Foundation and Grantee News
Affordable Housing Leadership Award Presentation 2011 Affordable Housing Leadership Award Recipient:
Denis Pierce, President of Pierce Family Charitable Foundation and President, Pierce & Associates
The Pierce Family Charitable Foundation supports nonprofit organizations providing essential social services in the areas of housing and opportunities for homeless people. Pierce & Associates is a law firm representing the mortgage banking and real estate industry.Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago (NHS) recently presented its 2011 Corporate Leadership Award to Denis for finding ways to harness the power of philanthropy to improve the lives of Chicago-area families, and for helping NHS build, grow and lead.
A number of agencies supported by the Pierce Family Foundation or Pierce and Associates were honored at the recent Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards program.
- The award for "Outstanding Non-Profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project" went to Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago (NHS) for Roseland Place, the senior housing community on the South Side.
- The "Polk Bros. Foundation Affordable Rental Housing Preservation Award " went to Mercy Housing Lakefront for is preservation of the historic the Harold Washington Apartments in the Uptown neighborhood.
- One of the "Driehaus Foundation Awards for Architectural Excellence in Community Design" recognized Inspiration Kitchens-Garfield Park, a restaurant, training center and community space allowing neighbors affected by poverty to eat well, develop marketable skills and ultimately increase self-sufficiency.
- And the "Norman Bobins Leadership Award" went to La Casa Norte's Executive Director, Sol Flores, pictured here with LCN board members Keith Decker and Martha Pierce. Congratulations to all!
Below is background on Sol's award, which we thought we'd share: here
South Side Initiative
For the past year PFF has spearheaded an informal set of discussions with funder colleagues around community issues and capacity building in South side nonprofits. Our efforts included a consultants' roundtable and culminated in our awarding $142,500 to South side organizations addressing housing and homelessness issues. We are appreciative to our funder colleagues for their input and recommendations.
Helping Grantees With Their I.T. Needs, By John Carlson, Pierce Family Foundation Student Intern, Summer 2011 Notre Dame Class of 2014
More and more foundations are beginning to see the need to fund the costs of information technology (IT) systems at nonprofit agencies, but those open to supporting IT tend to approach that need in traditional ways: seeking proposals, reviewing them, and if the nonprofit is lucky, ultimately providing grants that nonprofits use to seek out and hire various services. At the Pierce Family Foundation, IT is . . . read more
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Foundation Priorities
The Pierce Family Foundation supports nonprofit organizations providing essential social services in the areas of housing and opportunities for homeless people. We primarily support organizations in the Chicago metropolitan region as well as select projects in Michigan.
We place special emphasis on organizations that:
- Provide housing for women and children and families
- Address the needs of immigrant families
- Supply environmentally sound practices for food, housing and energy efficiency
The Pierce Family Foundation understands that the greatest challenges faced by nonprofit organizations relate to the lack of support for their general operations and organizational development needs.
We know that nonprofits rarely fail because their programs aren't needed or because their vision is limited; when they fail, it is because they are unable to adequately invest in the essentials necessary to keeping the doors open and the program thriving, essentials like staffing, technology, fundraising capacity. The critical "general op" dollars that support these essentials are the most difficult for nonprofits to raise, which is why nearly all of our grants are general op grants.
Whether for our core grantees or other organizations we support at more modest levels, we are particularly interested in helping organizations increase their effectiveness by providing support that focuses on operational needs and organizational development, offering grants and technical assistance for technology, strategic planning, nonprofit operations, financial management, fundraising, communications, board development and other areas that contribute to organizational stability and sustainability.
Unique to the Foundation is its commitment to underwriting the donation of organizational support services for its core grantees. Once an organization becomes a core grantee of the Pierce Family Foundation, it is eligible to receive at no cost a host of direct services provided by a team of nonprofit support specialists on call to the Foundation.
We tend to fund community-based organizations in need of ongoing support to stabilize or grow their core operations, and organizations with less opportunity to secure funding elsewhere.
* All proposals are by invitation only. Unsolicited proposals are not accepted or acknowledged. Organizations invited to apply are chosen through recommendations made by the Foundation’s founding family, the Foundation’s professional staff, and its grantee network. If your organization is invited to apply, you will receive an application via email. Application materials can only be submitted electronically.