Healthy Communities Foundation Responsive Funding

Healthy Communities Foundation Responsive Funding is sponsored by Healthy Communities Foundation. The Healthy Communities Foundation provides responsive grants to address immediate crises, promote community health and wellness, and provide sponsorship for community events. They focus on measurably improving the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities in their service region.

Healthy Communities Foundation – A health conversion foundation that promotes health equity, quality and access Advancing Health Equity for Thriving Communities We are a community-informed health conversion foundation dedicated to measurably improving the health and well-being of individuals, families and communities in our service region, located in Chicago and the western suburbs of Cook County.

Home is Where Your Health Starts 2026 Grantmaking Update: Deepening our Commitment to Health Equity 2025 In Review: A Look Back at Highlights & Achievements in 2025 We use health equity as our guiding principle and lens, funding organizations and collaborating on community-led solutions that create and expand opportunities for all members of our service region to live full, healthy and happy lives—no matter who they are or where they live.

As a health conversion foundation, we focus our support within a five-mile radius of MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, covering 27 zip codes in Chicago and the western suburbs of Cook County. We allocate the majority of our funding to organizations and efforts that address local health needs and drive systemic solutions that improve the quality of life for communities most affected by health inequities in our region.

Given the interconnected issues our communities face, we see ourselves as “weavers” that work across sectors and issues to strengthen our region’s health ecosystems. When woven together, our grantmaking and strategic frameworks that inform our work are iterative and shape our multi-pronged approach to impact health outcomes and opportunities at individual and community levels. Click on each box to learn more.

General Operating Support We commit the majority of our funding to unrestricted one-year or multi-year grants, which help us stay informed of community needs and solutions and help strengthen our partners' resilience. We aim to foster our partners' adaptability, creativity and value-driven work toward advancing racial and health equity.

We proactively support innovative and strategic health initiatives that require seed funding or long-term investment to address our region's health needs and transform the systems our communities interact with daily.

Beyond general operating support, we provide responsive grants to address immediate crises, promote community health and wellness, and provide sponsorship for community events that celebrate and encourage new ideas and practices in our region. Read how we are evolving our grantmaking strategy this year in our 2026 Grantmaking Update .

We value the diverse perspectives of grantee partners and the data we gather as they inform our grantmaking strategies. Our evaluation framework, which is values-centered and community-informed, guides us toward achieving our vision of building healthier communities while staying true to our core values and desired outcomes.

We aim to support, strengthen, and amplify the power-building and civic engagement efforts, ideas, and best practices of community to drive our mission and vision of building healthy communities. We leverage our power as a philanthropic institution to analyze, conduct research, and support innovative community-led efforts and their leaders.

We believe that a thriving health ecosystem in our region relies on the capacity of local leaders and organizations doing the work. Beyond general operating support, we seek to invest in partner-led efforts that address organizational culture, systems, and power through a racial equity, racial healing, and racial justice lens.

Foundation Highlights & Impact Stories Where You Belong, You Thrive National Nutrition Month: Confronting Food Insecurity, Advancing Equity Home is Where Your Health Starts 2026 Grantmaking Update: Deepening Our Commitment to Health Equity Since 2017, the Foundation has given approximately $65 million* in grants to organizations serving the health and wellness needs of community members in our service area.

*Based on 2025 unaudited financial statements