Building Sustainability

Hello Friends, 

We've got a plan to ensure the Garden is open for generations to come–but we need your help to make it a reality. 

The last six months at Leach Botanical Garden have been a wild ride. Our cash crunch in February led us to make tough choices internally to reduce hours and layoff staff. And it led us to reach out to you all, our community, for support both financially and as volunteers and visitors. 

I'm happy to say that six months later, we are in a much better place. Visitation to the Garden was up substantially this spring. Gift shop sales increased. Volunteer hours blossomed and increased donations buoyed us to solvency. We were able to continue to hold events and weddings without interruption, we completed the Pedestrian Bridge Project and opened the new East 5 public pathway. We even were able to hold a special fundraiser that enabled us to hire horticulture staff support over the next 12 months.

The City of Portland, through the support of Parks leadership, city councilors and Mayor, provided a one-time grant of $200,000 that allowed us to move confidently into our new fiscal year that started July 1. We have a year to build out a sustainability plan. 

Sustainability for a nonprofit means, ironically, having a profit. That "profit" goes right back to the garden, not to shareholders. But Leach Botanical Garden has limits on its revenue. If we were to charge visitors a fee equivalent to the shared cost of what it takes to maintain a space like this, the entry fee would be over $33 per person, per visit. No one wants that!  Because we are committed to having the Garden remain accessible, we must fundraise $281K from individuals each year, we hold special events and weddings, we write grants, we sell things in our gift shop, we ask businesses for sponsorships. This diversity of revenue covers about 80% of our expenses. But 20% remains as a gap each year. Historically, we have made up that gap with support from the City of Portland funds. In July of 2027, that's not going to be an option. 

Our next place to turn is to build a sustainability fund. This is an investment fund that provides financial support to the Garden based on investment returns. Historically, investment returns can be around 8%. With inflation of 3% that means we could safely remove 5% from our investments each year in order to cover our $250K-$300K gap. A sustainability fund of $5 million today would give us $250K each year. Yes! But unfortunately we currently only have $200K invested, not $5 million. So if we start raising money now, by the time we raise enough to provide the income we need, inflation will require that we now need $300K per year. Thus the need for $6 million.  

We think it will take 5 years to raise $6 million.  How do we get from here to 5 years from now? We need $1.5 million for the next 5 years which would give us $300K per year on average... a little more than we need, but guess what, raising $6 million actually requires extra staff and expertise so we will have to spend more over the next few years to reach our $6 million goal. 

Whew! What does this mean?

1) A single philanthropic donor could donate $5 million today. Bingo. We are golden. That seems wonderful, but unlikely. 

2) We could set a total target of $7.5 million for our sustainability fund and start fundraising, but we must raise a good portion (at least $250K) by July of 2027. And then another $257K by July 2028 and so on.  (keep in mind, the amount we raise for the sustainability fund is in addition/on top of/supplemental to the normal amount we have to raise from donations for regular operations, also around $250,000 per year. We can’t afford to cannibalize our regular fundraising in order to build the sustainability fund). 

3) We could find a new funding source that would commit to contributing $250K in 2027,  increasing by 3% each year after that, indefinitely into the future. 

All three options get us to our goal of sustaining operations at our current level. If we want to add more hours or days to the garden, or if we want to build out the garden with more plants and pathways, we will have to set our fundraising targets even higher. 

How can you help? Most people I know do not have several million dollars immediately at hand. I know more people who have assets (house, retirement savings, etc) that are valued in the millions of dollars. Thus our belief that our path to long-term sustainability lies in planned giving, people putting Leach Garden in their estate plan, designating a portion of their assets to Leach Garden and its future. But it doesn't even take a million dollars to make a difference. A $75K estate gift helped us finish the pedestrian bridge across Johnson Creek. Anything above $50K could help. 

Interested? Let's talk. You could be the person who puts us on the path to long-term sustainability. 

Thank you for your support.