In 1971, six years after its founding, the National Endowment for the Humanities experimented with three different state affiliate models. Oregon was one of two states (along with Wyoming) to try the model of the volunteer committee—an independent organization rather than a state agency or a university department. This model proved to be an effective way to engage a wide range of individuals and organizations in supporting, developing, and implementing public humanities programs. The model stuck. Today, the great majority of state and territorial humanities councils are, like Oregon Humanities, independent nonprofit organizations that have formed strong partnerships across multiple sectors and networks in their state.
Halfway through its sixth decade, Oregon Humanities has gone far beyond its original charter as a volunteer committee devoted to redistributing NEH funds as grants to public humanities projects across the state. Thanks to a creative, dedicated, and geographically dispersed staff, a statewide board of directors, and a healthy and diverse portfolio of foundation and individual support, we have developed and continue to grow our suite of face-to-face conversation programs, online and on-the-page publications, and reflective discussion facilitation trainings, all of which are rooted in partnerships with libraries, educational institutions, municipal bodies, social service agencies, and many other community organizations.
We have also developed several key institutional partnerships along the way. In 2001, we became one of the Oregon Cultural Trust’s five Cultural Partners (along with the Oregon Arts Commission, the Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Heritage, and Oregon State Historic Preservation Office). One key aspect of our role as a Cultural Partner of the Trust is to coordinate the Oregon Poet Laureate program. In 2015, our long-running college humanities course for adults living on low incomes (Humanity in Perspective) formally joined the international network of Bard College Clemente programs. Also in 2015, we began providing reflective discussion facilitation training to staff, board members, and community partners of other state humanities councils around the country and to a wide range of people and organizations in and beyond Oregon. In 2018, in partnership with the Oregon Community Foundation, we created the Fields Artist Fellowship program, a unique and increasingly recognized opportunity for community-engaged artists.
We have also started and continue to strengthen several innovative programs of our own. Consider This (formerly Think & Drink), an onstage conversation series that many other state humanities councils have emulated, has engaged audiences in Portland and across the state for over ten years. The Conversation Project, another program emulated in many other states, engages thousands of Oregonians in face-to-face conversation and continues to help cultivate and connect a growing core of discussion leaders.
We publish Oregon Humanities magazine, which reaches 14,000 Oregonians three times a year in print and more than 50,000 online and has received national recognition, and we email stories by Oregonians to Oregonians a few times a month through Beyond the Margins. We have recently developed the Community Storytelling Fellowships program, which supports storytellers working in any medium—written journalism, audio, video, comics, photography, and more—in sharing stories from communities they are part of. And our podcast, The Detour, has been airing on multiple community radio stations since 2022. Our free online resources include high school curriculum and innovative projects such as This Place, a weekly podcast featuring voices from people living in communities all over Oregon talking about what it's like to live where they do.
In 2015, we started a letter exchange program, Dear Stranger, that received renewed attention and national media coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to connect Oregonians across zip codes and geographies. And we continue to design, facilitate, and moderate responsive conversations in workplaces and communities all around Oregon and at national conferences, as well as online.
And we have stayed true to our original roots, in that we continue to distribute grants, including annual public program grants, two large rounds of COVID relief and recovery grants, and other responsive grant programs that are evolving to meet the changing needs, demands, and gaps of potential grantees.