First of the Month Favorites: The Community Organizations I Love to Support
Most months on this blog, I'm pointing you toward a treasured experience or local business. This time it's a different kind of favorites list — the nonprofits here in Central Oregon I actually give my time, money, or attention to, and why.
Oregon Adaptive Sports is marking 30 years in 2026, and I have a personal stake in that milestone — my dear friend Colleen co-founded it. What started as a small group trying to establish adaptive ski opportunities in Central Oregon has grown into a program that gets more than 400 people with disabilities outside every year, across skiing, mountain biking, paddling, and golf.
Furnish Hope (Bend)
I've mentioned Furnish Hope before as a great place to shop, but the shop is really just the fundraising engine. The actual work is turning empty houses into homes for people starting over — veterans, foster kids aging out of the system, families fleeing domestic violence, people who've lost everything to a fire or flood. They work through a network of local referral agencies, then furnish a home room by room.
Humane Society of Central Oregon
I'm an easy mark for anything animal-related, and the Humane Society of Central Oregon is usually where that lands. What I like most is where they're headed. They're working toward a mobile clinic and a new public vet clinic to bring care to parts of Central Oregon that don't have easy access to it, and they're expanding their foster program too. If you've been looking for a way to help animals here, fostering, volunteering, and shopping their thrift store are all good places to start.
NeighborImpact's mission is to support people and strengthen communities, and their reach is wider than most people realize. Their work runs from preparing children for kindergarten to helping young couples buy their first home, and they serve more than 55,000 households across Central Oregon each year. On the food side, they distribute over 6 million pounds of food a year, including through mobile food banks that take food out to the smaller towns around the region, so it's not just Bend and Redmond that get covered.
My favorite event of the year is their Empty Bowls fundraiser every October. You take home a handmade bowl from a local potter and enjoy a soup dinner, and the proceeds go to feeding our neighbors. Mark your calendar for next year!
The Giving Plate Community Store (Bend)
The Giving Plate is a food pantry set up like a store, where families choose their own groceries in a welcoming space, free from stigma or shame. What I love most is their Kid's Korner program. Kids get to shop for themselves at the Kid's Korner Market and on a mobile pantry bus, and weekend snack packs go home with students in more than 30 Bend and La Pine schools.
Council on Aging of Central Oregon
The Council on Aging of Central Oregon has been at this since 1975. They help older adults and people with disabilities with things like Meals on Wheels, community lunches, Medicare guidance for people turning 65, and even a birthday card for someone who's isolated. They're always looking for volunteers, and they draw on a dedicated community across the tri-county area, from Madras to Chemult, that gives more than 20,000 hours a year. They were a tremendous help as I supported my father in his last chapter, and I've gladly referred them to clients and their families as a starting point.
Mustangs are federally protected, yet thousands end up in BLM holding pens, and many are shipped to kill-pens in Mexico and Canada. Skydog Ranch & Sanctuary runs a 9,000-acre ranch near Prineville for mustangs and burros pulled off that path, and specifically they work to keep herd families together. They also push hard on the advocacy side, trying to change how wild horses get managed before rescue is the only option left. Recently, a documentary called Blue Zeus was made celebrating the mustang and the work Skydog has done for him. I've loved horses my whole life, so this one's personal for me.
These are a few of the organizations doing great work in Central Oregon, and where I put my own time and support. If any of them speak to you, they can always use more of both.
However you choose to give, thank you.
— Heather
