Western Friend is published by the Friends Bulletin Corporation, an independent 501(c)3 non-profit (EIN 93-1156843), established jointly by Pacific, North Pacific, and Intermountain Yearly Meetings. While Western Friend is the official publication of these three yearly meetings, the opinions expressed within the magazine and on this website are those of the authors, not the meetings. The Board of Directors for Friends Bulletin Corporation comprises three members from each of the three yearly meetings. The board meets three times a year, rotating between the regions of the yearly meetings. Each board meeting is typically hosted by a local Friends meeting, and local Friends are encouraged to visit with the board and staff!
Our mission is to build practical and spiritual connections among Friends in the West – in print, online and face-to-face. We accomplish this by:
Originally founded in 1929 by Howard and Anna Brinton, Western Friend was known as Friends Bulletin for the better part of eighty years. At the time, Pacific Yearly Meeting stretched from eastern Colorado and New Mexico, west to Hawaii and north to Washington and Montana. Friends Bulletin was- and remains- a valuable means for these far-flung Friends to stay in touch with one another. Even after Intermountain Yearly Meeting (CO, NM, AZ and UT) and North Pacific Yearly Meeting (WA, OR, ID, MT) split off from PYM in the mid-1970′s, Friends in the West continued to place a premium on maintaining their connections with one another. Over the decades, it grew from a single-sheet, black-and-white broadside focused on announcements of births, deaths, and upcoming events, to the full-fledged color magazine featuring articles by and about Friends in the West, known since 2008 as Western Friend. This website and additional programs such as workshops and speaker events serve to further our mission of building practical and spiritual connections between Friends in the West in print, online, and face to face.