Hello to all you Oregonians! After two years of planning, my partner and I are finally ready to start the process of moving to Portland!

In 2005, we began a long process of evaluating where we should "settle", and after many long nights determining the values and lifestyle we want in a community, we thought Portland would be the right place for us. In March of 2007, we visited the region for two weeks to see the area firsthand. We spent a lot of time getting to know the city, the nature, went up to Seattle (for a point of comparison), spent time in the mountains, on the river, and at the coast, and by the end of the trip, we felt like we had finally found "home".

After our trip, we sold our house (no easy feat right now), and now we are wrapping up projects at work, and preparing for the big move. We are planning on moving in June, therefore, I thought that it would be a good time to start building a community of professional contacts in the nonprofit community, and looking into employment options.

Any advise you could offer on the city of Portland would be most helpful, and I would love to share more about my interests and experience as appropriate.

We are really looking forward to joining you in the City of Roses!

-Jamie

Welcome to my favorite city in the US! My name is Steven Pascal-Joiner and I am the Mid-Career Transitions Coordinator at Idealist. Here are some of the resources that I recommend people use when orienting themselves to the area.

1. Using Idealist
I am not just starting here because I work for Idealist. To be honest, there are a few local nonprofit networking tools that have more resources that Idealist (for the Portland area at least) but I still think Idealist is a good place to start.

Idea #1: Use Idealist to do an organizational search. On the site, look for the box in the center column with the tabs “Find/Post/Receive Email Alerts.” Click on the Organizations link and enter in your search criteria. I encourage people to only use “State or Province” and “City or Town” and their search criteria. I generally choose “Within: 50 miles.”

When I did this for Portland, I got 598 results. Use these results to see what nonprofits are in the area and then make a list of the organizations that you would like to contact for an informational interview. This step can take a while but I honestly think that it is one of the best ways to gain an understanding of what is available in the area. After setting up a few informational interviews or offering to volunteer (or intern) with an organization when you first arrive, you will find a lot more open doors and a much larger local network of people who know that you are looking for work.

Idea #2: Make sure to sign up for daily email alerts for anything that has to do with Portland. I get these and usually end up with 2-5 items a day ranging from job posts to new organizations added.

Idea #3: Do a consultant search. This is started in the same box as the organizational search. Consultants are usually great people to contact as they have a very good understanding of the local nonprofit demographic and may be able to put you onto organizations that you may not have otherwise known about. A consultant search for Portland yielded 5 results when I did it. One organization in particular that comes up when I did a consultant search is Technical Assistance for Community Services (TACS). They do a lot of great work and are well worth looking into.

Idea #4: We are currently developing a lot of career resource materials for our website. They can all be found at www/idealist.org/careers This location also features the book that I am wrote with a colleague on careers in the nonprofit sector. The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers (www.idealist.org/careerguide) is available as free downloadable PDFs.

2. Local Resources

Besides sites like Craig’s List (which does offer nonprofit jobs and volunteer opportunities), there are two other good resources here in the Portland area.

CNRG (pronounced like synergy) stands for “Community Nonprofit Resource Group.” They have a great daily email digest that has a lot of events, volunteer opportunities, and job openings. You can sign up for their emails at www.cnrg-portland.org I get their emails every day and it helps me stay abreast of what is going on locally. CNRG also hosts a monthly meeting on the third Thursday of every month. I believe that signing up for the daily digest will also keep you in the loop about the networking events. Here is the email I got for the February event:

Nonprofit Networking Night: Are you a non-profit or someone who works with them? A non-profit looking for affordable consultants or vendors? A volunteer looking an organization eager for your time? A non-profit wanting to partner on a project? If so, then non-profit networking is for you. Come meet others who work and volunteer in Portland's non-profit sector. Swap resources, share ideas, devise solutions and just hang out with community-minded people like yourself. Bring your brains and your rolodex; we provide snacks and drinks. Thursday, February 21st from 6:00-8:00pm. At CubeSpace, 622 SE Grand Avenue.
Suggested Donation: $5.00 to cover food and drinks *This is a regular event that happens every third Thursday of the month.*
Any questions, contact CubeSpace at 503-206-3500 or on the web at www.CubeSpacePDX.com Co-sponsored by CNRG and CubeSpace

Green Drinks: These are all over the country and are a social networking group for environmentally minded people. This typically also includes folks who work in nonprofits but not necessarily directly on the environment. Here in Portland, they meet on the first Tuesday of the month at the Ecotrust Building (which is a great organization to check out as well: www.ecotrust.org). Just do a Google search for Green Drinks Portland and you will get right to the site. They also send out daily updates.

I found recently. It is www.igivewhereilive.net This is a nonprofit in Washington County (which is where you, according to your resume, live) that focuses on giving to local nonprofits. They have a fair amount of information on local nonprofits and would be a great place to contact for more information.

On the Washington side of the River, the Nonprofit Network of Southwest Washington www.npnw.org, is a good place to start. For volunteer specific opportunities, Hands On Portland www.handsonportland.org is a great resource.

Finally, Kelley Carmichael (the moderator for this group) is a career transitions counselor and she is a FANTASTIC local resource. You can visit her website at http://www.careertransitions.org.

Wow! Thanks for all of the ideas and resources, some of which I knew about (CNRG) and some of which I didn't (idealist listserv!).

Just wanted to clarify that we are moving from Washington, DC (I guess I will have to get used to making that distinction on the west coast)...