The Oregon iSector

A New Oregon Sector for Community Innovation

A New Sector for Community Innovation

Imagine a new sector where leaders from the public, private and civic sectors can seize opportunities to integrate and leverage resources and take unified action on complex economic, environmental, and social challenges. Imagine a new sector that connects public, private and civic partners and makes it easier for them to work together to build a thriving Oregon.

Oregon leaders from the public, private and civic sectors need a platform and infrastructure that enables them to work easily together across sectors to initiate and conduct successful partnerships that utilize their collective capacities to meet these challenges.

Our mission is to provide a platform for launching cross-sector partnerships to enable leaders in communities throughout the state to work together to address challenges and seize opportunities to build a thriving Oregon. The Oregon iSector is being developed to provide support and assistance to Oregon’s leaders from every sector to help them work together more effectively to create innovative solutions.

 

Vision

Visualize a new sector where leaders from the public, private and civic sectors bring their resources together to take unified action on complex economic, environmental and social challenges. Imagine a new sector where synergies among the sectors lead to innovative solutions. Imagine a new sector that inspires hope in our ability to solve problems.

Need

In today’s world, Oregon’s public, private, and civic sector leaders face complex challenges on issues ranging from health care to housing to education and poverty. Now, more than ever, these challenges are best solved with joint action. While individual public, private and civic investments help contribute to solutions, the iSector’s unique approach results in all three sectors bringing their resources together to solve Oregon’s challenges holistically. When leaders find ways to work together through the iSector they can truly seize opportunities that help improve the lives of Oregonians.

Who

The Oregon iSector organization is building a platform for launching innovative partnerships to enable public, private and civic leaders at both the state and local levels to come together to address complex problems and achieve sustainable outcomes.

The Oregon iSector Board is made up of experienced leaders from government and private and philanthropic sectors who have created these kinds of partnerships.

What an iSector Partnership Looks Like,

The Housing Innovation Partnership

Oregon is in a tie for last in having the worst housing deficit in the United States. In a crisis, there is a lot of chaos and it can be hard to see the way forward. People tend to double down on preserving the institutions that have been developed over time, but we need to look at this housing crisis objectively and understand that we will not get out of it by doing things the same way we have been. We need a new set of tools.

To that end, a Housing Innovation Partnership has been initiated to bring leaders together to develop and implement an innovative plan to help produce more housing units as soon as possible. The partners come from all sectors – government, business, the nonprofit world, and foundations – committed to addressing our state’s current housing crisis through innovation, systems change, and community implementation.

HIP members are focused on scaling up housing production quickly and affordably, creating safe and accessible housing to reduce Oregon’s dramatic housing deficit. The partners are developing specific strategies for the following areas: producing mass timber and modular housing and panels, building local governments’ planning and management capabilities, developing new financing models and incentives for middle/workforce housing, and organizing research capabilities.

See more here.

UPDATES

The Workforce Housing Imperative

With a housing deficit of around 140,000 units, there is no question that Oregon needs to build more housing. We have programs in place to subsidize...

“The public sector may no longer be capable of solving big problems by itself. The nonprofit sector may want for authority and resources alike. And the private sector may be primarily motivated by profits. But in the end, their interests are intertwined, because the success of each, indeed, of the great American experiment itself, depends on finding new ways to address the many challenges before us.”

Frank A. Well

Founding Chair, The Intersector Project, The Aspen Institute's Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation