Cudahy Fund: General Community Grants

Cudahy Fund: General Community Grants is sponsored by Patrick and Anna M. Cudahy Fund. Offers grants focusing on social services, health, education, environment, and arts for under-resourced populations in Metropolitan Chicago and Wisconsin.

Greetings and happy Holidays to everyone! Fall Meeting of Board of Directors 2026 The Fall Meeting will take place on December 12, 2026 . The proposal deadline is October 16, 2026.

Please note that spring and fall meeting dates may vary by several months each year depending on the availability of the board of directors. Please make sure to check the website each year to ensure you have the correct due dates.

Returning Grantees : All organizations that received grants in the fall of 2025 may reapply for the fall of 2026 meeting without submitting a LOI UNLESS your organization's grant was directed by a specific Cudahy family member and was considered a Discretionary Grant. All organizations that received discretionary grants need to be invited to reapply.

If you received a discretionary grant in 2025 and you apply without being invited, your proposal will not be considered. Finally, beginning in 2026, the Patrick and Anna M. Cudahy Fund will no longer accept proposals or LOI's that are e-mailed.

Proposals and LOI's should be submitted via the link on the Apply page. If you encounter problems with the link, please contact us. This webpage will be updated with any changes.

The Patrick and Anna M. Cudahy Fund is a private family foundation that supports social services, health care and human services, the arts, education and environmental issues. If your organization is interested in being considered for a grant, please read about our application process on the Guidelines and Application pages.

The Patrick and Anna M. Cudahy Fund has enjoyed active involvement in local, state, national and global communities, seeking new ways to effectively enhance common welfare. The Fund conducts most of its grantmaking throughout the state of Wisconsin and in the Chicago metropolitan area.

However, a portion of the fund's annual grantmaking budget is allocated to discretionary grants in geographic areas across the United States and abroad reflecting the interests of Directors.

Patrick and Anna Cudahy in 1908 The Fund officially dates back to September 15, 1921, when Articles of Association were originally drawn for the purpose of creating the Alice Dickson Cudahy Clinic in order to provide free education, medical attention, domestic service and child welfare services to all dependent members of any family of an employee of the Cudahy Brothers Company However, Patrick and Anna's philanthropic giving and civic engagement began several several decades earlier after Patrick became a successful business entrepreneur in the meat-packing industry.

We are proud of the wonderful organizations we support and the work they do to improve the lives of people of all ages, families and entire communities. We believe that everyone should have the resources to lead happy and healthy lives.

Although we do not accept unsolicited proposals, we do give all nonprofit organizations within the Chicagoland area and throughout Wisconsin, primarily in Milwaukee, the opportunity to tell us about what they do through our Letter of Inquiry process. Please visit our Guidelines page for more information. To achieve our goals, the Fund supports organizations and programs in the following categories: