How This Accessible Chicago-Based Funder Targets Entrepreneurship, Health and Disabilities
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We periodically publish quick overviews of grantmakers on our radar, looking at recent developments and key details about how they operate. Today, we’re taking a look at the Coleman Foundation, which supports organizations in the Chicago metropolitan area focused on entrepreneurship, health and rehabilitation, and intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Launched in 1951, the Chicago-based funder is a good example of the ways even smaller local foundations have been reassessing their practices post-2020. The foundation has been implementing takeaways from a recent strategic planning exercise, such as embracing some of the principles of trust-based philanthropy and grappling with systemic inequities that impact the communities it serves. Coleman also has a refreshingly accessible grant application protocol for eligible organizations. Here are a few things to know about the Coleman Foundation.
“Philanthropists don’t always leave instructions”
In 1915, H. Teller Archibald founded the candy manufacturer Fannie May Confection Brands, Inc. Within 20 years, the company had 47 stores in Illinois and nearby states. After Archibald died in 1936, his wife Dorothy took over the company. Eight years later, she married J.D. Stetson Coleman, who joined the board of directors.
The pair established the Coleman Foundation to improve opportunity and quality of life for Chicago area residents. J.D. died in 1975 and after Dorothy passed two years later, the company was purchased by then-President Denton Thorne.
After the estates of Dorothy and J.D. Stetson were settled, the foundation began its work in earnest, according to former CEO Michael Hennessy in a piece on the foundation’s site titled “Philanthropists Don't Always Leave Instructions.” “While Dorothy and J.D. Coleman did not lay out a specific programmatic vision for the foundation’s giving,” he wrote, “their actions, leadership, values and the individuals they trusted have guided us.”
Stakeholders centered the foundation’s work on three priority areas — to advance entrepreneurship in the Chicago Metro area with an emphasis on low- and moderate-income neighborhoods; support patient-centered health and rehabilitation services, including cancer care; and support the efforts of intellectual and developmental disabilities service organizations to use best practices. Dorothy’s nephew, Michael Furlong, serves as board chair.
The foundation’s net assets in 2020, 2021 and 2022 were $188 million, $206 million and $159 million, respectively. It did not receive incoming contributions in any of those years.
It’s working to better serve grantee priorities
Writing in the foundation’s 2022 annual report, then-CEO Shelley Davis, who started in the role in 2020 and currently sits on MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving Evaluation Panel, noted that the foundation spent the year implementing its new strategic plan, which included reviewing its organizational practices, pursuing “training in the tenets of trust-based philanthropy” and setting its learning agenda. “These approaches,” Davis wrote, “helped center our work around our grantees' priorities, enabling us to better leverage our resources in response to their needs.”
For example, Davis explained how discussions pertaining to its Health and Rehabilitation priority underscored a 13-to 16-year “death gap” between residents in Chicago’s South and West Side versus downtown. The exercise prompted the team to “ask hard questions about the causes and effects of systemic inequity in healthcare,” Davis said. The foundation consequently centered its grantmaking on increasing access to health services in historically underserved communities that experienced health closures, helping patients overcome barriers to care and supporting collaboratives in the South and West Side neighborhoods.
It’s accessible to eligible organizations
The foundation disbursed $8.3 million and $15 million in 2021 and 2020, respectively. I attribute that abnormally high latter figure to the fact that the foundation dug deep to help organizations navigate the pandemic. It was a founding partner of the Chicago Community COVID-19 Response Fund, made emergency grants to 22 organizations that served individuals with developmental disabilities and launched a COVID-19 Matching Grant Program that supported 80 nonprofits.
In 2022, it moved $9.6 million in grants to 168 organizations. The recipients of the largest grants in 2022 were Clearbrook, a developmental disabilities service provider ($1.2 million), the Chicago Community Trust ($250,000) and three hospital systems — University of Chicago Hospitals ($250,000), Sinai Health System ($225,000) and Rush University Medical Center ($200,000). Only 18 grants flowed to organizations based outside of Illinois.
In 2023, the foundation granted $9 million. Funding was more or less equally distributed across its three priority areas accordingly — Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities ($2.9 million), Health and Rehabilitation ($2.7 million), and Entrepreneurship ($2.4 million).
Grants flowed to the Chicago Community Foundation’s Fund for Equitable Business Growth ($250,000), the South Side Health Community Organization’s Hypertension Prevention and Management program ($250,000) and the HAP Foundation’s Community Health Worker Program expansion ($200,000). In December, the foundation announced the appointment of Peter Handler as interim CEO and its plans to “initiate a search for a new CEO.”
Chicago-area organizations will be pleased to learn that they can submit a letter of inquiry via the grant management platform Fluxx. If there’s alignment, a program officer will reach out to the organization. Following a more thorough conversation with organizational leaders, the officer will then ask for a full proposal. The board accepts LOIs and proposals on a rolling basis and evaluates them at quarterly board meetings.
The foundation typically funds programs, although it provides general operating support in special cases. Check out its FAQ page for more information.
