Welcome to the Circle of Service Foundation!
The Circle of Service Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants to support great organizations to enhance community, opportunity and well-being. Each of our grants generally can be categorized in one of four areas:
Community Giving
Our Community Giving program supports organizations in Cook and Lake Counties, Illinois that help individuals become self-reliant or that help individuals who are unable to help themselves.
Education
Our Education program supports organizations that enhance educational opportunities for low-income youth in Chicago to enable them to lead productive lives.
Jewish Community
Our Jewish Community program supports organizations that honor the past and strengthen the future of the Jewish Community. Jewish Community grants to organizations outside Cook and Lake Counties, Illinois are by invitation only.
Medical Research
Our Medical Research program supports organizations that seek to advance scientific and medical research focused on the diagnosis, prevention, treatment and cure of cancer and other diseases. Medical Research grants are by invitation only.
Generally, our grants are limited to organizations that focus their work on residents of Cook or Lake Counties, Illinois.
We consider grant applications on a rolling basis, and, unless we have told you otherwise, we do not have specific deadlines for grant applications. Most grant applicants will hear from us within 90-120 days of the application date.
We welcome grant applications both for specific programs and for general operating support.
To learn more, please review our FAQs and our application process.
Challenge Grants
In our experience – largely learned from prior recipients of Foundation grants – challenge grants can be a powerful tool for organizations to leverage additional financial support. Accordingly, the Foundation awards many grants in the form of challenges. To clarify, in a challenge grant, the amount that the Foundation ultimately awards to the recipient organization will depend on subsequent fundraising by the organization. (This is also known as a matching grant.)
In most cases, our challenge grants are based on new funds pledged and collected by the organization after receiving notice of the challenge grant. New funds include funds pledged and collected either from a new donor to the organization or from a prior donor, but only to the extent of the increase in that donor’s gift to the organization over that donor’s gift in the prior year.
Our primary goal with challenge grants is to give grant recipients another tool in their fundraising toolboxes. Organizations are encouraged to create a request with a challenge component. We are happy to work with organizations to design challenge grants to achieve the greatest impact for the applicant. In turn, we expect recipients of challenge grants to use the grants to achieve the greatest possible leverage with further fundraising.
Grantee Reports
Please see our Reporting Tools page regarding reports from grant recipients.
Other Helpful Information
If your organization wishes to apply to us for a grant, it must use our online grant application, and it must be a public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
If a grant request is denied for any reason, your organization may not submit another application until 12 months from date of denial.
Organizations are not eligible for more than one active grant at a time. Each request for a new grant requires a new, complete online application.
If your organization is interested in submitting a grant application, please read our FAQs before beginning our application.
We continue to evaluate and revise our approaches to making grants. Please check this page periodically for updates.
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