Nonprofit Resource Center

Government Documents Room
2nd floor, Central Library
801 S.W. 10th Avenue
Portland, OR 97205

Since 1973, Multnomah County Library has housed a regional collection for the Foundation Center, which was chartered as an educational corporation in 1956 by the Board of Regents of the State University of New York. The Foundation Center is a nonprofit organization concerned exclusively with gathering, analysis and dissemination of information on philanthropic foundations. Foundation Center national libraries are located in New York, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, San Francisco and Atlanta, and over 200 regional collections are in libraries throughout the United States.

The four other regional collections in Oregon are located at:

University of Oregon , Eugene – 541.346-3053
Oregon Institute of Technology , Klamath Falls – 541.885.1773
Pacific Nonprofit Network , Medford – 541.779.6044
Oregon State Library , Salem – 503.378.4277

Multnomah County Library makes the publications of the Foundation Center available to the public along with other materials on foundations, corporate philanthropy, government grants, proposal writing, fundraising and nonprofit management. Library staff provide help in using these materials, and brief reference questions can be answered by telephone. Some of the indexes and directories published by the Foundation Center are also available online. The library staff is not able to do foundation research for patrons nor recommend foundations as sources for funds.

The Nonprofit Resource Center is primarily a reference collection, and the resources must be used in the library. However, the library does have a substantial circulating collection on nonprofit management, fundraising and proposal writing.

Multnomah County Library also:

Provides access to Foundation Directory Online Professional, a database of over 92,000 U.S.-based foundations, grantmaking public charities, and corporate givers and IRS 990s.
Has federal grant information.
Offers periodicals, newsletters and the Foundation Center's Web site, which contains current information on nonprofit management, grantmakers, news and events.

To obtain financial information or the 990 IRS returns of Oregon foundations, contact the Attorney General's Office, Charitable Trust Division, at 503.229.5725 or 1515 S.W. 5th Ave., Suite 410, Portland, OR.