In the spring of 2022, Brilliance Labs gave away its first six micro-grants. There was no template for it — only a conviction: that the churches and ministries doing the quiet, unglamorous work of loving Portland deserved to be believed in, and that a relatively small, timely, trusting gift could go a remarkably long way.
Five years later, that twice-a-year rhythm has become something with real shape and weight. This is the whole story, in order — nine rounds, forty-two organizations, and the work it set in motion across greater Portland.
The Full Report
Five Years of Coming Alongside
The complete designed report — every round, every recipient, in a print-ready format.
Where it began
The idea was simple, and it has not changed. Twice a year, we invite churches, nonprofits, and grassroots community projects across the greater Portland area to tell us what they are doing to bless their neighbors. We read every application. And wherever we can, we come alongside — with a grant, with training or a design lab, and sometimes with both.
Those first grants carried forward the legacy of Central Bible Church, and they were aimed deliberately at organizations serving communities that are under-resourced or otherwise overlooked. We have never tried to fund the largest or best-resourced organizations in the city. We have tried to find the ones already doing faithful work on the ground — and to remove a barrier or two so they can do more of it.
By the numbers
Nine rounds. Seventy organizations applied; forty-two were funded. Fifty-three grants in all, totaling $263,709.66 — an average of $4,975 per grant, ranging from $1,000 to $9,000. Thirteen of the organizations were churches; twenty-nine were nonprofits and ministries. Eight were funded in more than one round.
| Round | Focus | Recipients | Awarded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2022 | Inaugural round — underserved Portland communities | 6 | $33,800 |
| Fall 2022 | Immigrants, refugees & holiday outreach | 8 | $28,800 |
| Spring 2023 | Creatives, mental health & recovery | 4 | $16,440.66 |
| Fall 2023 | Youth & mental health for leaders | 4 | $25,572 |
| Spring 2024 | Youth, evangelism & immigrant services | 5 | $27,500 |
| Fall 2024 | Refugees, foster care & church renewal | 7 | $34,600 |
| Spring 2025 | Local churches only — creative outreach | 5 | $25,000 |
| Fall 2025 | Our largest, most competitive round to date | 7 | $34,497 |
| Spring 2026 | Men & families — upstream solutions | 7 | $37,500 |
| Total | 2022–2026 | 53 | $263,709.66 |
The grants have reached nearly every corner of the metro area — Northeast and East Portland, Beaverton, Gresham, Vancouver, Gladstone, Tualatin, Lake Oswego, Oregon City, Damascus, and beyond. Some organizations we have walked with for years: One H.O.P.E. Fellowship ($20,500 across four grants) and Pamoja House ($14,000 across two) among them.
The nine rounds
Spring 2022 · The inaugural round
The first round set the tone for everything that followed, funding a cross-section of the city: multi-ethnic church plants, immigrant and refugee ministries, and community development in some of Portland's most overlooked neighborhoods. One H.O.P.E. Fellowship, a multi-ethnic church plant in Northeast Portland, received our largest first grant for community outreach and evangelism. Jubilee Hall, a nonprofit coffee shop creating safe spaces for refugee and immigrant integration, was funded to equip its Burnside and 122nd location. Not every first-round bet unfolded the way we hoped — City Teams Portland's entrepreneurial cohort wound down — but we counted it as a lesson worth the investment.
Fall 2022 · Immigrants, refugees & the holidays
Our second round leaned into the season and into the city's immigrant and refugee communities. River City Church in Vancouver served more than 400 people over Thanksgiving weekend, delivering upward of 300 meals directly to neighbors who were shut-in or living in homeless camps and safe-stay housing. Punto de Encuentro turned its $1,000 into gift cards for twenty-two high-need students at Liberty High School. And a long partnership with Pamoja House began — a Southwest Portland organization serving immigrants through ESL, driver's education, tutoring, and citizenship classes. A later grant helped fund a staff member's full school-year salary, the kind of behind-the-scenes capacity that rarely gets funded and almost always determines whether a small organization survives its first hard years.
Spring 2023 · Creatives, mental health & recovery
The third round was smaller but unusually creative. We funded Humble Beast to produce The Halftime Podcast with Shai Linne; LifeCity Church to open a mental-health clinic offering professional counseling to people who otherwise had no access; House of Healing to expand its children's ministry; and New Life Church for One Right Church, a podcast made specifically for people leaving high-control religious groups.
Impact
At its peak, One Right Church drew more than 2,000 listens a week. Two fourteen-year-old boys told the team the podcast had helped them navigate their own families' exit from the Followers of Christ. A small grant, an enormous reach.
Fall 2023 · Youth & the mental health of those who serve
By the fourth round we were funding larger, more established projects. HOLLA School returned for playground updates; River City Church again ran its growing Thanksgiving meal program, which the mayor of Vancouver once called “an anchor of hope in the city”; and We Belong PDX received its first grant for children's mental-health programming. We also funded something easy to overlook: Thrive Church Planting used its grant for mental-health counseling for ministry leaders and their families who needed it but could not afford it. HOLLA's later report showed student retention up ten points to 99%, parent satisfaction at 96%, and literacy scores climbing 26.5% in a single year.
Spring 2024 · Youth, evangelism & immigrant services
The fifth round funded five organizations across a wide range of work — Pamoja House, One H.O.P.E. Fellowship, Mosaix PDX, Faithful Friends, and House of Healing. But the grant whose story traveled furthest went to House of Healing for a youth retreat.
Impact Story · A weekend that didn't end
With its $5,000 grant, House of Healing took 23 young people and eight volunteers to a campsite at Silver Cove, Washington, for a weekend built around honest conversation and the Gospel. What began that weekend didn't stop there: the youth kept a group text thread to check in with their leaders twice a week, and on New Year's Eve, four of the teens who came to the retreat were baptized.
Fall 2024 · Refugees, foster care & church renewal
Our sixth round was our broadest yet, funding seven organizations: Refugee Care Collective, Sanctuary Inn, We Belong PDX, Sacred Spaces PDX, The Language Hospitality Project, The Contingent's Every Child PDX, and Love INC of Clackamas County. We Belong PDX's reporting from this period is some of the most encouraging we have received — across a full year with 22 children at the Centennial site, 90% of surveyed youth said they had at least two adults they trusted.
Spring 2025 · Local churches only
For the seventh round we did something deliberate: we limited it entirely to local churches, wanting to see Portland-area congregations get more creative about reaching their neighbors. We funded One H.O.P.E. Fellowship, As Is Church, Columbia View Church, House of Healing, and Restoration Church. Columbia View's grant went to ICPDX, the only DOJ-recognized immigration legal office operating as a church ministry in East Portland; by the midpoint of its project it had already served 160 immigrants, past its goal of 150.
Impact Story · A fresh start, and a place to belong
As Is Church used its grant to open Hope Center Homes, a Christ-centered sober-living home for men coming out of recovery programs. One early resident landed a steady job and a promotion and moved out to reunite with his wife; another worked toward becoming a recovery counselor and began leading meetings of his own. The home's conviction, in its own words: that “every man deserves a fresh start rooted in faith, built on love, and surrounded by community.”
Fall 2025 · Our largest, most competitive round
Fall 2025 was our largest and most competitive round to date, with 25 ministries applying. We funded seven: Charis Counseling Associates, Divine Threads, Echo Ranch, Parklane Christian Reformed Church, Portland Central Young Life, The Family Room, and Relife NW. Portland Central Young Life's Acts 29 program saw 24 students finish the year and 9 graduate on to college, with attrition under 10% — far below the 20–25% they had braced for. Charis Counseling, partnering with Transitional Youth, stretched its grant into a $15,000 initiative providing trauma-informed counseling to unhoused young adults for just $10 a session.
Spring 2026 · Men & families, upstream solutions
For our most recent round, we did something different again — and it may be the clearest expression yet of what we have learned. After five years of work in this city, we have come to believe that many of the problems Portland's ministries work so hard to solve would be far less severe if men stepped fully into their God-given calling to love, lead, and care for their families and communities. So Spring 2026 was dedicated entirely to organizations serving and building up men and families. Paid in Full Oregon received our largest single grant ever — $9,000 — to form adults in custody as spiritual mentors across three Oregon prisons. Triple Threat Mentoring, the African Family Holistic Health Organization, NextG SAV PDX, Pure Life Alliance, Dads Helping Dads, and BMIT rounded out a round that best captures where we are headed.
The throughline
Look across all nine rounds and a pattern emerges. We have funded café equipment and counseling clinics, podcasts and playgrounds, youth retreats and rescue-horse footing, refugee staffing and prison ministry. On the surface these could not be more different. Underneath, they are the same thing: people who already love their neighbors, given a little more room to do it.
The grants are small by the standards of institutional philanthropy. But the impact reports make clear that timing and trust matter more than size. Again and again, recipients told us the same thing: the money came at the right moment, with no strings that strangled the work, and it let them say yes to something they would otherwise have had to decline. None of it is flashy. All of it is real.
What comes next
Five years in, the conviction that started it all is only stronger: that Portland is changed not by the biggest institutions but by faithful people in overlooked places, and that our job is simply to find them and come alongside. Every round still begins the same way — with an open invitation for churches, nonprofits, and grassroots projects to tell us what they're doing to bless the city.
If you know an organization doing this kind of work, we would love to hear about it. Nominate them, encourage them to apply, or reach out with a question at andrey@brilliancelabs.org. The next chapter of this story is still being written — and it will be written by the people on the ground, with us cheering, and helping, from alongside.
Read the full report
The complete record — every recipient in every round, in the original designed format.