The Crossroads Fund has given more than $6 million in grants over the past 30 years to literally hundreds of grassroots organizations.
"At 30 years, [the] Crossroads Fund is a relatively young organization, but the amount that our grantees have accomplished, with our support, is incredible," said Jeanne Kracher, executive director for the Crossroads Fund. "We are very proud of the groups who received their first funding from us and have gone on to grow into Chicago's non-profit leaders, including Affinity Community Services, Chicago Women's Health Center, Chicago Women in Trades, Korean American Resource and Cultural Center, and many others."
"I'm also really proud that [the] Crossroads Fund has remained true to our founding principles for the entire 30 years of our existence—and those principles still feel right today. Our motto is change, not charity, which means that we support groups who are working to change systems of inequality.
"Another founding belief of Crossroads Fund is that activists should be involved in making decisions about where to put resources. We engage the broader community to help us in grant-making decisions. We also follow a democratic fundraising model—most of our donors give us about $100, and we are able to pool those resources and really have an impact for racial, social and economic justice. We are also happy to receive a gift of $10,000 or $100,000, and lucky to have gotten [those amounts, too] over the years."
The 30th-anniversary celebration for the Crossroads Fund was held in March at the Chicago Cultural Center.
"At this event, we [presented] the Ron Sable Award for Activism," Kracher said. "We have presented this award for the last [18] years in honor of the late Dr. Ron Sable. In his lifetime, Ron worked for gay and lesbian liberation, women's liberation, reproductive rights, just treatment of prisoners, and national healthcare. He helped develop services for individuals with HIV/AIDS at Cook County Hospital, was an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and pioneered a position as the first openly gay candidate for alderman in Chicago. Ron was a founder of Chicago's AIDS Foundation and served as a member of the Crossroads Fund board for 10 years.
"His death in 1993 was a great loss to the progressive philanthropic community. However, Ron's legacy lives on. The Ron Sable Award for Activism is a living memorial to the man whose clarity, wisdom, honesty, and leadership continues to guide Chicago's community members. Each year, awards are distributed to a grantee organization and an individual or group who has made a significant impact on Chicago's communities. We are proud to honor Ron and his lifelong commitment to social change. He was an inspiring example for us all."
[Editor's note: Past recipients of the Ron Sable Award include Affinity Community Services, Long Term Prisoner Policy Project and the Chicago Workers' Collaborative.]
Kracher, who lives in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood, has worked for the Crossroads Fund for the past 11 years. She actually received funding as a grantee when she was Executive Director of Women in the Director's Chair in the mid-1990s; and when a member of ACT-UP/Chicago in the early 1990s.
"At Crossroads Fund, we recognize that racial, social and economic injustice is, unfortunately, not on a trajectory to be resolved in the next 10, 20 or 30 years," Kracher said. "Due to the complicated nature of the issues that our grantees are working on, our goal over the next 30 years is to continue to build our capacity to be a resource for groups working on solving systemic injustice."
This is the goal even in a tough economic time.
"The economic downturn has impacted the entire nonprofit sector, including Crossroads Fund and our grantees," Kracher said. "There was a period of time immediately after the first shocks of the recession when we saw donors continuing to give, but giving at lower levels than in the past. That trend persisted for about a year. Now we are seeing that our donors are coming back at a higher level, and we are again finding new donors. We are incredibly grateful to our very loyal donor base.
"Thirty years ago, Crossroads Fund was the first and, for a while, the only foundation to support LGBT groups. So we gave funding to the earliest iterations of building community institutions and projects like Horizons and [the] Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force (IGLTF). A number of these groups grew up to become some of the bigger and more established institutions in the gay community. We are really happy that we were able to be a part of that. And we are really happy that the LGBT community is now so visible and generous in supporting our own institutions and also that more mainstream philanthropy feels relatively comfortable in supporting some of the biggest projects in LGBT communities.
"Our mission is funding new and emerging groups that look at the intersections of issues and oppressions. This means that now we may fund groups who may be perceived as on the margins of the LGBT community, but we see them as absolute essential in building a strong, diverse and whole community of communities.
"We have been a strong and consistent supporter of Affinity Community Services. We have given grants to Amigas Latinas. We gave grants to the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance since its inception. Importantly, we ask all of our grantees, no matter what issue they are working on, how they address LGBTQ issues in their work, because we recognize that we are everywhere, and our issues intersect with so many other issues—immigration, worker rights, disability rights—really everything."
Other Crossroads Fund highlights include:
—Giving grants through its Youth Fund for Social Change, which was a grant-making program initiated in 2008;
—Raising $300,000 to seed its newest grant-making effort, the Youth Fund for Social Change;
—Raising its first endowment gift of $1 million; and
—Receiving a $400,000 bequest, its largest gift ever from an individual donor.
"Over the last 30 years we have seen many grantee victories of great significance," Kracher said. "In the 1980s, ADAPT, a disability rights group, pressured the CTA to make public transit in Chicago accessible. In the early 1990s, when I was involved with ACT-UP, we received a Crossroads Fund grant for an action to pressure Cook County Hospital to open up an AIDS ward for HIV-positive women, and we won. More recently, we are very proud of the many groups we supported who worked for the successful abolition of the death penalty in Illinois. And just last year a grantee we have supported since they were founded, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, was a leader in the effort to pass the Prevent School Violence Act, which protects LGBTQ and gender variant youth in schools."
Kracher said the biggest challenge facing the Crossroads Fund is fundraising, which can be challenging because of the economic downturn and the broad focus of the foundation.
Crossroads Fund is at 3411 W. Diversey Ave.; see www.crossroadsfund.org for more info.
