Oregon-Rooted Nonprofits Join Forces as Funding Pressures Mount

Faced with drying funding and growing need, two international nonprofits with Oregon ties are combining forces in a move that remains uncommon in the sector. Portland-based Green Empowerment has announced that the U.S. arm of blueEnergy is formally in the process of merging with it, while blueEnergy's French arm has signed a formal partnership with the Portland group.

The two organizations are still negotiating the terms. The effort grew out of a project in Uganda. Green Empowerment, a renewable energy nonprofit, has since 2019 helped communities there supply power and clean water to health clinics. When it tried to expand that work last year, funding was tightening amid a sweeping pullback in U.S. foreign aid.

The group turned to blueEnergy, which works globally and has bases in France and the U.S. Together they connected with a Ugandan clean water organization that already partnered with Green Empowerment, and an existing blueEnergy France donor paid for the work. Executive director Andrea Johnson told OPB the project is under way and could serve as a model for approaching other funders. Talks have also begun on repeating the arrangement in Ethiopia, where blueEnergy France has a long-standing partnership.

Johnson said that even as funding shrinks, "our work is still very urgent." Nonprofits are contending with rising costs, much like businesses and households, while cuts to social services and federal foreign aid have driven demand sharply higher.

For Green Empowerment, which has partners in 10 countries and helps build community-owned micro-utilities such as solar installations, the merger offers a chance to support projects in two more countries and tap additional funding sources in Europe. BlueEnergy, for its part, needed an organization with strong administrative capacity to take over its U.S. operations, and can fold its U.S. assets into Green Empowerment with assurance that its work will continue. Both want to keep backing renewable energy in rural communities in places such as Nicaragua, Uganda and Burkina Faso.

Mathias Craig, an Oregon native and blueEnergy co-founder who is working with Green Empowerment on the merger, said the process of more than a year was long and rocky. "If you have a strong bedrock of trust and openness, you can work through it, no problem," he said.

The broader backdrop is difficult. Nonprofits typically rely on donations, grants and government money, and can also earn revenue from sources like ticket sales or thrift shops. When the economy weakens, as Oregon's has since the COVID-19 downturn, they often take a hit just as demand rises. President Donald Trump paused U.S. foreign aid soon after taking office in 2025, and the administration formally closed the U.S. Agency for International Development that summer. Neither Green Empowerment nor blueEnergy US received federal funding, but both worked with many partners that did.

Jim White, executive director of the Nonprofits Association of Oregon, said organizations without government funding are also feeling the effects because they are trying to cover gaps left by groups that lost it. "There's no way they can fill all of the gap," he said. His association has built a five-part workshop on coping with funding losses, including how to merge with or be acquired by another group. White said mergers can expand reach when values and work cultures align and the groups can handle the administrative and legal burden. He expects more of them, though many organizations are currently consolidating by sharing resources instead.

Portland's William Temple House, which offers low- and no-cost counseling and a food pantry, has done that by creating a full-time job shared between two peer organizations. Executive director Graham Craft said the group would consider a merger if it would help serve more people and improve its financial sustainability. "The future for nonprofits is tough now and it's uncertain," he said.