HCF: Responsive Funding - Community Event Sponsorships

Overview

_NOTE: The Healthy Communities Foundation’s Responsive Grants Portal is closed as we transition to a new grants management system. We aim to reopen the portal in Fall 2025. We will NOT review sponsorship requests during the closure._

Who We Are

Access to affordable, high-quality healthcare is crucial for a healthy life. However, social and systemic conditions, such as your race, ethnicity and where you live, often have a greater impact on overall health.

As a community-led and engaged foundation that serves a 27 zip-code region in Chicago and the western Cook County suburbs, we seek to:

* Center community context in our grantmaking and strengthen our local health ecosystem by working with and learning from health equity leaders and their organizations
* Meet immediate and emergent community health and wellness needs for residents, especially those underserved and underinsured
* Catalyze long-term systems change to address root causes of health inequities and health barriers

The communities within our service region, each with their own unique ecosystems, hold the solutions to the issues they face. We believe in trust-based philanthropy and value the partnerships with organizations and leaders as they are the base to improving health outcomes in our region.

Responsive Funding Grants

What We Believe

As a community-informed and engaged foundation, we recognize that our grantmaking must be agile and responsive to our region’s immediate and evolving community health and wellness needs. Outside of our general operating support grantmaking, we make Responsive grants to community partners for time-sensitive crises, special activities promoting health and wellness, and sponsorship for community events that celebrate and/or encourage new ideas and innovation in our region. Additionally, our Responsive grants are opportunities to learn about organizations we may not already have a relationship with, which can create gateways for future partnerships with those organizations.

Led by our mission, vision, and core values, we accept requests on a rolling basis for responsive funding.

Community Event Sponsorships

We accept sponsorship requests for community-based and community-oriented events in our region. Event types include, but are not limited to, grantee partner organization fundraisers, community health fairs and education events, and community convenings on topics related to the social determinants of health.

We prioritize sponsorships most aligned with our mission, vision, core values, and events and convenings that benefit our region’s residents.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

* Who We Fund
* Must be a 501c3 organization (or have a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a Fiscal Sponsor) 
* Responsive funding requests must benefit residents or staff that reside and/or are based in the Healthy Communities Foundation service region. 
* Responsive funding requests must align with at least one of the Healthy Communities Foundation’s funding priorities, which include: 1) Access to quality health services; 2) Address social determinants of health; 3) Advocate for health-related policies and systems change; and 4) Augment health knowledge. 
* Philanthropy-Serving Organizations (PSOs) are eligible for Responsive funding if the request aligns with or supports HCF’s learning goals. 
* Your organization must not discriminate by race, ethnicity, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, religion or national origin.  
* Your organization does not have to be a current grantee partner of Healthy Communities Foundation.

Ineligibility

* What We Do Not Fund
* Requests submitted less than 6 weeks before the start date of the proposed event, project, or initiative.  
* Initiatives already receiving general operating support from Healthy Communities Foundation  
* Businesses 
Capital campaigns\ 
* Government entities  
* Individuals 
* Operating foundations not directly connected to community-based efforts in our service region 
* Partisan political events or individuals 
* Religious activities (i.e., worship services) and/or programs of religious teachings or training (i.e., bible study) 
* Scholarships 
* School districts & individual schools (including parent/teacher associations, charter schools and nonprofits with more than 80% of expenses for school-based operations.

\*Only capital expenses for materials will be considered for funding (i.e. medical equipment, dental chairs).