Carrie Summy said her first interaction with the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation made her feel like she wasn’t the kind of person meant to get involved.
Now after nine years working with the foundation to serve the west Cook region, she’s landed the agency’s top job and is intent on making sure the foundation is there for everyone and upholds its fundamental purpose of “helping the helpers.”
“When I first moved to Oak Park, what I received in the mail looked like a fancy wedding invitation, it was on heavy card stock with fancy fonts, it was an appeal letter for the community foundation,” Summy said. “While it was very pretty and I noticed it, I also felt like it was above me. I felt like this is something I don’t belong to, they’ve got the wrong person. I was a young mom and I just thought I will never be at the level of whatever this organization is. I tell you that background story because to me, it’s important that nobody feels that way.”
“I never want to lose sight of that, that everybody has a place and belongs here and has a voice here. That’s kind of a guiding light for me.”
Summy stepped in as interim president and CEO in April after Antonio Martinez left the foundation for a new role heading university advancement at Dominican University in River Forest. The foundation’s board announced that she’d be staying in that role on a permanent basis earlier this week.
“The board looks forward to the continued growth of the foundation with Carrie at the helm,” said Doug Dixon, chair of the foundation’s board of directors. “I have known Carrie for most of my relationship with the foundation, which is close to a decade, and her track record is impeccable. She’s an excellent listener, and she addresses problems with a ‘Yes and’ attitude, which is a great collaborative approach that results in solutions that are win, win, win.”
Summy first joined the foundation in 2016 as a program and development coordinator overseeing the Leadership Lab program on a part-time basis after co-founding the local service organization The Neighborhood Giving Project. She went on to serve in a variety of roles with the foundation, most recently as director of external affairs, working closely with Martinez and the board on strategic planning, donor relations and other projects.
She lives in River Forest with her husband and four children.
Summy said her time with the organization has included reckonings with a few “tipping point” moments. Both the obstacles nonprofits faced as result of the coronavirus pandemic and the nationwide racial justice protests that followed the murder by police of George Floyd challenged the foundation to reflect on its strategy, mission and messaging, she said.
Changes the group made around that time included identifying addressing racial equity and social justice issues as the foundation’s core mission and updating its messaging to make it clear that the foundation served a region beyond just Oak Park and River Forest, including Chicago’s West Side, Berwyn, Cicero and Proviso Township.
“It’s an enhanced vision and mission that we’ve been working towards these last four years,” Summy said. “One thing I’ll say is that for the city as a whole, there’s a large community foundation, The Chicago Community Trust. There’s a lot of family foundations that do a lot of support. But then really when you kind of cross that city line and even with the Austin neighborhood, that support drops. There is a lot of need here in Oak Park and our surrounding communities. That’s our responsibility, that’s our role here. Getting out and about in all those towns and getting to know who’s working there, who’s doing what. That’s my job, that’s what I’ve got to figure out.”
Work to support those goals has included extensive community surveying to make decisions informed by experiences of people receiving services, updating the foundation’s grant process and pushing forward a special focus on supporting community health and mental health.
Another major next step for the foundation includes building out the group’s staff so it can live up to its mission, Summy said.
“I’m really excited to build our team,” she said. “That’s going to be key for continuing to build our culture.”
The foundation will lean on lessons learned during the pandemic years to help local nonprofit groups face the current moment. Sweeping federal budget cuts are threatening the bottom lines of many local nonprofits, Summy said.
The community foundation must be a leader helping organizations continue serving their clients, she said. The foundation will soon be hosting workshops for local organizations on how to navigate those headwinds, Summy said.
“I want to increase that engagement, it’s built into our core values anyway,” she said. “Our core values are equity, inclusion and courage. If you’re thinking about equity and inclusion, it’s about access and representation. The best way to do that is through relationships and being boots-on-the-ground in the community. That’s what I want.”
“I’m always thinking about the foundation in terms of what can we do beyond a check? What can we do beyond that to support our nonprofit sector beyond that and how collaboratively can we uplift and support our entire sector here in west Cook? Because the nonprofits are the folks doing the hard work.”
