Our Grants

Community Organizing

There are many approaches to creating change, and all are needed. Strategies include advocacy, education, direct service, research, and direct action. Woods Fund Chicago supports organizations that engage in power building through taking collective action. Here is how we define community organizing:

Community Organizing is the process by which people impacted by injustice take collective action, guided by an intersectional racial justice analysis, to build power to win meaningful change in their lives and communities, challenge the power structure, and achieve systemic change. Organizing often involves winning changes in practice, policy, and resource distribution of public or private institutions. It is fundamentally about justice, grassroots democracy, and self-determination. 

To learn more about key terms in our approach to community organizing, visit our glossary of terms.

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Types of Grantmaking

Woods Fund Chicago has two types of grants: Core and Special. Core grantmaking makes up the majority of Woods Fund Chicago’s annual grants. The Woods Fund Chicago Board of Directors awards grants once a year in June.

Core Grantmaking Priority Areas:

  • Community organizing enables democracy at the grassroots level to reimagine and transform systems. Our Community Organizing program area seeks to support organizations that bring people together with a collective vision to reclaim, build and wield their power to take collective action to advance racial equity and/or racial justice in metropolitan Chicago.

    Learn more about criteria for this priority area.

  • Our Public Policy Advocacy program area seeks to support organizations that influence public discourse and policy decisions to advance racial equity and/or racial justice.


    Public policy advocacy is composed of a continuum of activities that aim to inform decisions within the public sector and may include educating the public and policymakers; influencing legislation, referendum(s), budgeting, and rulemaking; monitoring policy implementation, and taking legal actions.

    Learn more about criteria for this priority area.