William Temple House and Thrift Store

02/28/2026

Today, PPS reversed a surprise decision to eliminate MLC’s high school program. We applaud this reversal—and applaud the advocacy from MLC students, families, staff and others that led to this reversal.

For years, William Temple House has partnered with MLC to provide their student body consistent access to low-cost mental health care and food assistance. MLC is unique: it’s designed to be a trauma-informed, safe space for students that struggled at their neighborhood schools. We’re thrilled that this model—and our partnership—will continue for high school students.

02/11/2026

The best way to see our impact is to be part of the impact.

Thank you to RE/MAX Equity Group Foundation for volunteering at William Temple House last week. These lovely folks filled food orders for families at Metropolitan Learning Center across the street; with the pressures nonprofits and funders are facing, RE/MAX Equity Group Foundation is leaning deeper into employee volunteering - and we're here for it.

Does your employer sponsor volunteering? Here's what you can expect at WTH:
- An in-depth tour of our pantry & counseling clinic
- A meaningful project to work on that will better the lives of your neighbors
- A chance to volunteer in community alongside our staff and regular volunteers!

DM us to schedule your group volunteer experience!

02/06/2026

Feeling very grateful for community and stellar business partners like Deschutes Brewery ❤️

We raised $697 for William Temple House this January at Deschutes Brewery - and met our $2,500 match. In total, we raised over $5,500 to ensure our community can access the food and mental health care everyone deserves.

Special thank you to our amazing volunteer crew for filling up Deschutes - and the Deschutes crew for the lovely service (and pretzels 😋)

02/02/2026

Thank you to KATU News and especially Samantha Holm for stellar reporting on the need William Temple House and other nonprofits are seeing for food assistance and mental health care right now in Portland.

William Temple House is in this year's KATU Souper Bowl of Caring, which is spotlighting food insecurity in Oregon, a topic that is intimately tied to mental health.

"Food is one of those fundamental pockets of safety. When that fundamental pocket of safety is threatened, or taken away, or is unstable, we go into survival mode. We can't think about really anything else." - Victoria Burgess, Deputy Director of Counseling at WTH.

You can get involved to support your neighbors by:

🙏 Volunteering in our Food Pantry
🫶 Making a monetary donation at williamtemple.org. We're able to buy more food through our partnerships and buy exactly what our pantry needs with your generous monetary gifts.
🌟 Checking out the Souper Bowl of Caring at KATU.com to see the many other pantries in Portland that are doing important work for the community.

01/30/2026

REPOST FROM IG: In solidarity with the nationwide general strike happening today, William Temple House Thrift Store is operating cash‑only to avoid bank and credit card fees. We stand resolutely with our immigrant neighbors and all people impacted by ICE.

Every purchase today and every day supports William Temple House’s low-cost mental health counseling and free food pantry for our community—for ALL Portlanders, including many who have come to Portland from around the world. We encourage everyone to use cash if you do choose to shop, and to support local and immigrant-led businesses.

Many of our neighbors in NW are taking action by either closing down, moving to cash-only, or committing to donating a portion of proceeds. ✊ Thank you for supporting community care.

01/27/2026

📣New Community Offering📣

This February, we're offering a support group on sexual wellbeing, open to all orientations and relationship structures. ❤️ Join this 5-week group to increase sexual knowledge, reduce shame, expand self-understanding, and support healthier sexual connection, whether partnered or solo.

✅ $1 - $15 per session sliding scale. No one turned away for inability to pay.
🏠 On-site at William Temple House in NW Portland.
🕖 Starting Thursday, Feb. 12 at 7pm, with weekly sessions until Mar. 12.
💗 Open to adults, 18+.
📧 Email facilitator, Paulina, at pploszaj@williamtemple.org to join!

This group will be facilitated by Paulina Ploszaj, a WTH Counseling Intern.

Please share widely.

01/26/2026

Thanks to you, these photos are old news! We have raised $2,300 of our $2,500 match for January. Huge shout out to the incredible staff at Deschutes Brewery, who teamed up with us to offer a beer tasting next to our outreach table last week. It worked - who would’ve guessed?! 😉

Tomorrow is the last day to hit up Deschutes for a pint - $1 off all pints tomorrow will be donated to support our mission of providing food, counseling, and connection. And we have one more week to raise $200 to meet our match goal - can you help out by sharing or giving?

Link to give: https://givebutter.com/Rl1F3A

Our team is hitting up Deschutes tomorrow from 5-7pm - come say hi!

01/21/2026

Today was our third day piloting an exciting new tool for our Pantry: the digital lottery!

Here’s how our pantry used to operate: Each visitor receives a number on a ticket 🎟️ That number is randomly called by a staff member when it’s their turn to shop in our pantry. Crucially, we weren’t able to give visitors a clear wait time.

To make the process clearer and more empowering, Matt (pictured here) built an interactive webpage that displays all numbers in real time - with wait times - so everyone can see their place in line.

This means folks can make more informed choices. If they know they have an hour until they’re called into pantry, they can run errands and check their spot from anywhere via the webpage.

This tool doesn’t replace our analog process but expands it, and we have a TV monitor displaying our webpage for folks without mobile devices. It even displays in multiple languages commonly spoken in our pantry, like Mandarin and Russian.

Our visitors tell us this tool reduces confusion and improves their experience. Huge props to Matt for using his tech skills to further our mission and accessibility in the pantry 🙌

Check it out at williamtemple.app!

01/17/2026

William Temple House is deeply honored to be recognized by Senator Jeff Merkley at his Town Hall today as an outstanding organization in Multnomah County for our 60 years of service providing vital, accessible mental health counseling and food assistance to Portland. Hear what our Executive Director, Graham Craft had to say about this honor.

We share this recognition with our staff, interns, volunteers, donors, partners, and especially the people we serve. We are also proud to share this recognition with the many other deserving nonprofits that have received a flag before us, including Feed the Mass, Cultivate Initiatives, Word is Bond PDX, Albina Vision Trust, Mudbone Grown, Outside In, and Neighborhood House Portland.

Head to our website to learn more about what we do, our impact, and how you can join in 2026.

01/16/2026

Tomorrow, William Temple House will be honored with a flag flown over the US Capitol during Senator Jeff Merkley's Multnomah County Town Hall at the Oregon Convention Center. We are thrilled and grateful to be spotlighted by the Senator as an outstanding organization in Multnomah County.

2025 was a challenging year for Portland but also a year that showed just how powerful we are when we come together. We saw that when SNAP benefits were frozen in early November and we took emergency action to make sure no one left our pantry empty-handed and organized a drop-in counseling support group for folks dealing with the weight of current events in our community. We couldn't have done this without the support of our volunteers, donors, and community champions - and the collaboration of our many outstanding peer non-profit partners. In 2026, we're committed to providing the low-barrier counseling, food, and connection our community thrives from.

We hope to see you there for this recognition.

YOU’RE INVITED! I’m headed to Multnomah County for a public town hall conversation on Friday, January 16 at 10:00 AM and I’d love to hear from you!

Whether it’s fighting for solutions to the affordable housing crisis, creating living wage jobs that support families, working to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, or protecting our “We the People” democracy, hearing directly from Oregonians about the challenges they face and the issues they care most about shapes my work in the Senate.

Input from communities across Oregon has a big impact on legislation in D.C. Feedback and ideas from Oregonians were the basis for funding I secured for nearly 500 community-initiated projects around the state—direct, targeted investments in our communities.

These forums give folks around the county a chance to ask me questions, talk about federal policy, and let me know what’s working in your local community that we might want to bring to a national level. Advocating for Oregon in Congress is what I’m here for, and I hope to see you at a town hall this year. If you can’t make it this time, please know that I hold a public town hall for every county in Oregon every year—and you can always reach my team and me through the contact form on my website.

The Multnomah County Town Hall will be held at:
The Oregon Convention Center, Exhibit Hall E
777 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, OR 97232

Visit my website for more information about my Multnomah County Town Hall on 1/16, including location details and accommodations resources.

01/09/2026

Huge thank you to Cotopaxi in NW Portland for collecting 26 pounds of warm weather coats for our community this December! 🧥

Cotopaxi is generously running a food drive in support of our Food Pantry this January and February, with a discount for those who participate. Community partners like Cotopaxi help us serve thousands of Portlanders every year with food, counseling, and connection. ❤️

01/08/2026

Happy new year! William Temple House’s 60th year of service brought challenges that we tackled and meaningful moments that we created together. That includes new partnerships towards our mission of providing accessible mental health care, food security through our food pantry, and community support. These partnerships included so many folks committed to this mission, from peer organizations to our incredible volunteers to neighbors to new faces. Thank you!

A very incomplete highlight reel:

🥫 Collaborating with peer organizations through the Coalition to Advance Food Equity (CAFE) to build local, collaborative solutions to food insecurity, including shared bulk food purchases. We welcomed Connor, who gleans for WTH and partner orgs like Lift Urban Portland, Portland Fruit Tree Project, and more.

🫶 We expanded our counseling team to welcome a Deputy Director and our very first Associate, Misha, to provide timely and affordable mental health care that Portlanders rely on.

💙 Our mighty team of volunteers only grew; 104 caring volunteers supported our pantry services in 2025.

🤝 We partnered with so many great organizations to do collective good! Untapped Trivia Deschutes Brewery Portland Pickles Baseball The Commons Law Center, Front & Curry Community Garden, our Episcopalian partner parishes, KGW's Hello Rose City, Street Books, Portland Fruit Tree Project, Kiehls, just to name a few!

🛒 In November, when the administration froze SNAP benefits, we ensured no one left our pantry empty-handed and hosted a free evening food market, powered by dozens of committed volunteers.

👚 Our Thrift Store saw a record year of engagement where, thanks to our team and some smart advertising, we broke records in sales, meaning more funding for our counseling and social services programs.

Lastly, we had a record year-end fundraising campaign, which we will announce the results of soon.

Whether you volunteered, donated, liked or shared a post, attended an event, or received services from WTH, thank you for being part of our mission.