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Who We Are

About Polk Bros Foundation

Our Mission and Goals 

Polk Bros. Foundation is a private, independent foundation dedicated to making Chicago a place where all people have the opportunity to reach their full potential.

We pursue this mission through three interconnected goals:

Closing the Life Expectancy Gap

To address the root causes of stark disparities in health equity and personal and community safety across different neighborhoods in Chicago  

Building Community Wealth Across Generations

To create pathways out of poverty and toward economic opportunity for residents of Chicago’s historically disinvested neighborhoods

Fostering Participatory, Multiracial Democracy 

To ensure that the diverse voices of our city are heard and can influence the decisions that affect their lives

Our Role in Chicago

Since 1988, Polk Bros. Foundation has invested more than $620 million in Chicago communities, supported nearly 4,000 nonprofit organizations, and in recent years provided approximately $25 million annually in grantmaking. We are one of the largest funders of Chicago nonprofits and a trusted partner in the city’s civic and community ecosystem.

Our role extends beyond grantmaking. We also convene partners, align resources and support the broader conditions needed for long-term change in Chicago.

Million Invested

Supported nonprofits

Million Grantmaking

Working Across Sectors

We believe we can often achieve greater impact by joining forces with our colleagues in philanthropy, nonprofits and the public and private sectors. Working together gives us an opportunity to dive deeply into issues. To share and learn what’s working and what isn’t. And to align more resources around promising solutions to long-entrenched challenges.

Polk Bros. Foundation helps launch, support, and sustain cross-sector efforts that address persistent challenges and improve opportunities in Chicago. These collaborations often take the form of shared funding tables, coordinated citywide initiatives, and long-term partnerships that align resources around common goals.

We do this by:

  • Collaborating and Aligning Resources 
    Polk Bros. Foundation has helped establish, lead and/or partner in collaborations which bring funders together to pool resources, share learning and align strategies around complex challenges.  
  • Informing Public Sector Responses 
    Polk Bros. Foundation staff are often invited to join City, County and State task forces to inform responses to long-standing challenges, particularly where coordination across sectors is required. This includes participation in planning and strategy efforts related to homelessness and housing affordability, violence prevention, education, community economic development and healthcare, among other areas.
  • Strengthening the Nonprofit Sector 
    Polk Bros. Foundation also helps establish and invest in efforts that strengthen the capacity of Chicago’s nonprofit organizations and their leadership. 

A Long History of Investing in Chicago

Since our founding in 1988, Polk Bros. Foundation has worked with partners across Chicago to expand opportunity and strengthen the systems and organizations that help people and communities thrive.

2026

The Foundation launches its new strategic goals and begins accepting applications aligned to its updated grantmaking approach.

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Three new requests for proposals are designed to support community-driven efforts while also informing and refining grantmaking strategies and approaches to make progress toward new goals

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The Foundation helps launch this funding collaborative to meet communities’ needs for food, shelter, safety and healthcare while building a stronger social safety net for tomorrow.

The Foundation makes a grant to help establish this collaborative effort supporting local nonprofits’ operational stability, leadership and long-term effectiveness.

2024-2025

Advisory Cohorts across the Foundation’s three goals help staff listen and learn in a deeper, more structured way to ensure future grantmaking strategies and processes are relevant, responsive and vital.

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The Foundation introduces three interconnected organizational goals and a two-year transition toward future grantmaking focused on systems change and long-term impact. Multi-year transition grants totaling $35 million are awarded to nearly 400 current grantee partners between 2024 and 2027.

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2023

To make it possible for Chicagoans to more easily access assistance with essential health and social services support, the Foundation joins peer funders, the City and the County to provide financial support to launch 211 Metro Chicago, a 24/7/365 helpline available via phone, text, web chat and database search.

2020-2022

The Foundation commits to flexibility, responsiveness and continued partnership with grantee organizations navigating the uncertainty and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The Foundation increases its grantmaking by an additional $17 million over two years to support Chicago’s equitable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

With these grants, the Foundation supported establishing networks of community health workers, stemming learning loss for public school students, providing emergency services, ensuring local residents — including women — can access the construction trades through the We Can Build It Consortium in partnership with the Obama Presidential Center, and helping launch Press Forward Chicago to strengthen local journalism.

Drawing on the collaborative approach developed through Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities (PSPC), the Foundation partners with the Joyce Foundation, Chicago Community Trust and Civic Consulting Alliance to stand up an emergency “one-table” approach to COVID-19 information sharing and response. The coordinated funders table hears directly from community leaders and coordinates funding in response to community-identified needs.

In Fiscal Year 2020, the Foundation makes $9.5 million in grants supporting community priorities identified through these conversations.

The Foundation joins fellow funders in two funding collaboratives, one focused on supporting community organizations providing essential pandemic support across the region and another to ensure metropolitan Chicago builds back stronger than before the pandemic’s onset.

The Foundation works with peer funders to launch this collaborative of more than 30 local philanthropic partners as a local network of the national Funders Together for Housing Justice.

The Foundation invests in and helps steward this funding collaborative to ensure all communities are equipped with the resources, leadership and collective power to dismantle systemic injustice and build equitable, self-determined communities.

2019

The Foundation invests in and serves on the fund’s oversight committee to address disparities in access to small business resources and support services.

2017

The Foundation’s Board commits resources beyond its standard spending policy to respond to immediate crises affecting Chicago communities, including gun violence, threats to immigrant rights and instability caused by the Illinois state budget impasse.

Two new outdoor performance stages open at Polk Bros Park as part of the Foundation’s legacy gift to Navy Pier, expanding opportunities for free arts programming and public events.

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2016

In response to rapidly rising gun violence, the Foundation joins with four other funders to identify and support community-led, evidence-based scalable solutions as part of a comprehensive approach to addressing gun violence. In the first year, the table grows to include 30 Chicago funders. By 2025, the effort expands to 50+ funders granting a combined $177 million and Chicago gun violence experiences historic lows.

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After joining with funding peers to support research about the types of support nonprofit leaders, funders and capacity-building providers determined was needed in Chicago, the Foundation and partners help launch AMPT to strengthen the organizational health and support long-term development of small nonprofits on Chicago’s west and south sides.

2014

In recognition of the legendary role that the Polk family and the Polk Bros stores played in the lives of Chicagoans, the Foundation makes a $20 million legacy gift from the Polk family to transform Navy Pier’s “green front door” into Polk Bros Park, a welcoming 13-acre space where Chicagoans and visitors can come together to enjoy arts, culture and the lakefront. Polk Bros Fountain and Plaza at the entry point of the Pier feature a dramatic and interactive, 12,500-square-foot signature fountain, and Polk Bros Park Performance Lawns include two performance stages at the park’s southern end to feature Chicago’s artists at live arts and culture events set against amazing views of Lake Michigan and Chicago’s skyline. Greeting visitors at the northern end of the Park near the entrance to the Pier is an oversized pop-art P sculpture in Polk Bros stores’ signature orange color. 

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2013

Gillian Darlow joins the Foundation as CEO, bringing a deep commitment to Chicago and its communities.

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2012

The Foundation takes a leadership role in both the CPS Arts Education Plan and the Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs. The Arts Education Plan establishes the Creative Schools Fund and supports an infrastructure for arts education data collection via Ingenuity that together have greatly increased understanding of and access to arts education throughout Chicago public schools. The Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs develops a shared vision for strengthening Chicago’s economy, investing in neighborhoods, expanding public spaces and improving transportation infrastructure, influencing a range of efforts that continue to shape the city today.

The Foundation joins four peer funders to launch this funder collaborative which has become the region’s major convener of the philanthropic community advancing workforce development and employment.

The Foundation and two peer funders establish this collaborative as a vehicle for coordinated philanthropic giving in support of the then-new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. It expands to support critical services, legal aid and policy work and becomes a long-standing collaborative that continues to support immigrant and refugee communities.

2011

After catalyzing collaboration through the Chicago Arts Learning Initiative (CALI) to develop a set of recommendations regarding existing cultural and educational resources, the Foundation joins other partners in launching Ingenuity to implement those recommendations and strengthen arts education access, equity, data and quality in Chicago public schools.

2009

The Foundation helps launch Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts) through early investment and collaboration with arts, education and civic leaders working to address gaps in access to high-quality arts education. The effort leads to the development and opening of Chicago’s first public high school focused on professional-level arts training.

To promote the practice of preserving existing affordable rental housing as a viable solution to addressing Chicago’s affordable housing shortage, and to bring visibility to the non-profit and for-profit developers who are doing this well, the Foundation creates the Polk Bros. Foundation Affordable Rental Housing Preservation Award, presented at the annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards held by LISC Chicago.

2008

Despite a 26% decline in assets during the recession, the Foundation maintains grantmaking levels to support nonprofits facing dramatically increased community need.

2006

The Foundation supports the launch of this funding collaborative to support small and mid-sized arts organizations in Chicago and Cook County.

2004

The Foundation begins a grantmaking initiative focused on preserving and expanding affordable housing opportunities across Chicago communities.

2003

Through participation in cross-sector planning tables and collaborative efforts with City and nonprofit leaders, the Foundation helps shape the City’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. With later updates to this work, the Foundation joins partners at Chicago Funders Together to End Homelessness in 2024 to support dedicated new, positions at the City and State.

2000

The Foundation launches partnerships between schools and healthcare providers to improve access to healthcare services for students and communities, which leads to wider introduction of school-based health centers in public schools to increase health outcomes for students, their families and the local communities.

1997

The collaborative fund is created in response to federal welfare and immigration policy changes affecting immigrant communities and grants a total of $6.2 million through 2002.

1996

Beginning with three Chicago public schools, the Foundation helps CPS introduce and spearhead an innovative model proven highly effective in other cities – full-service community schools – which later expands to a network of more than 200 community schools supporting Chicago students, families and neighborhoods with coordinated, engaging programming.

1994

The Foundation launches a major arts education initiative connecting cultural institutions and Chicago public schools to expand arts learning opportunities for students.

1988-1993

The Foundation is founded with two transfers of assets, $42 million in 1989 and $120 million in 1992, upon the closing of the last of the 17 Polk Bros stores.


Nikki Will Stein is hired in 1988 as the Foundation’s first Executive Director and later, in 1993, is joined by Sandra P. Guthman as CEO. Together they lead the Foundation until they both retire in 2012.

Our Goals

At Polk Bros. Foundation, we believe real change happens when the conditions shaping people’s lives change. To shift these conditions, we fund community-rooted approaches across three connected goals.

Learn About Our Goals

Our Origins

Polk Bros. Foundation was established in 1988 following the success of the legendary Polk Bros chain of retail appliance and furniture stores, a Chicago institution that was deeply woven into the communities it served for more than 55 years. Learn more about our origins.

Read About Our Origins