PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A generous grassroots fundraising effort for businesses in downtown Portland is sharing some uplifting news.
We’ve known that local businesses have banded together after being beaten down and vandalized over the course of the past year. Boarded-up windows are bad for business and many owners cannot afford to fix them. Plus, because insurance downtown has become such a big issue — deductibles are outrageous.
But there is now a glimmer of hope.
A group of downtown businesses call themselves the Rose City Downtown Collective. In December, they started a GoFundMe fundraiser — hoping to raise $2,500 to help a couple of small businesses whose windows were broken.
Within just a few short weeks, leads of the collective say they’ve raised over $12,000. And better yet, someone has offered to match all of the donations, so they have now raised $25,000.
“It’s really exciting and heartening to see how the community is rallying around these small businesses,” Rose City Downtown Collective Co-founder Vanessa Sturgeon said. “Covid was hard enough, then the civil unrest, rioting and nightly destruction has been really the gut punch.”
If your business needs help repairing vandalism — they’ve set up a nomination form. They will distribute micro-grants to businesses in need by the end of January.
If you want to see the city come back to life and get its spark back, you can help these businesses too. They’ll be leaving the fundraiser open for a little while longer.