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Greetings and happy Autumn! The leaves have changed, the temperatures have dropped and snowy days are ahead as we approach the winter. Through it all, we have been busy at The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund over the last few months. Please take a few minutes to read about the new Board members we are welcoming, our Scholarship Fund awardee, and our Fall 2023 grantee partners in the Culture and Education funding categories. Review of applications submitted in the Civic Activism and Health & Human Services categories are underway and will be discussed at the upcoming Winter board meeting.
We also want to take a moment to mention some noteworthy commemorations that occurred in the last few months. Latinx Heritage Month is observed from September 15th through October 15th every year (also acknowledged as National Hispanic Heritage Month). In October, we recognized Filipino American History Month, LGBT History Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We also honored Indigenous People’s Day on October 9th and the full month of November commemorates National Native American Heritage Month. Chicago is located on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations, and is home to one of the largest urban Native American communities in the United States. Many other tribes, such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee and Sac and Fox, also called this area home. Finally, we commemorated US veterans and victims of all wars on Veterans Day, November 11th. We encourage all to consider honoring these causes through philanthropic giving to nonprofits that represent and provide service to these communities. We are looking forward to a full winter calendar and, as always, we are grateful for all of our grantee and community partners who are on the ground doing critical work for the residents of Chicago.
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Message from the Executive Director | |
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Greetings Grantee partners, Foundation colleagues and Friends of The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund,
I hope this note reaches you in good health and spirits and that you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday of gratitude with loved ones. As alluded to in our opening message, we have been busy at the Pick Fund over the last few months, particularly in the areas of board governance and grantmaking. We are proud to announce our three new directors that joined the Pick Fund board in September: Verónica Cortez of the Erikson Institute, Ahmadou Dramé of the Illinois Justice Project and Anna Miran Lee of United Way Metro Chicago. They bring a wealth of lived expertise and experience along with fresh perspectives that will serve the Fund well as we continue to work to center racial equity and social justice in all that we do. We are also excited to announce two new colleagues who will serve on our Investments, Finance and Audit (IF&A) Committee: Laura Glick, Chief Investment Officer of the Spencer Foundation and Elva Gonzales, Chief Financial Officer of the Healthy Communities Foundation. Laura and Elva’s expertise will serve as a welcome complement to that of our Board Treasurer Clare Golla who has helped steer the Fund’s efforts to diversify our investment managers and deepen our commitment to socially responsible investing. A warm welcome to Verónica, Ahmadou, Anna, Laura and Elva! Scroll down to learn more about our new board and committee members.
With respect to our grantmaking, most notably, at the fall board meeting we awarded 24 grants totaling $355,000 to organizations in our Culture and Education portfolios, all of whom are existing grantee partners. While we are honored to support the work of these organizations, we also made a very difficult decision to provide the organizations in our Culture portfolio with terminal grants as we have decided to wind down individual grants in the Culture portfolio. Grants in our Culture portfolio have been made to foster use of the arts within non-arts organizations, and we still see immense value in this work. We will continue to have a presence in the Arts and Culture sector primarily through our support of the Arts Work Fund (AWF), and we are hopeful that many of the groups in our Culture portfolio will receive future support via AWF or other foundation initiatives such as the MacArthur / Field Foundation’s “A Road Together ART” (ART) grants. We recognize this decision comes at a time when the funding landscape in the Arts sector is shifting as highlighted in the report released last month by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). Some nonprofits, particularly those that are BIPOC-led and have struggled historically to receive adequate funding, are benefiting from the funding landscape shift. However, there are other well-established organizations that are adversely feeling the impact of these sectoral shifts. To the extent possible, the Pick Fund will help advise our Culture grantee partners through this transition by making introductions to foundation colleagues and providing letters of recommendation per their request. Scroll down to see the list of our Fall 2023 Culture and Education grantee partners.
As we continue to reimagine our grantmaking in order to have greater impact in the sector, given the Pick Fund’s limited resources, we are moving toward providing larger grants to a smaller number of organizations. We are also trying to determine how we can make room in our portfolio to support new and emerging organizations with small budget sizes that could greatly benefit from our early support. In addition, because we prioritize support for smaller nonprofits with budget sizes under $2.5 million, there are long time and/or existing grantee partners whose budgets have “outgrown” the Pick Fund’s criteria. There are also others who remain under the $2.5 million budget threshold but have grown and evolved over time to attract more robust funding resources. Consequently, in the spirit of making room for new and emerging organizations, we are in the midst of examining our portfolio to determine how best to sunset support for some of our more seasoned / long time grantee partners. While the process is not perfect and evolving, we are striving to be responsible and respectful in how we approach this shift in our grantmaking. We will announce the grant awards for our Winter 2023 grantee partners in the Civic Activism and Health & Human Services portfolios before the end of December.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t end this message without expressing my profound appreciation and gratitude for the dedication and steadfast work of our grantee partners and philanthropy colleagues that embody tenacity, resilience, courage and grace day in and day out in their unwavering commitment to furthering social justice – both at home and abroad. Your efforts are not taken for granted and the Pick Fund will continue to offer philanthropic support that helps to mitigate and address the complexity of challenges we face in today’s world and our beloved Chicago.
Warmly and In Solidarity,
Heather D. Parish
Executive Director, The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund
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APJF Welcomes New Board Members! | |
The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund is proud to announce the addition of three new members to our Board of Directors. Verónica Cortez, Ahmadou Dramé and Anna Miran Lee bring a wealth of experience - both lived and professional - that is sure to elevate the work of the Pick Fund. We are so excited that they are joining us on our mission to provide under-resourced Chicago residents with the tools they need to improve their lives. Click on the button below to read the impressive bios of our board members and staff on our website!
In addition to new board members, The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund has also welcomed aboard two members to our Investments, Finance and Audit Committee. Laura Glick and Elva Gonzalez will lend their investment and financial expertise to this committee, and we are so grateful they have agreed to serve in this role.
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Scholarship Awardee
Announced!
| 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 a Chicago area law school: DePaul University College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Kent College of Law, Loyola University College of Law and 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. This year the scholarship has been awarded to Breana Enyeart, a first-year law student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Click below to read more about Breana's impressive accomplishments. Congratulations, Breana! | |
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APJF Executive Director Heather Parish (second from right), and Board Members Ahmadou Drame,
Shelley Davis, Veronica Cortez, Alberto Morales and Rachel Lindsey attend the
11th Annual Diverse Trustees Reception hosted by the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation on October 3rd.
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Grantee Spotlight
The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund is proud to be a long term funder of Storycatchers Theatre, an organization that does innovative and impactful work with youth who have been involved in the juvenile justice system. Through the use of musical theatre, young people are able to tell their stories - working through trauma and finding their voices. The work is life changing for both the youth involved and the audiences who are lucky enough to bear witness.
Read more about their work here!
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Celebrating 75 Years of The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund
Pick Fun Facts: Philanthropy in support of Education
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“He [Albert Pick, Jr.] saw students in a special glow: the future of the country, the future of families and families of nations. And so he looked to universities as the hope, perhaps the only hope, for peace and justice. He would know a number of politicians in his time, and leaders that included two Presidents, but his faith was to remain in the power of education rather than with the powerful few.”
The above paragraph taken from Albert Pick, Jr.’s biography* sums up well why the Pick Fund has had a strong interest in supporting Education over the years. In fact, it was during the decade from 1967 to 1977 that Albert Pick, Jr. demonstrated his greatest commitment to educational philanthropy through the establishment of student scholarships and contributions to university buildings. There are a number of higher education schools and initiatives across the country with scholarships that bear either his or his wife Corinne’s name, with the Albert Pick, Jr. Fund Law Student Scholarship program in Chicago (featured above) being one of them. Other schools/initiatives that received gifts and scholarships, many on an annual basis, include: Rollins College, Florida; Roosevelt University in Chicago; Berea of Kentucky; Cornell University; Florida State University; Michigan State University; Oklahoma State University; Pennsylvania State University; University of Denver; University of Houston; City College of San Francisco; Michigan Colleges Foundation; Olio Foundation of Independent Colleges; and the United Negro College Fund.
Albert Pick, Jr. also made sizable gifts to establish new buildings or renovate existing facilities on university campuses bearing his or Corinne’s name, with the three most notable being at Northwestern University, University of Chicago and University of Miami. The Albert Pick Hall for International Studies can be found at both the University of Chicago and University of Miami. The Pick Steiger Concert Hall at Northwestern University (featured in our Summer 2023 newsletter) was erected in honor of Corinne and Albert’s sister, Pauline Pick Steiger, along with a music student scholarship named for Corinne.
Mr. Pick also served on the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, the University of Chicago, as well as the Board of Governors for International House, which operated independently of the university and provided room and board for international students. International House operated at a deficit for many years and was heavily subsidized with support from John D. Rockefeller, who erected the four International Houses located in Chicago, New York, Berkeley, California and Paris, France. Mr. Pick’s expertise in hotel operations and management was instrumental in restructuring the deficit-operating model for International House in Chicago, and ultimately all four International Houses, to one of surplus and long-term sustainability.
*Source: “The Indestructible Crown: The Life of Albert Pick, Jr.” by Judith Barnard, Page 153.
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The Chicago Racial Justice Pooled Fund provides grants to Black-led community organizing groups as well as allied community organizing groups addressing anti-Blackness. The Fund will raise and move $10,000,000 to Chicago organizations building and sustaining movements for justice that center Black lives and address anti-Blackness. Community organizing in this context means: Building movements and collective power to dismantle the systems, structures, and institutions that are rooted in white supremacy and perpetuate anti-Black violence. The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund Executive Director, Heather Parish, serves on the Allocations committee and APJF is a proud contributor to the Fund since its inception.
Applications are reviewed as they are received. Grants are awarded on a rolling basis. The deadline to apply is May 15, 2024. Prospective applicants can apply through Crossroads Fund’s grant portal. For questions, please email Leslie Ramyk at Leslie@conantfamilyfoundation.org.
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FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: Springboard Foundation Fund Cycle is OPEN!
https://springboardfoundation.org/apply-grant
Do you know of a small nonprofit that provides afterschool programs, that is in start-up mode and doing great work? SEND THEM TO SPRINGBOARD FOUNDATION FUND!
SPRINGBOARD SUMMARY
Springboard has twin objectives: supporting afterschool programs and building nonprofit organizational capacity.
Springboard funds small nonprofits that provide critical afterschool programs in under-invested neighborhoods in Chicago. Its funding style is like the venture philanthropy model providing general operating support to start-up nonprofits and their intrepid leaders for 5 years. First-year grantees receive general operating fund grants plus capacity building funds.
- To be eligible for a Springboard grant, first-time applicants must:
- Be a Chicago-based and/or serving 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
- Be in operation for five years or less
- Have an organizational budget of less than $100,000
- Provide afterschool programs operating sometime Monday through Friday between the hours of 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm during the CPS calendar year (roughly September to June).
All interested prospective grantees should fill out the Prospective Springboard Grantee Survey found on Springboard’s website (see link above). Grant proposals for new grantees are due February 29, 2024.
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