Our mission is one sentence: "We equip Christian leaders to discover and deploy upstream solutions to hard and neglected problems." The word doing the most work in that sentence is "upstream." People ask us what it means, and the Fall 2026 grant round is open, so this is a good time to answer.

Short version: given the choice, we fund the thing that keeps a problem from happening over the thing that manages it afterward. The longer version owes a lot to one book.

The river story

In Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen (Avid Reader Press, 2020), Dan Heath builds on a parable he credits to the sociologist Irving Zola. Two friends are having a picnic by a river when they hear a child drowning. They dive in and pull the child out. Then another child comes down the river, and another. They keep rescuing, until one friend climbs out and starts walking away. The other asks where they are going. The answer: upstream, to stop whoever is throwing the children in.

Heath's point is that most of our effort goes into rescue. Far less goes into finding out why people keep ending up in the river. He describes upstream work as efforts to prevent problems before they happen, or to steadily reduce the harm they cause.

Downstream work still matters

We want to be careful here, because rescue is love. When River City Church in Vancouver served more than 400 people over Thanksgiving weekend and delivered more than 300 meals to neighbors who were shut in or living in camps, that was downstream work, and we were glad to fund it. Hungry people need dinner tonight.

Heath says something similar. In a 2020 conversation with the Lean Enterprise Institute, he said "the need for heroism is usually a sign of systems failure." He honors the rescuers. He also sees that if we need them at the same bend in the river every week, something upstream is broken, and someone should go look.

Why upstream work is hard

Heath names three barriers. We see all three in Portland ministry.

  • Problem blindness. We stop seeing a problem as solvable. It becomes "just how things are" in a neighborhood or a family.
  • A lack of ownership. The problem is real, but it isn't anyone's job. A church sees it, a school sees it, a nonprofit sees it, and each assumes someone else will act.
  • Tunneling. When you are handling one crisis after another, you have no room left to think about next year. Most small ministries we know live here.

Seven questions worth asking

Heath then poses seven questions for upstream leaders. Here they are, with how we'd put each one to a Portland ministry.

  1. How will you unite the right people? Who else touches this problem: churches, schools, families, other nonprofits?
  2. How will you change the system? What pattern are you changing, beyond helping one person at a time?
  3. Where can you find a point of leverage? Where does a small push change a lot? Heath tells how Chicago Public Schools found that a student's freshman year says a great deal about whether they will graduate, and focused on keeping ninth graders on track.
  4. How will you get early warning of the problem? What shows up before the crisis? Proverbs 22:3 says the prudent see danger coming and take cover, while the simple walk on and pay for it. Seeing early is wisdom.
  5. How will you know you're succeeding? Heath warns about "ghost victories," when the numbers look good but the mission hasn't moved. Count what matters, and be honest about it.
  6. How will you avoid doing harm? Prevention reaches into people's lives before they ask for help. Go gently, test small, and listen.
  7. Who will pay for what does not happen? A prevented crisis shows up in nobody's budget, so it rarely gets funded. That is one reason a small grant from an endowment can matter more than its size suggests.

What upstream looks like in our grants

Since 2022 we have given $263,710 through 53 grants to 42 organizations over nine rounds. For our first eight rounds we funded good work of every kind. Spring 2026 was the first round we built around upstream solutions. After five years of this work, we had 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 calling to love, lead, and care for their families and communities. So we gave $37,500 to seven organizations serving men and families. Here are a few examples from that round.

Dads Helping Dads. This Portland nonprofit helps fathers get past barriers such as criminal records, unstable work, and strained family relationships. Part of its work is running workshops on Oregon's record-clearing options, which can open doors to jobs, housing, and time with their kids. Our $4,500 grant funded the Kingdom Impact Fatherhood Fellowship, recurring shared meals that build friendship among fathers and strengthen their bond with their children. Downstream, families come apart and kids carry the cost. Upstream, a father gets support before that happens.

Paid in Full Oregon. Paid in Full Oregon believes most approaches to life after prison deal with behavior, skills, and compliance, and leave identity and purpose untouched. So it starts inside, before release. It forms adults in custody as spiritual mentors through Christ-centered discipleship, accredited biblical and theological education with Corban University, and peer-led formation. Our $9,000 grant helps fund its Spiritual Mentor Director, who oversees the work across the three facilities it serves.

African Family Holistic Health Organization. AFHHO serves African immigrant and refugee families in Portland. For the men it serves, isolation is one of the biggest health risks, and culturally specific support for them barely exists here. Our $5,000 grant helps launch the Ubuntu Men's Initiative, a 12-month pilot starting this September in East Portland and Beaverton, with group sessions, a fatherhood program, and facilitator training. The aim is to form whole men before isolation becomes a crisis.

We don't claim any of these grants solved a problem on its own. Each organization asked where the trouble starts and went to work there.

What this means if you're applying

Our tenth round, Fall 2026, is open until Friday, October 23, 2026. Grants run from $1,000 to $7,000. This fall is open to any project. Upstream is a lens we read with, not a box you have to check, and downstream projects are still welcome.

If your work is upstream, make it easy for us to see. In your proposal, tell us:

  • The problem you're preventing. Name it plainly. What happens if nobody acts?
  • Who is affected. Real people in a real place, and how many.
  • Your early-warning signs. What do you watch for that tells you trouble is coming?
  • How you'll know it worked. The markers you will actually track, and what a ghost victory would look like for you.

Everything else is on the Portland Grants page. When you're ready, use the nonprofit application or the church application. Both go to the same review and the same pool of money.

An invitation

If you have spent years pulling people out of the river and you have a hunch about where they are falling in, we would like to hear it. Write it up before October 23. Or, before you write the whole thing, send Andrey Gorban a message and ask whether it's a fit. We'll tell you straight.

Dan Heath's book Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen was published by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2020. The summary above is ours. Read the book for his full argument and stories.