A New ADHDA: Powered By You

New Look, Same Community Partner

Our new website is the next step in a big transition the ADHDA made this year. Since it's earliest days, our association has been a 501(c)3 non-profit. While that's the most commonly known type of non-profit, there are a few other types. Our friends at the Astoria Warrenton Chamber of Commerce, for example, are structured as a 501(c)6 which is a "member-based" non-profit.

For most of the ADHDA's history, we too have offered memberships to downtown businesses and Astoria community members as a means of empowering the work we do. These memberships were designed to give our local businesses some agency and ownership over the decisions that are made downtown. The biggest benefit to membership had been a vote in our annual Board of Directors election. This allowed our members to shape the direction of leadership within our organization.

As time went on, we did our best to earn the trust of the business community and prove we were an organization worth funding by acting as an ambassador for the downtown in matters with the City of Astoria and beyond, by working with property owners to secure grant funding (at no cost to them) to keep our beloved historic buildings looking their best, and by creating a slate of events throughout the year to foster more commerce in the downtown, keeping it as the center of commercial and cultural activity in Astoria.

Broadening The Scope

The ADHDA has been around for over 40 years now. Our partnerships with the downtown businesses through memberships have yielded some amazing results - there's a reason we were named a semi-finalist for the Great American Main Street Award this year! But it's time to think bigger. With some encouragement from our partners at Oregon Main Street and Main Street America, the ADHDA Board of Directors decided the time was right to make the switch away from memberships and into a more general donation-based non-profit structure.

We will let our local member-based non-profits do the important work of building a community around their membership. We at the Downtown Association hope to make the whole world our community. By expanding the scope of who we hope to rely on, we aim to capture the support of not just local businesses and community members, but anyone and everyone who loves Astoria and wants to see it continue to thrive.

Love our well-preserved historic buildings? Consider supporting us through a donation to keep that important work funded. Enjoy our legendary Astoria Sunday Market season? Help us make it better each year by becoming on ongoing sustaining donor. Do you enjoy our clean, well decorated streets? Our holiday traditions? Or our family-friendly community events we run throughout the year? It's all made possible by you - Astoria's biggest fan. It's as easy as clicking the donate button and choosing what works for you.

So What Has Changed?

For you, the people who love Astoria and want to see it succeed: nothing! We are still here. Doing the same work we've done for the past 40 years to advocate for Downtown Astoria and we will continue to show up in all the same ways. If anything, we hope to expand on the work we do and provide more opportunities for everyone to get involved. With your support we can build something truly unique - a partnership that expands far beyond the boarders of our 38 blocks of downtown and captures hearts and minds across the globe. So consider coming with us on this exciting new chapter of our story! Click the donate button and add your name to our list of Supporters today.