In our 11th year of awarding the Grady Britton marketing grant, we’re excited to have selected a Portland nonprofit that has been working for our community since 2008. Micro Enterprise Services of Oregon (aka MESO) elevates entrepreneurship throughout the Portland area. Through access to capital, business planning, market research, individual development accounts, bookkeeping, classes, networking and mentoring services, they help small businesses get started and get growing. Quite simply, MESO was founded on a notion that “low-income individuals could achieve economic security through entrepreneurship.”
Specifically, MESO’s mission is to elevate and empower historically excluded and under-resourced entrepreneurs, with the aim to build family wealth through small business ownership. Here are some statistics to illustrate: since 2009, MESO has placed 1,250 loans and disbursed $12M, 70% of which to women-owned businesses and more than 60% to minority-owned businesses; since MESO’s beginnings, the nonprofit has served nearly 10,000 businesses across their support services; during the COVID-19 pandemic, MESO has administered $16M through 4,618 grants to micro- and small-businesses, and provided free business workshops to 500 businesses throughout the community.
Our 5-person committee was tasked with the nearly impossible decision of choosing one marketing grant winner out of all of the applicants. What stood out to the team about MESO is the critical importance of their mission of helping grow our community’s small businesses. By providing financial assistance and program support to these entrepreneurs, they’re helping set Portland up for economic success while giving these business owners opportunities to see their visions through and set the next generation up for goodness, too.
We’ll soon be sharing more on the Grady Britton blog and social media channels about the other two organizations we spoke more deeply with, providing information on how you can help, too. Choosing one winner among Portland’s incredible, deserving nonprofits is...difficult, to say the least. That’s why we’re glad we get to have a new winner every year!
From all of us at Grady Britton, thank you to every organization that spent precious time to apply and share your stories with us. Above all, thank you for your selfless service to our community.
Be sure to read more about this year’s volunteer grant winner, Brown Hope!