Seated comfortably in her windowed office overlooking downtown Oak Park, Sophia Lloyd, executive director of the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation, is ready to address the seemingly insurmountable fundraising challenges ahead.
By Sept. 30 the local, public nonprofit corporation — the official designation for a community foundation — must raise an additional $900,000 to reach its goal of $2 million raised by the early fall fundraising deadline.
After meeting that mark, the foundation will be awarded a $2 million matching grant from Grand Victoria Foundation, the funding agent that has selected more than a dozen community foundations across Illinois to participate in its far-reaching strategic grant making program, Communityworks.
Lloyd, who has a master’s degree in social work with a specialization in community organizing from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says she personally understands the power of community, and believes in what individuals working together in their hometowns can do.
“If we had to say what our Communityworks looks like in Oak Park and River Forest, we’d define it as a partnership where individuals and institutions have come together to say, ‘how do we ensure our vision of a sustainable community in the areas of environmental sustainability, early childhood education and community leadership,’ ” says Lloyd.
In place now, she points out, is the tangible programming that has emerged from this strategic community planning process: Plan-it Green, Success for All Youth and the Emerging Community Leadership coursework, which was created in partnership with Dominican University in River Forest and is conducted via its Brennan School of Business, she says.
However, she adds, also still intact is the philanthropic group’s reason for being: to prudently manage endowments of any size for individuals and currently about 45 social service agencies. This function enables the foundation to act as a charitable vehicle via the traditional and strategic grant making process. Additional information on this, she says, is available online at www.oprfcf.org.
“Every dollar contributed to the Communityworks campaign will be matched, up to $2 million, giving us the potential of bringing a total of $4 million to our communities,” says Lloyd.
Working in community
Seven years ago, to formally kick off the Communityworks fundraising salvo, Grand Victoria Foundation challenged the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation to raise $250,000 up front. When they attained that fundraising goal, Grand Victoria awarded the foundation with a matching grant. The $500,000 helped establish a Communityworks endowment, she says.
It also enabled the foundation to provide funding for several surveys, the facilitation of a Community Café series and to inspire and steward the group’s strategic planning phase via the formation of an advisory committee comprised of community leaders and concerned citizens. Through that committee was developed an Environmental Vision Plan that created the framework for the programming that is currently underway.
In addition, and as part of the grant package, Grand Victoria Foundation has provided a multi-year, diminishing payout to help cover the group’s administrative costs and out-of-pocket expenses.
Recently, the community foundation has also taken on the critical role of being a neutral convener at their new, expanded offices on the second floor of 1049 Lake St., where they also provide a community meeting space to social service agencies and other community groups.
The early years ’til now
With humble beginnings, more than 50 years ago the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation informally took shape when a small group of citizens met with five local bankers to establish a trust to address the issues of deteriorating housing in Oak Park. For many years, the initial trust served as a modest repository of assets. Eventually, the group reorganized into a nonprofit organization.
“The new structure provided greater flexibility to accept gifts and manage funds,” says Lloyd.
Today, the foundation is managed by a board of local citizens with expertise in areas such as finance, law, nonprofit management, business and other related fields, and served by a hard-working staff of four, plus Lloyd.
This year they are managing more than $17.6 million in assets, which is enabling it to provide grants and scholarships annually that total more than the philanthropic group’s net worth in the mid-1990s.
For this initiative, the foundation has worked with regional and community organizations to leverage resources in an effort to attract interest and funding from new sources. They have also developed and implemented strategies that will provide for environmental sustainability in both villages, Lloyd says.
So, essentially, Communityworks has supported the development of an environmental plan that has defined goals and created a scorecard against which all progress toward desired outcomes can be measured, Lloyd says.
“I believe that all individuals are philanthropists, whether they are giving a sizeable or small financial donation or giving of their time and talents as community volunteers,” Lloyd says. “What you are doing here is ensuring that the needs of the community can be funded not just today, but in the long haul. You will be providing a permanent funding source for the development of future leaders, as well as helping us bring more resources to early childhood education programming and environmental projects, thereby multiplying the effect of your donations for the greater good.”