Woods Fund Chicago’s grants and administrative manager reports out from her first year on the job – and challenges the sector to live its values. 

The Chicago Racial Justice Pooled Fund (CRJPF) launched in 2020 as a shared project from Woods Fund Chicago and over a dozen other Chicago-area foundations. Here, we talk to the Pooled Fund’s inaugural Executive Director, Katelyn Johnson, about the mandate of this moment.

Amid slashed benefits and work requirements, organizing has never been more critical. Here, we look at how organizers are working to improve our material conditions by lobbying for fair legislation, crafting and advancing progressive revenue strategies, and taking the fight to private landlords and companies.

Half a decade into our shift toward Trust-Based Philanthropy, Woods Fund Chicago is consistently revisiting, honing, and sharing out our core commitments. In this newsletter, we also explore organizing around South Chicago’s Quantum Campus and upcoming grant opportunities. 

Woods Fund Chicago’s February Newsletter offers a look at how we’re leveraging our corpus for impact — a focus for the foundation in 2026.

Randall Strickland offers a 101 on how an organization can make their investments work for their mission — not against it.

Ahead of our 2026 Grant Cycle, we’re highlighting the grantee victories from 2025 that give us hope for 2026. Read for courageous fights — and wins — on diverse fronts, an update on 2026 grantmaking, and job opportunities across the sector.

Our end of year newsletter features a far-reaching conversation on organizing now with care advocate and organizer Ai-jen Poo; a love letter to Director of Grants Management Deborah Clark on her retirement, and a look back at our best reads of 2025. Click through for end of year job opportunities!

After a calendar year of state violence, upheaval, and incredible courage: where do we go from here? Care advocate and organizer Ai-jen Poo joins Woods Fund Chicago President Michelle Morales to talk about a shared framework for organizing in this moment. 

As organizations work to step into the breach of a government shutdown and combat ongoing attacks on our communities, funders have to look beyond our initial budgets and get creative.

Amid escalating ICE violence and the threat of national guard incursion, the base-building and emergency response work of Chicago organizers is growing a city of neighbors ready to protect one another. 

Application for the Cultivate Leadership Program 2025 - 2026 cohort is now open. If you are a woman or nonbinary leader of color working in the social, economic, and/or racial justice movements and are interested in leadership development and receiving Executive Coaching, please consider applying!

As summer wanes, we’re highlighting hard-fought wins from grantee partners. From the FAIR Act passage, to environmental justice, to making schools safe for all our kids, these organizations are doing more with less and working for a better city — and world — for all of us.

How Woods Fund Chicago is supporting grantees beyond our payout increase — and why moving more money faster is still our most critical tool.

This past month's anti-ICE protests evoke the summer of 2020 — then, philanthropy mobilized to support our communities in crisis. What does it look like to step up today?

This month's newsletter holds up the Disability Justice tenant of leadership by the most impacted: as Congress debates Medicaid cuts, our grantee partners are fighting for all of us. 

Funders must meet the moment now with bold, committed investment. If we don’t, this may be a moment we can’t come back from.

Our grantee partners are organizing at the intersection of immigration and labor to ensure workers and their employers know their rights and protections under escalating attacks.

We look at our responsibility as funders to support our grantee partners' ongoing commitment of resolve, collective action, and centering community in the latest Woods Fund Chicago newsletter.

This newsletter, we share how our grantee partners are prepared for the work ahead through issues such as immigration, housing, and economic justice.