Watch the City Council meeting above. (The Portland Children’s Levy discussion begins at 9:45.)

City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved $71 million in grants from the Portland Children’s Levy to support therapeutic services for foster youth, home visiting and parent education programs, school food pantries, after school music and sports programs and more. 

The grants benefit 94 programs from 64 organizations that provide services in after school, child abuse prevention and intervention, early childhood, foster care, hunger relief and mentoring. The package also includes continued funding for the popular Community Childcare Initiative, a special initiative that makes high-quality childcare more affordable for working families with low incomes. 

See full list of grants approved by City Council 

The ordinance approved Wednesday reversed City Council’s original decision June 4 to send back all 94 grants to the Allocation Committee, the body that oversees PCL, for reconsideration. It also rescinded City Council’s earlier decision to extend current large grants for a year. 

Instead, funding for the original package of grants approved by the Allocation Committee in April will go into effect starting July 1, 2025, and the grants will run for three years. 

More about the 2024-25 large grant funding round 

The 94 grants approved by City Council were the result of more than two years of equity-centered community engagement and input on needs and priorities. More than 750 community members and service providers provided input in more than 25 languages. PCL’s Community Council helped design the community engagement process, shape the application and scoring criteria, and create funding recommendations.  

By the numbers 

  • 76% of culturally specific organizations that submitted applications (28/37) had an application approved for funding. 
  • 71% of the applications approved for funding (67/94) are from organizations with majority Black, Indigenous and people of color staff. 
  • 50% of the organizations approved for funding (32/64) are smaller organizations with annual revenues under $6 million. 
  • 42% of the organizations approved for funding (27/64) have not previously received a PCL grant. 
  • $3 in requests for every $1 in available funding
  • 168 applications received in the 2024-25 funding round, a 45% increase compared to the last funding round in 2019-20 
  • More than 200% increase in the number of applicants that are not currently funded by PCL compared to the last funding round  
  • 91 trained community volunteers scored every application, with 4 reviewers per application
  • 21% drop in revenues from the current fiscal year to 2025-26 due in part to declining property tax revenue 

About the Portland Children’s Levy 

Portland voters approved the first Levy in 2002 and overwhelmingly renewed it four times, most recently in May 2023. PCL works to prepare children for school, support them to be successful inside and outside of classrooms, and eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in children’s outcomes. 

PCL grew out of a need to increase opportunity for all Portland’s children. Historical policies and practices have a direct relationship with disparities in outcomes for children navigating poverty and children of color. The Levy, a City of Portland initiative, strives to change this trajectory by generating about $20-23 million annually through a property tax to provide grants to community-based programs supporting children and families.