Handoff of PPS Foundation to The Fund for PPS: April Letter to PPS LSF Leaders

April 11, 2019

Dear PPS Local School Foundation Leaders –

In March, I emailed all of you to share the news that after 25 years of working in service to you, the PPS parent community, we are gracefully handing off the PPS Foundation program back to PPS and to a central nonprofit foundation for the district. This hand-off has the goal of ensuring that the broader needs of Local School Foundations are met and that the vision for a strong PPS district is supported. Following that email the question that we have been asked repeatedly is:

“Is All Hands Raised going away?”

The answer is no, All Hands Raised is not going away—in fact, we will continue to grow and expand our work. While this organization was founded as the entity to steward PPS Local School Foundation fundraising and implement the PPS Board Policy that guides the PPS Parent Fund, our work began to expand in the early 2000’s—first with Connected by 25, then with Ninth Grade Counts and, more recently, when community leaders appointed us to adapt a national cradle to career movement locally in Multnomah County

It is that work of the last nine years that has galvanized this community, and affirmed our focus on sustaining a county-wide vision to ensure the success of our kids, inside and outside of school, from birth through career. In this role, we work every day to align community assets from throughout Multnomah County to ensure we improve educational outcomes, especially for kids of color and kids living in poverty.

To help explain the heart of our work, I have enclosed a copy of the latest story of the All Hands Raised Partnership—Chapter 04.  Our chapter publications are intended to update the community on both the progress being made and the work yet to be done through the All Hands Raised Partnership, which encompasses seven school districts. We are proud that Chapter 04 embodies the values this work was founded on—shared responsibility, shared accountability and shared credit.

We hope that after reading Chapter 04 you feel proud of the community’s work to solve complex local problems with complex local solutions.  We hope you will stay in touch.

Sincerely,

Dan Ryan
CEO
All Hands Raised