Initiatives

Portland Leadership Foundation engages leaders throughout the city with the goal of developing healthy partnerships. In essence, we don’t do anything alone. We are better together.
PLF brings together individuals and organizations that:

Act Six

Act Six is a leadership and scholarship program that connects urban ministries and faith-based colleges in order to equip emerging urban leaders to engage the college campus and their communities at home through a four-part strategy:


Recruit and Select
Locally recruit and select diverse, multicultural cadres of promising urban student leaders.

Train and Prepare
Intensively train these groups of students in the year prior to college, equipping them to support each other, succeed academically and grow as service-minded leaders.

Send and Fund
Send the teams together with unsurpassed scholarships for four years of education at partner colleges.

Support and Inspire
Provide strong campus support, ongoing leadership development and vocational connections to inspire scholars to serve their home communities.

This year we will award $2.1 million of scholarship funds to 20 urban leaders! Check us out online.

Urban Identity Consulting

Portland Leadership Foundation adds value to our partners by bringing know-how, relationships, and access to city. Our basic rule is that we don’t operate alone. This makes capacity building an institutional priority:

Warner Pacific College: In addition to our North/Northeast Portland office, we have developed a Southeast office at Warner Pacific College to help progress the institution’s urban identity and strategic plan. Warner Pacific has made their urban identity an institutional priority. Our job is to help them become “in the city, for the city.”

Young Family Foundation: Portland Leadership Foundation (PLF) is partnering with Young Family Foundation (YFF) to develop a thorough, long-term, strategic plan to operate their “Hope House.” Also, PLF is excited to partner with YFF as we look to form a larger collaborative designed to bring peace to the city.

Service Collaboratives

Many non-profits are already serving their communities through a myriad of innovative projects. By building upon the unity and collaboration of the citywide Season of Service, we see opportunities for more partnerships. We can model what spiritual renewal looks like through serving others. The Season of Service is designed for sustainability so that partnerships and community service are the identity markers for a healthy faith community.

United Demonstration Project

United is incredibly simple yet incredibly complex at the same time. We have partnered to build an authoritative community where fatherless kids come to experience intergenerational relationships. Each student fills-out a life plan and is placed with a mentor. Many kids need to be re-parented; we do that here. United is built as a intentional response to a study called Hardwired to Connect: A Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities, and a book written by the Search Institute called Developmental Assets.