Terry McDonald has served as Executive Director of St. Vincent de Paul
Society of Lane County, Inc. (SVdP) for 37 years. He is a hands-on, visionary
leader with undergraduate degrees in political science and history and a
Master of Education degree from the University of Oregon.
Terry’s road to entrepreneurial leadership began with a modest tool employed
by many nonprofits — the retail thrift store — and has grown to encompass a
small empire of reuse, recycling and upcycling businesses. He also opened
the first mattress-recycling facility in the nation, and through the SVdP
subsidiary DR3 Recycling, today the nonprofit remains the largest mattress
recycler in the United States with four facilities in California and Oregon.
Terry has led SVdP to become the largest social-services agency in its region.
Some 60 percent of its annual $55 million budget comes from earned income.
For nonprofits like SVdP, the value of generating revenue means the ability to
pivot quickly to emerging community needs. SVdP’s social enterprises also
employ more than 600 people and diverted more than 44.1 million pounds of
material from the waste stream last year alone.