Fund Newsletter - April 2023

Grantee Pictured: Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America (FORA)

The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund would like to wish all of our numerous grantees, partners and friends in Chicago’s philanthropic community all of the best this season has to offer! Happy Spring!

Message from the Executive Director

Dear Grantee partners, Foundation colleagues and Friends of The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund,

The Spring Equinox is one of my favorite times of the year, because it symbolizes a transition into new beginnings. The Pick Fund is in the midst of such a moment as well, and we have a number of important changes underway. As of March 31, Iris Krieg & Associates (IKA) is no longer serving as the Fund’s philanthropic management firm and we have now fully transitioned to Foundation Source for grants management and operations support. Our final board meeting with IKA staff in March was bittersweet, as they worked closely with the Fund for more than ten years. However, the transition to Foundation Source is going well and we are already seeing the benefits of being connected to its customized online grants management platform and foundation support services.

The transition in our operations has also been out of necessity, as the Pick Fund’s endowment experienced a significant decline in value last year due to the volatility of the financial markets. As a consequence, our 2023 grantmaking budget has been reduced by 25 percent – a bitter pill to swallow and it means we will not be able to provide grants to the same number of groups as in years prior. However, this challenge is also an opportunity for the Pick Fund to streamline and simplify its practices and determine how we can provide meaningful impact for the small nonprofits we support. To this end, the Pick Fund is launching a new Letter of Inquiry (LOI) and funding application process and moving to two grantmaking meetings a year. Our revised grantmaking guidelines and calendar are described below and can be found on our website at albertpickjrfund.org. 

Finally, the Pick Fund’s board of directors is also undergoing a moment of transition. The March meeting was the last for two of our long-time board members – Andrea Sáenz, who was named the President and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust last fall, and Mark Rosenberg, an investment advisor with UBS who serves as the national board chair for Mikva Challenge. The expertise, insights and lived experience they both brought to the board have been invaluable. They will be sorely missed and we wish them well. Fortunately, we welcomed Alberto Morales to the Pick Fund board of directors last fall and the March meeting was his first one with us in person. Alberto is a nonprofit consultant with a proven track record in racial equity facilitation, strategic planning, grantmaking, capacity-building, program evaluation and project management, and formerly worked for the Robert R. McCormick Foundation where he stewarded multi-million dollar grants in the area of education. We are very grateful that Alberto has joined the board and look forward to benefiting from his insights and lived expertise.

Please stay tuned for more information forthcoming in the upcoming months and thank you for your continued support.

Warmly and In Solidarity,

Heather D. Parish

Executive Director, The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund

Updates to Grantmaking Guidelines

In line with our move to Foundation Source, the Pick Fund is excited to announce the launch of a new Letter of Inquiry (LOI) application process which is now live! The LOI is designed to gather key information and data about a proposed funding request and take a relatively short amount of time to complete. Given our focus on support for smaller organizations with budget sizes under $2.5 million, we want to make applying for grant funding as streamlined as possible, and at the same time, provide a way for the Fund to hone in on groups that are in line with its grantmaking guidelines. The deadline for submitting an LOI is May 22nd and you can find the link to apply here and on our website. The application link will take you to the Foundation Source online application platform and should be straightforward to complete. No establishing of credentials or passwords will be necessary. LOI applications will be reviewed at the June board meeting and final decisions on organizations that will be invited to submit a full funding application will be announced before the end of June.

For returning grantees: If you are an existing grantee partner submitting a request for renewal funding, you will be asked to submit a year-end or mid-year status report with your LOI application. If you previously submitted this in Foundant, then you should upload the pdf of the report as part of the LOI application process. All deadlines previously stated in 2022 grant award letters no longer apply and we ask that you submit a status report with the LOI regardless of when you were awarded your last grant.

If you have any questions on the LOI application process, feel free to reach Grants & Operations Administrator Alexis Allegra at alexis@albertpickjrfund.org.

The other major change in the Pick Fund’s grantmaking is that we are moving to two grantmaking cycles a year, with each cycle devoted to reviewing grant applications in two of the four issue areas (see calendar below). We are disheartened to report that the decline in value of the Fund’s endowment in 2022 has resulted in a 25 percent reduction in our grantmaking budget for 2023. As a consequence, the Fund is also striving to find ways to deepen its impact with nonprofits given the limited financial and human resources it has at hand. For the 2023 year, the Fund’s grantmaking meetings will occur in the fall (September) and winter (December). In 2024 and moving forward, we anticipate grant meetings occurring in the summer (June) and winter (December). The grantmaking calendar for 2023 can be found below.

We want to take this moment to thank everyone for their patience as we worked over the last few months to transition our operations to a new office location and philanthropic management firm. As a consequence, we had to put our grantmaking on hold and take the time needed to reimagine a grantmaking process that would be simpler for grantee partners to navigate and more in line with Trust-Based Philanthropy practices. We have had numerous inquiries about our plans for grantmaking this year which we are finally ready to reveal. Please keep in mind that we are striving to be responsive to the needs of the nonprofits we support and that our grantmaking practices will continue to evolve accordingly.

For those who may be a new applicant and learning about the work of the Pick Fund, we encourage you to review the list of our 2022 grantee partners below and go to the Fund’s website to see who has been funded in the last few years.

Albert Pick, Jr. Fund 2022 Grantees

Civic Activism

• Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago
• Chicago Community Foundation/GAPA
• Chicago United for Equity
• Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers
• Crossroads Fund
• Illinois PIRG Education Fund
• Latino Union of Chicago
• Logan Square Neighborhood Association
• Luggenia Burns Hope Center/African American Community Trust
• Red Line Service Institute
• Southside Together Organizing for Power (IJF)
• Young Invincibles

Culture

• Chicago Community Trust/Art Works Fund
• Kuumba Lynx

• Contextos
• FreshLens Chicago
• Harmony, Hope and Healing
• Indo American Center
• Musical Arts Institute
• National Veterans Art Museum
• Snow City Arts Foundation

Education

• Brown House Experience
• Chicago Chess Foundation
• Chicago City Theater Company dba Joel Hall Dancers & Center
• Chicago Debate Commission
• Chicago Poetry Center
• Chicago Pre-College Science and Engineering Program, Inc.
• Chicago Women's Health Centers
• Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America
• Gardneers
• Ladies of Virtue
• Living Works
• People Matter
• Plant Chicago NFP

• Project Exploration
• Project SYNCERE
• Territory NFP
• Working in the Schools, Inc. - WITS

Health and Human Services

• Chicago Freedom School
• Children's Research Triangle
• Connections for Abused Women and their Children
• Court Appointed Special Advocates of Cook County
• Family Rescue
• First Defense Legal Aid
• Heartland Alliance International/Kovler Center
• Black Alphabet
• EverThrive Illinois
• Girls Inc. of Chicago
• Mobile CARE Foundation
• Mother and Child Alliance
• Options for Youth
• Refugee ONE
• Stick Talk
• True Star Foundation, Inc.

As referenced above in the message from the Executive Director, we would also like to extend our deepest gratitude to two Albert Pick, Jr. Fund Board of Director members who are transitioning away from board service. Thank you to Mark Rosenberg and Andrea Saenz for their leadership, dedication and time. We wish you nothing but the best as you embark on new and exciting things! And welcome to our newest board member, Alberto Morales!

Pictured above from left to right: Executive Director Heather Parish, Board Secretary Rachel Lindsay, Board Vice President Nikki Will Stein, Board Member Andrea Saenz, Board President Shelley A. Davis, IKA President Lauren Krieg, Board Member Alberto Morales; On screen: Board Member Mark A. Rosenberg, IKA Associate Michael Nudo; Not pictured: Board Treasurer Clare Golla

Grantee Spotlight

The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund is honored to support exceptional nonprofits in the areas of Civic Activism, Culture, Education, and Health & Human Services. We will be highlighting grantee partners in this section of our newsletter that exemplify work underway in these sectors.

This month we would like to congratulate Pick Fund grantees and Crossroads Fund 2023 Seeds of Change Awardees:

Law Student Scholarship Program Launches on May 1^st!

The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund Law Student Scholarship Program was established in 2003 to assist a first-year or second-year law student who is a long-term resident of Chicago studying at one of four law schools in the Chicago area:

·      DePaul University College of Law

·      Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Kent College of Law

·      Loyola University College of Law

·      University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Law

One scholarship of $5,000 is offered each year to support full-time study for a student that demonstrates financial need with preference given to historically underrepresented students. If you or someone you know would like to apply, please visit https://learnmore.scholarsapply.org/albertpickscholarship/

Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter! We look forward to connecting with you again this Summer. In the meantime, enjoy the Spring!