Community-based nonprofits were the original hospices founded over 30 years ago in Oregon and nationwide. As part of their nonprofit charter, these organizations are managed by volunteer boards of directors comprised of local community members. These boards have a responsibility to ensure that their agencies serve the needs, values and priorities of their communities and fulfill their stated missions, which are focused on providing excellent care to individuals with serious illnesses and supporting their caregivers and family members. Revenues are dedicated to enhancing care. Funds raised locally remain local.

The Oregon Nonprofit Hospice Alliance (ONHA) is a registered, 501 (C)(3) nonprofit corporation founded by four hospices with service areas that cover about half the counties in Oregon. With its focus on collaboration to achieve mutually-assured success, ONHA plans to expand to include the majority of the remaining nonprofits in the state. Members will share best practices and work together to innovate and assure exceptional community-based hospice and palliative care. Besides collaboration, we are committed to excellence, community engagement, integrity, leadership and providing charitable care while being good stewards of resources.

ONHA supports member organizations by sharing clinical and business best practices and expertise, sharing administrative resources, leveraging combined purchasing power and developing partnerships with health care providers, institutions and payors.

Revenues at these organizations go to providing patient and family care that is responsive to individual and community needs. Revenues do not go to corporations or shareholders. Patients and families served receive more care, which results in fewer days in the hospital and more days with loved ones. Nonprofit hospices are incubators of innovation that solve problems within health care.

In an era in which health care is increasingly fragmented and driven by profit and corporate-interests, community-based, nonprofit hospices live out the values and mission of the hospice movement in which the needs of patients and families serve as the north star guiding the way forward.

By necessity, nonprofit hospices must be collaborative, innovative, nimble, optimistic and focused on their mission to provide exceptional care for all. These qualities enable them to harness resources of goodwill unavailable to their competitors. With the dawn of ONHA, community-based, nonprofit hospices in Oregon will be stronger together for the benefit of Oregonians.

All ONHA member agencies are community-based, nonprofits investing more resources in patient and family care in keeping with the values and diversity of their local communities. They care for patients and families without regard to ability to pay for services. For-profit hospices are often owned by large multi-state and national corporations seeking to maximize returns for shareholders; some are owned by venture capitalists. For-profit hospices pursue business and service delivery strategies that optimize profits. Community-based, nonprofits pursue strategies that optimize the priorities of the local community. Community-based, nonprofits are for the community; for-profits are for profit.