NWHF Bids a Warm Farewell to Outgoing Program Director Jen Matheson

Message From Jen:

Jen, Michael, Eddie and Shannon look snazzy in denim for the 2019 holiday card

During my tenure at NWHF we’ve tried to align with the principles of  justice-based philanthropy: focus on system change, center the most impacted, strive to be accountable and responsive and act with both our assets and influence. 

You might think that looks like cutting a check and taking a back seat. 

But it is quite the opposite, these principles demand we listen, ask questions, give and receive feedback, show up and build relationships. 

This has been the most meaningful part of my work. The after-hours phone call with a new executive director weighing the opportunities and risks of changing their strategy. Volunteer board members in a rural community sharing what’s at stake for their children if they are not able to win their campaign. Encouraging a disability justice leader to apply for our grant, and hearing why our process doesn’t work.  

It also looks like asking community organizations to help us shape our grantmaking and programs. Inviting leaders from Warm Springs, Oregon to Raymond, Washington to learn together, challenge their assumptions and share their point of view. Thank you for trusting us with your time and capacity, letting us know what you need and how we could do better. 

I’m so excited to see what comes next for the partners of Northwest Health Foundation. The bold leaders and organizations of Oregon and SW Washington are asking themselves what would it look like to do work differently, to build resilient infrastructure and networks across communities, across regions and movements to advance democracy so communities have the health, dignity and freedom we deserve. 

This work is about what we hold for future generations, what we want to fight for, and who we want to fight alongside. 

I am so proud to have been a part of this work, thank you for letting me bring my heart and care.  Thank you for your trust and friendship.

Sincerely,

Jen

Jesse Beason, President & CEO: 

Management team, aka Jesse, Jena and Anita are all smiles in 2024

Jen Matheson started working at NWHF six months after I did. We were both strangers to philanthropy, but not to each other. Although we hadn’t worked at the same place before, our government and nonprofit lives were intertwined across the previous decade through jobs, volunteering, coalitions and lobby days.

For the past 12 years at NWHF, across six different roles amongst us, we’ve had many chapters in our philanthropy lives. Throughout these chapters Jen has made an immeasurable impact on our work and on me.

In recounting that impact, I am finding it hard to know where to start. I will start here: Jen has made our programs, past and present, more proximate, more community-accountable and more human. I will add: she has made our staff and board, in all its iterations, more connected, more joyful and more effective. 

I will share two memories. 

First: In 2012, NWHF made three grants totaling $80,000 to disability-focused organizations, only 1.5% of our giving that year. For a foundation that names disability as one of its lenses, that number was deeply embarrassing. We weren't okay with it, and we set out to do better. Jen helped lead much of the effort to make disability justice a core part of NWHF. But Jen made it more than just work. She built meaningful relationships with disability justice leaders, uplifted their work and grieved their deaths.

Second: It was Saturday April 14, 2018. We were in Medford with about 70 folks from across Oregon & SW Washington. We were gathered as part of our Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities collaborative. Leaders from Mujeres Unidas y Activas had flown up from Oakland. I looked around the room impressed at all the ways that Jen (and former NWHFer Michael!) had helped build a cohort of community leaders, some employed at nonprofits, some just volunteering. We were all learning, first hand through the work of MUA, that there need not be a separation between providing direct services and organizing—that people can receive assistance and help lead their communities forward. I remember feeling a sense of gratitude for Jen’s knack at the art of gathering: thoughtful planning at every step, caring through not only the logistics but the relationships she forges and the spaces she creates.

Jen has taught me so much about humility, generous authority, and how to show up authentically in community. She will be greatly missed here.

I know I speak for so many staff, board and grantees when I say: Jen Matheson, thank you, thank you, thank you.