Venture Portland

As of 2023, Venture Portland celebrated 37 years of supporting small business through portlands business district associations. We continue to provide information and assistance, a grants program, networking opportunities, board trainings, webinars, promotions, and offer select districts a district manager at 36 hours per week through our catalytic investment initiative program. In 2022-23, we provided 3,000 hours of technical assistance to business district associations. Our members donated 5,000 hours of volunteer time to support our goals and strengthen our business community. We streamlined our events hub with a focus on marketing and promotions as key components of the events work. For the first time in our history, in the summer of 2023, we were able to offer a "major impact grants" opportunity awarding 250,000 in grant dollars to multiple business district associations. This, along with our spring and fall grant cycles, allowed us to gift 350,000 in grant funding within the span of twelve months.