Dear friends and community members,

After 27 years, we are very excited to announce the name change of CommuniCare to Schnitzer Cares!

In 1997, the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation started a student-led grantmaking program that would help high school students learn about needs in their communities. Since then, this program has helped over 8,000 students learn about philanthropy!

This name change better reflects our family's continued philanthropic efforts to help make communities in the metropolitan area, across the state of Oregon and the country, a better place! High school students are asked to choose a pressing need in their neighborhoods. We ask them to get together and figure out how to raise $1,500 from bake sales, car washes, you name it - whatever it takes to be creative and entrepreneurial. We then match their fundraising with a $15,000 contribution so they can make their own decisions within their chosen theme.

We are very excited that in the 2023-2024 school year 1,800 students across 83 different school groups completed the Schnitzer Cares program to better their communities, granting over $1.1 million to 143 Oregon nonprofits and many additional school programs!

In 1905, when my paternal grandfather Sam Schnitzer arrived from Ukraine, and my maternal grandfather Simon Director left Poland to come to Portland, they could not have imagined the legacy that they would pass onto my parents and that my parents would pass onto me! I hope to continue this legacy by passing it on not only to my children, but to the many students, teachers, advisors, and recipients who are involved in the Schnitzer Cares program every year.

The students who participate in this program represent the best of the American dream - where those who came before us worked hard to build our communities and have now passed the baton of leadership to us to forge a new future. Now we are working hard to continue to make our community, our state, and our country the best that it can be. Giving back is both our duty and our joy! In the words of my late mother, Arlene Schnitzer, "You can't just take in the free air. You owe something. If you don't do it and I don't do it, who is going to do it? You either put up or shut up." That is what my family does! We show up for our communities. We show up for Oregon. These family values are what we hope to pass on to all the participants in Schnitzer Cares!

On behalf of our amazing staff at Schnitzer Cares, we cannot thank all the school advisors enough. I know each of you join me in celebrating the amazing achievements of these 1800 grantmakers.

To all of you high school students, you represent the best of what we can achieve when we work together!

For those students who are graduating high school, we again salute you and send our best wishes for your future success. For those students who are continuing in the program next year, thank you for what you have done, and we look forward to you and others working in the Schnitzer Cares program to help even more nonprofits next year.

Best Regards,

Jordan Schnitzer
President, The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation