships with youth-serving organizations or ongoing relationships with children, youth, and families. This challenge has been true especially for after school programs. If your organization would be leveraging existing partnerships with schools or community organizations, or has success engaging youth at program sites for other activities, then you can discuss that experience in your application. 

Your program services must fit with one of PCL’s program areas and must address at least one funding priority in the selected program area. You can check our website to see if your program services would fit a program area and one of its funding priorities.

Only direct services for children and families, not for capital campaigns or general operating. 

Your organization is not eligible. The eligibility for PCL small grants is based on the organization’s revenues in its last closed fiscal year, and not on the size of the program in the organization. 

Yes, services may occur outside of the city but the children, youth, and families served must live in or attend school in Portland.  

This first map shows all of the metro region, and you can zoom in to see Portland’s specific boundaries relative to neighboring cities such as Beaverton and Gresham.  

This second map shows zip codes, neighborhoods, and the 4 districts of city council for City of Portland. Also note that school districts entirely in Portland boundaries are Centennial, David Douglas, Parkrose, Portland Public. A small part of Reynolds is also in Portland. 

Yes, but we encourage you to think about the feasibility of your expansion. In our experience, applications have been more successful when they demonstrate successful partnerships at Portland locations and serving children in Portland. Similarly, programs that receive grants for new services have often struggled to get them up and running in the first year and sometimes longer. This results in few children receiving services from that grant, which reflects negatively on the program’s performance with the grant. 

Yes, the funding priorities in hunger relief include food distribution through pantries and delivery. You can see all hunger relief funding priorities on our website.  

PCL grants are reimbursement-based, and grantees submit quarterly invoices for actual and allowable PCL grant expenses. Invoices are due within 30 days of the end of the quarter. After invoices are submitted, it typically takes PCL and the city’s accounting team 3-4 weeks to process and pay an invoice as direct deposit to an organization’s bank account. PCL provides organizations the option to request advance payments each quarter for up to one-quarter of the annual grant budget.  

We understand some programs have seasonal services where expenses are concentrated in some quarters more than others. If your program incurs most of its expenses in a particular quarter, that is allowable.  

PCL is not accepting applications for preschool classroom services due to passage of Preschool for All. PCL’s early childhood funding priorities focus on other early childhood supports across the early childhood age spectrum, especially infants and toddlers. You can find the funding priorities for early childhood on our website. 

PCL also funds the Community Childcare Initiative (CCI), administered by Childcare Resource and Referral. The program helps working families earning low-incomes access childcare, for babies age 6 weeks through youth age 12. Childcare providers (including for-profit childcare providers) may participate in the Community Childcare Initiative to serve eligible families.  

Yes, a video of content covered in the info sessions is available on our Info Sessions and Q&A webpage.