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MISSION & CORE PRINCIPLES

Woods Fund of Chicago is a grantmaking foundation whose goal is to increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities in the metropolitan area, including the opportunity to shape decisions affecting them. The foundation works primarily as a funding partner with nonprofit organizations. Woods supports nonprofits in their important roles of engaging people in civic life, addressing the causes of poverty and other challenges facing the region, promoting more effective public policies, reducing racism and other barriers to equal opportunity, and building a sense of community and common ground.

The Woods Fund has a strong belief in the need for and effectiveness of including the less advantaged in the entire process of addressing issues that affect them. To this end, the Woods Fund encourages and supports organizations and initiatives that promote “participatory policy making” by reaching out to their less advantaged constituencies. Such efforts should involve the less advantaged in identifying and defining the issues that face them, and in forming effective solutions to these problems.

The Woods Fund believes that encouraging a close, learning-based partnership with its grantees can further the causes of Chicago’s less advantaged residents and communities. All grantees of the Woods Fund are expected to engage in a learning partnership. Through this partnership, the Woods Fund expects that grantees will share best practices and successes with the Woods Fund and fellow grantees, as well as those challenges that impede effective implementation. This powerful collaboration has the potential to inform the Woods Fund's grantmaking process and to educate the nonprofit community and others about ideas and strategies that they may successfully adopt.