It may have seemed like a lofty goal three years ago for the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation: Raising $2 million in just a few short years.
Fast forward to today, and the Community Foundation — a 50-year-old charitable organization that provides grants to everyone from the Animal Care League to West Suburban PADS — has blown that goal away by $90,000. As such, they’re receiving a $2 million match from the Grand Victoria Foundation, a nonprofit arm of an Elgin casino. With the money raised, the Community Foundation plans to make $225,000 in grants available each year to local nonprofits.
Sophia Lloyd, the four-year executive director of the Community Foundation, said they were able to hit their goal with the help of more than 400 individual donors.
“I often tell people that I live in Oak Park but I sleep in Chicago because this very much has become the place that matters to me,” said Lloyd, 46, a resident of Chicago’s Dearborn Park neighborhood. “It’s been a real honor for me to be able to support the charitable interests of this community, and the generosity of this community.”
The Community Foundation first announced the fundraising campaign in September 2008, and reached the final goal by way of a $100,000 donation from the Russell and Josephine Kott Memorial Trust, just ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline.
Also in 2011, the Community Foundation received a Green Award from the village, for its efforts to better the environment in Oak Park and River Forest.
The foundation took over the endowment of the near 100-year-old Auxiliary of West Suburban Medical Center, after the organization was disbanded in 2011. And the past year was the first in which the foundation started giving out “gap funds” to help nonprofits that fell short of the funding needed. Four such grants were handed out last year.
Lloyd said that, in 2011, the Community Foundation gave out the highest dollar amount of grants in its 50-year history, though she could not provide an exact figure before press time.