• Child Care
• Land Use & Protection
• Workforce Development

What makes a community work?

The Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation in partnership with the Grand Victoria Foundation launched the CommunityWorks initiative to improve the quality of life for people in our community by focusing on issues that directly impact everyday life: childcare, land use and protection, and workforce development.

What have we done?

• Surveyed the community, held stakeholder workshops and met with community leaders to understand our challenges and opportunities.
• Developed goals to drive and guide our efforts.
• Solicited our community partners for their best ideas.
• Built an endowment of more than $575,000 to launch initiatives and make annual grants that strengthen our community.

What's next?

The Community Foundation will be making grants and supporting initiatives to:

• Improve the quality of child care from birth through 5th grade through education, training and support of child care providers and families.
• Promote sustainability as an essential component of community land use, planning, preservation and decision making.
• Improve opportunities for workers in the nonprofit arena through employment that encourages employee retention and advancement and enables people of all socio-economic levels to live and work well in our community.

Click here for printable pdf of CommunityWorks grant guidelines