Last year, Portland-based nonprofit Green Empowerment was looking for ways to increase its work in Uganda.

Since 2019, the renewable energy nonprofit had been helping communities in the east African country provide power and clean water to health clinics. But when the nonprofit tried to expand the work last year, funding was starting to dry up amid a massive pullback in foreign aid from the United States government.

So, Green Empowerment tapped blueEnergy, another nonprofit working globally with bases in France and the U.S.

Andrea Johnson, Green Empowerment executive director, told OPB the groups partnered up. The two were able to connect with a current Green Empowerment partner, a Ugandan-based clean water group, and an existing blueEnergy France donor funded the work.

“That project is moving forward right now as we speak,” Johnson said. “And what we’re able to do with that, ideally then, is use that as this model that we’ll be able to reach out to other funding partners to do more of that work. We’ve already started conversations about replicating that collaboration also in Ethiopia, where blueEnergy France has a long partnership.”

The partnership in Uganda was a catalyst for the two groups to explore a still-rare move in the nonprofit sector: a merger. Like businesses and households, nonprofits have been struggling under rising costs. At the same time, due to massive cuts in social services and federal foreign aid, the demand for services many nonprofits provide has skyrocketed.

“In a shrinking funding environment,” Johnson said, “our work is still very urgent.”

Green Empowerment was interested in finding more funding sources to keep their programs strong. The group has partners in 10 countries that help them build community-owned micro-utilities, like a solar installation to power a community. BlueEnergy needed a group with strong administrative support to take over their U.S. arm.

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The two groups realized they had missions that aligned, and internal working cultures that were compatible. Most importantly, both groups wanted to keep supporting renewable energy projects in rural communities in countries like Nicaragua, Uganda and Burkina Faso.

After the two groups established they had shared goals and values, they embarked on a more than yearlong process that included vulnerable conversations and a whole lot of paperwork for the two nonprofits to figure out two alliances.

The pair is still in negotiations, but has announced the U.S. arm of blueEnergy is formally in the process of merging with Green Empowerment. The France arm of blueEnergy has signed onto a formal partnership with the Portland-based group.

The merger will have an impact on the ground. For Green Empowerment, the agreement can support energy projects in two more countries and opens up more funding sources based in Europe. On the other side, blueEnergy can fold its U.S. assets into Green Empowerment with assurance that its work will continue.

Mathias Craig, born and raised in Oregon, is a co-founder of blueEnergy and is working with Green Empowerment on the merger. He told OPB the two organizations already had successfully worked together on projects and built trust with each other.

“The process of discussing a merger, it’s a long one, it’s a rocky one, and you can’t prescribe the solution to all of the issues,” Craig said. “You don’t know what’s going to come up, you don’t necessarily know how you’re going to resolve it when it does. So, if you have a strong bedrock of trust and openness, you can work through it, no problem.”

Ripple effects of funding cuts

Oregon has a diverse range of nonprofits. Some are large organizations that have worked in treacherous places around the globe. Others provide local resources to Oregonians, such as food, clothing, healthcare and disaster relief.

Nonprofits often get their funding from donations, grants and government sources, but they can also generate revenue from things such as ticket sales or running retail shops, like a thrift clothing store. When the economy is doing well, nonprofits can be among the beneficiaries. When the economy is struggling like Oregon’s has been since the COVID-19 downturn, nonprofits tend to take a hit right as demand for their services goes up.

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Pausing U.S. foreign aid was one of the first actions President Donald Trump took after being sworn into office in 2025. The effects were immediate, as billions in U.S. funding that supported an international supply chain of companies, aid organizations and government bodies disappeared.

In the summer of 2025, the Trump administration formally closed the United States Agency for International Development, known as USAID.

Neither Green Empowerment nor blueEnergy US got any federal funding, but they worked with many partners that did.

Jim White, executive director of the Nonprofits Association of Oregon, said many government-funded nonprofits are facing cuts at the federal and state levels.

Organizations that don’t rely on government money are feeling the ripple effects, White said, in part because they’re trying to cover gaps left by groups that did lose funding.

“There’s no way they can fill all of the gap,” White said. “When you talk about federal money or state money, you’re talking about billions of dollars.”

More nonprofit mergers could be coming

White and his organization put together a five-part workshop on different strategies for weathering the loss of funding. It includes how to be acquired by or merge with other organizations.

“We knew that with this level, this magnitude, of cuts there would definitely be organizations that are going to no longer be financially viable,” White said. “And it’s not their fault, right? That is just the business model that they’re in, in the ecosystem of today that they’re dealing with. ”

White said mergers are a powerful tool that, when done right, can help expand the reach of both organizations. But the two merging groups need to have aligned values and compatible work cultures for it to be successful, and they have to be willing and able to work through the administrative and legal work that accompanies a merger.

It can be hard to get all of those pieces in place, so nonprofit mergers are still somewhat rare. But White predicts more are on the way. And, in the meantime, White said a lot of groups are consolidating by sharing resources.

That’s one way Portland’s William Temple House, which provides low- and no-cost counseling services plus a food pantry, is dealing with funding cuts.

“We’ve run into situations where we have work that we need done, but we can’t afford a full-time employee to do it,” Graham Craft, executive director of William Temple House, told OPB. “And quite often there’s one or more of our peers who have the exact same problem. So we’ve been able to band together and create a job between two of us that keeps someone employed full-time.”

Craft said he supports mergers like the one between Green Empowerment and blueEnergy US. His organization would consider a similar move if leaders were convinced it would help them reach more people. Also, the merged organization would have to increase William Temple House’s level of financial sustainability.

“The future for nonprofits is tough now and it’s uncertain,” Craft said. “And yeah, if there’s a way that taking two organizations and making them one would lead us to be more sustainable, we would do that.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/22/nonprofit-merger-green-empowerment-blueenergy/