How we arrived at our new goals — and why our commitment remains absolute
By Gillian Darlow, Evette Cardona and Anna Lee
This past October, we shared Polk Bros. Foundation’s new strategic goals — shaped by the wisdom, experience and vision of so many of you. Since then, conversations with partners across the city have surfaced important questions: How did we arrive at these goals? What guided our thinking? And in the face of today’s challenges, will we stay the course?
Transparency and partnership have always been core values of the Foundation. So today, we want to share more about our process and reaffirm that our commitment to these goals remains absolute and steadfast.
How we arrived at our goals
We’ve been on a journey to listen, learn and deepen our focus. As part of that journey, through years of grantmaking, the Foundation has had the opportunity to learn from Chicago’s nonprofit leaders and grantee partners who are closely connected to their communities. We have analyzed research on key drivers of inequity across Chicago communities and what it would take to disrupt them. In a process that engaged all our staff members, we took an intensive look at our grantmaking – what we support, who our policies and practices center, and who they marginalize. Reports from our peers in philanthropy, studies on wealth and health inequities in Chicago, and frameworks for systems change helped clarify where our future funding could be most effective.
Patterns emerged from this work. In Chicago, the city’s life expectancy gap — where residents of some historically disinvested communities live, on average, 30 fewer years than those in other, wealthier areas — remains among the most severe in the country. The wealth gap continues to widen, making it harder for disinvested communities to build intergenerational and community stability. And across all systems, political and economic power is too often concentrated in ways that exclude the very communities most negatively affected by policy decisions.
These findings made it clear: shifting the conditions holding communities back requires a more targeted, transformational approach.
Through research and engagement with grantee partners, community leaders and philanthropy peers, we identified where our resources could have the greatest impact — areas where targeted investment could help address the root causes holding these disparities in place.
The three new goals we announced reflect our long-standing commitment to Chicago and our long history of supporting work that strengthens communities: Closing the Life Expectancy Gap; Building Community Wealth Across Generations; and Fostering a Participatory, Multiracial Democracy.
Funding for long-term change
As we worked to refine our focus, we examined what it would take to drive real, lasting change. What we learned from grantee partners and research made it clear that while direct services are critical, they alone cannot dismantle the policies, practices and cultural norms that limit opportunity and investment in Chicago’s south and west side communities.
Through this process, four key approaches emerged as essential to supporting both immediate needs and long-term transformation: Immediate Intervention; Community Power and Influence; Ecosystem of Systems Change; Community Innovation. These approaches emerged from a deep commitment to learning — drawing from conversations with partners, analysis of what has (and hasn’t) worked in philanthropy, and frameworks that guide systems change. Our thinking was particularly influenced by this framework: Water of Systems Change.
To share more about how we’re thinking about our new goals and approaches, the Foundation’s program officers will write a series of blog posts through the rest of the year — diving deeper into each goal and building on what we shared last fall. Our staff will be having conversations about these goals and how they’re shaping our future grantmaking, and we’ll be sharing video clips from those discussions on our social media.
Looking ahead
The forces sustaining inequities in Chicago’s communities run deep — now compounded by executive orders and harmful rhetoric that threaten progress. And today our communities are in a moment of profound risk, where hard-won rights and resources are under attack, and the systems that uphold injustice are being further entrenched.
Lasting change requires intention, persistence and resources. Chicago has always been a place of resilience, creativity and movement-building, led by communities and so many of our grantee partners that refuse to accept the status quo. We remain committed to standing alongside you — listening, learning and shaping future funding strategies to ensure they meet the moment and the needs of Chicago communities.
Your feedback is important to this process. We have invited all of our current grantee partners to join us for optional individual conversations, and many have taken us up on that. But we recognize that some feedback may be more comfortably shared anonymously. So, we have created this anonymous survey to invite you to help us understand how clear our new direction is, what questions this transition is raising for you, and how we are showing up in our relationships with grantee partners and community leaders.
As we move forward, we are committed to turning these goals into action — grounded in what we’ve learned, guided by our partners, and shaped by the feedback we receive along the way.
Gillian Darlow is CEO of Polk Bros. Foundation. Evette Cardona is the Foundation’s Vice President of Programs. And Anna Lee is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives.
