The donors, board and staff of the Crossroads Fund will celebrate a decade of leadership from Executive Director Jeanne Kracher Oct. 28.
Kracher, a native Chicagoan, lives on the North Side with her long-term partner, Laura McAlpine. Her political activism emerged through her work as a documentary film maker, creating films that addressed a wide range of social justice issues, from healthcare in prison to a history of the women's global peace and justice movement.
She took her activism to the streets as a founding member of ACT UP/Chicago. "It was originally CFARChicago for AIDS Rights," Kracher explained. "We changed the name when it became clear that it was a movement that was emerging around the country and it was important to be identified with that sort of 'brand' so to speak, although nobody used those terms back then. A precursor to CFAR was DAGMAR, which was dykes and gay men against any 'R-word' you could think of at the timeReagan, racism, the right wingwe would just sort of insert as many Rs as we needed to," she laughed.
"We were all folks who met each other because we had been involved in leftist organizations in Chicago and came together around AIDS. We had always been out as queers or gays and lesbians in the various activities we were involved with, but when people started becoming HIV-positive and dying, we decide we had to take a stronger stand politically as queers or gay people. I think people don't remember that there were discussions with [ then Illinois Governor ] Jim Thompson about quarantining gays: the most heinous and repressive ways of 'How do we deal with this emerging disease and these diseased people?' So we started DAGMAR, which morphed into ACT UP." ACT UP dissolved in 1995 and was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2000, the year Kracher became executive director of Crossroads Fund.
Kracher's connection to Crossroads began a number of years earlier, first as a grantee through her work as executive director of Women in the Director's Chair and later as a member of the board of directors.
"I was on the Crossroads board for a few years in the mid- to late- 1990s," she said. After about 15 years of strong leadership and continuity, the organization endured a period of "not finding a good fit" for their top staff position and a number of growing pains. "I was approached by a couple of people to apply for the executive director job. Crossroads meant a lot to me as an activist. ... I was really thrilled to have the opportunity to help turn things around and we were able to do it."
At the time, Kracher was working at the Women's Health Education Project, part of a women's health initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The 10-year project included seed money for Alice Dan's Center for Research on Women and Gender at University of Illinois Chicago and funding for women's health projects through the Chicago Foundation for Women. "The health education project was [ MacArthur's ] idea of a grass-roots project based on the model of the Boston Women's Health Collective." Several entities were on the advisory board, including the Chicago Women's Health Center, the long-time lesbian and transgender friendly not-for-profit organization which was Crossroads first grantee.
"I came in close to the end of the project; I was sort of hired to put it to bed," Kracher explained. The drop-in resource center was located at the intersection of Milwaukee, Armitage and Western, not a trendy neighborhood back then. "It was us from the center and all the methadone addicts from down the street."
Taking the helm at Crossroads, Kracher has been able to guide and grow the organization into "a nice and stable position.
"It's not just about me," she said, adding, "It's about leadership development, staff development. Yes, it takes dedicated individuals but no dedicated individual can do it alone."
The organization will celebrate Kracher's leadership by announcing the Building Strong Leaders Campaign ( BSLC ) . For almost three decades the Crossroads Fund, a pioneer in funding LGBT organizations and activism, has raised grant monies through "a network of progressive individuals, businesses and foundations" dedicated to "help create social and economic justice." Their donor list reads like a Who's Who of Chicago area progressives.
"Crossroads Fund, in its mission, is developing leaders all over the city. We fund new and emerging groups, which in effect is seeding grassroots leadership around the city," Kracher said. "So whether that project exists 10 years from the time we fund it or not, the people in that project have grown. The idea of the initiative is that people are giving additional money beyond their regular gifts so that we can really do more to develop leaders with training and skills building." The goal for the BSLC campaign was $10,000; more that $15,000 in pledges and outright gifts has already been received.
In both direct grant work and technical assistance to advocacy organizations, Crossroads works across a wide range of social justice issues including disability rights, LGBT rights, arts and culture, criminal justice, environment and community development, government accountability, health access, human and worker rights, immigrant issues, women and girls, youth and international policy and advocacy. Crossroads prides itself on its difference from "mainstream philanthropy."
"We've been funding Affinity for over ten years; who else is going to fund an African American Lesbian organization?" Kracher said. "What we're trying to do is look at the funding as a way to deepen the groups of people that are the most marginalized to be a part of generalized movement building."
Kracher sees the professionalization of the foundation and not-for-profit world as a huge change over the years. "It used to be the province of the rich family member who didn't need a job so they ran the foundation," she said. "Now you've got this industry. There are good things and bad things with that."
When she first got to Crossroads there were still many groups operating on a strictly volunteer basis with no desire to institutionalize. "It was really about activism and street activism," she said, recalling the ACT UP days. "Now you have groups that haven't even been around a year and want an office and a staff person. It's not good or bad, it's just different, different expectations. This work is no longer just about community ferment, but also about jobs. That didn't used to exist, but the foundation world helped to create some of that because it got so big and there was so much money available, which is no longer true. Just like the housing market bubbleit was a false sense of what was possible."
Working with many small and start up organizations, Crossroads staff is careful to guide the often young or emerging community activists in what they can and cannot do with grant money, "You can advocate around issues, but you can't advocate for a candidate," explained Kracher. "We've been helpful as a resource to allow people to see what the parameters are. At the same time, there's a lot not-for-profits can do."
Within the work and concerns of each advocacy area supported by Crossroads there is an emphasis on cross-issue organizing and understanding. What Kracher calls "intersectionality."
For example, how can LGBT issues be incorporated into immigrant issues. "How is an undocumented immigrant who is gay doubly exploited? How do we really train our staff and our board and our community to think about these issues?"
"When we go to a group we say, 'Oh, you're working with people with disabilities, how do you also incorporate LGBT issues, or race? How do we really ensure that you are really looking at all the people who are part of your community?"
During the grant review process all applicants must be able to specifically and adequately respond to the question: "How does your group manage the challenges of including diverse groups within your constituency such as people of color, low-income, LGBT, people with disabilities, youth, seniors, and/or women?"
"Mainstream philanthropy is about putting a bandaid on a problem, although there are exceptions to that. Philanthropy was created to maintain a status quo, so that workers wouldn't be sick and would be better workers. So that we wouldn't have plagues and pestilence and people would show up to the coal mine," Kracher asserted. "Crossroads is about changing the fundamental conditions and systems in the community."
People who are interested in attending or supporting the Building Strong Leaders Campaign can contact Sheila O'Donnell, Crossroads Fund development director, at 773-227-7676 or sheila@crossroadsfund.org .