Eighteen organizations on Chicago’s West Side and the near west suburbs have received grants from the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation – an organization that helps donors manage their philanthropic assets and give grants for local service programs.
Earlier this month, the foundation announced the community organizations that got a portion of $265,000 in grant money.
Though the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation gives out community grants annually, for the first time, this year’s chosen organizations all focus on behavioral and mental health for children and young adults.
The foundation paused its community grants in 2023 in order to shift focus for its grantmaking strategy. While in previous years, community grants served education, housing and arts organizations, in the coming years, they’ll focus on mental and behavioral health organizations, specifically those that further workforce development.
The foundation chose to highlight mental health after getting feedback and data from practitioners, nonprofit leaders and community members.
“When you look at our geographic space, when you look at our demographics, our upbringing and so on, mental health plays such a vital role in how we move forward with our lives,” said Tony Martinez Jr., president and CEO of the foundation, in an interview with Growing Community Media, parent company of Wednesday Journal and Austin Weekly News.
Of this year’s grant recipients, about three-quarters of them address access to resources and treatment of mental health, half target workforce development, and one-third focus on safety and belonging.
Recipients applied for the grants, which they will use for either projects or general operations.
“What we were looking at is organizations that had specific programs that they were working on or ideas and plans that they were working on,” Martinez said of the chosen groups’ trajectory for workforce development.
The following organizations received a grant:
- A Greater Good Foundation
- And Rise Women, Inc. (aka &Rise)
- Austin Coming Together in Austin
- BUILD Incorporated in Austin
- Dominican University in River Forest
- Family Service and Mental Health Center of Cicero
- Front Porch Arts Center in Austin
- Kinfolk CoLab in Oak Park
- Maywood Fine Arts Association
- New Moms, Inc. in Austin
- Race Conscious Dialogues in Oak Park
- The Firehouse Dream Inc. in Maywood
- The Nehemiah Community Project in Maywood
- Thrive Counseling Center in Oak Park
- Youth Crossroads Inc. in Berwyn
- Youth Educational Mentoring Basketball Association (YEMBA) in Oak Park
- Youth Outreach Services, which has an office in Austin and Melrose Park
The Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation was founded in 1959 and has historically served those two neighborhoods. But since 2020, the foundation is making a conscious effort to broaden its reach to the rest of western Cook County.
Around Covid-19, the foundation’s leaders noticed that organizations outside Chicago city limits were often overlooked for state-level funding opportunities. But, communities in and outside of Chicago access each other’s resources, and the whole region needed support – not just Chicago neighborhoods.
“Many of the folks who are across Austin or Roosevelt or Harlem, they come to our area to seek support from the nonprofits that are housed here, and vice versa. When it comes to need, people are going to go where they can receive services,” Martinez said. “It was a moment that we could expand our capacity and we knew that we had the potential to do more.”
The foundation is also working to change its relationships with community members it works with.
Moving forward, the community grants will include a multi-year process including meetings and shared decision making to improve advocacy opportunities and systemic change. The process will involve members of western Cook County, plus partners like mental health practitioners and policy makers.
“It’s more than just a grant award. It is a continuation of building a relationship, building the trust, building the network,” Martinez said. “Our goal in the coming year is to continue building on the networks to see what things we can invest in as an organization and also attract other resources.”
Part of this goal is to create a growing network that can increasingly fund local organizations.
“We received an unprecedented amount of proposals, demonstrating the significant need facing our community partners throughout the entire West Cook region, from Elmwood Park to Berwyn, and from Melrose Park to Austin,” Martinez said in a statement.
And while the most-recent $265,000 in community grants going to 18 organizations is higher than the average 15 groups who get a total $150,000 to $200,000, the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation received over $1 million in requests and over 50 nonprofit applications.
“If we were able to get more funding, we would have figured out ways to support them as well,” Martinez told GCM. The foundation will remain in contact with those who didn’t receive a grant this year and look to connect them with other philanthropic opportunities.
Martinez added, “I’m hoping that this also inspires individual donors to understand that the need is tremendous.”
