​We are deeply grateful for your unwavering support throughout 2024. Your generosity made it possible for us to provide 64 Annual Grants and 11 Recovery Fund Grants that positively impacted thousands of children and adults in Highland Park and Highwood. Click the image below to explore the tangible difference your contributions made in expanding opportunities and addressing unmet needs within our community.​

​Your continued support plays a crucial role in building a more inclusive and thriving community, enriching the lives of all residents, and strengthening the resources that empower our neighbors to overcome adversity and reach their full potential.

Join us in making a lasting impact.

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As 2025 comes to a close, we want to extend our heartfelt thanks for your incredible support. Your generosity has fueled meaningful progress this year—strengthening local nonprofits, supporting families, and helping us build a stronger Highland Park and Highwood.

Yet even with this strength, conversations with our partners show that many residents are experiencing increasing hardship.

• Families are facing rising childcare costs, housing instability, food insecurity, and increased need for basic essentials.
• Seniors are worried about food insecurity as well.
• Federal, state, and local funding for nonprofits continues to decline, even as needs grow.
• Significant uncertainty surrounds new Medicaid work requirements, changes to the ACA, and other shifts in funding.

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In 2018, the Highland Park Community Foundation established the Personal Achievement Award to honor a Highland Park High School senior for significant personal achievement. The award recognizes a student who, among other things:

• Demonstrates a genuine commitment to persevere despite obstacles or personal challenges;
• Sets personal goals and challenges him/herself to achieve them;
• Thrives in the school environment;
• Works hard and is a positive influence; and
• Shows appreciation for the help he/she receives.

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Our Corporate Champion Program Continues to Grow.

We are delighted to share that Mariani Landscape has joined our growing list of Corporate Champions. We look forward to visiting their new Design Center, which is opening in downtown Highland Park in early May, and hope you will stop by, too.

Mariani’s Corporate Champion pledge will provide monetary resources needed to support HPCF’s mission to address unmet needs and expand opportunities for all Highland Park and Highwood residents now and in perpetuity.

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To all our supporters: We join you at this time of giving thanks for touching lives in so many ways.

For Thirty years, you have Helped us Address Needs of our community, fostering Kindness and compassion to Seniors and children alike. We are extremely Grateful to all of you – the Individuals, families, businesses & foundations that provide Vital resources to Improve the lives of children and adults Now and in perpetuity. Thank you for Genuinely caring about your neighbors.

We wish all of you and your families a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

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Alvin H. Baum Family Fund

Modeled on the successful Corporate Champion Program we launched in 2020, the Highland Park Community Foundation has launched a Foundation Champion Program to provide the opportunity for private foundations to become our philanthropic partners.

The Alvin H. Baum Family Fund has signed on as HPCF’s first Foundation Champion. Making a five-year commitment at the Platinum level, the Baum Family Fund has generously provided a $20,000/year financial commitment to support the HPCF in addressing unmet needs of the community and expanding opportunities for all Highland Park and Highwood residents.

We are most grateful to the Baum Fund for leading the way and look forward to other foundations adding their support!

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“When a teacher believes in you like Sarah does – she’s like a Mary Poppins. She magically makes it happen.” HPHS parent

We are thrilled to recognize Sarah Douglas as the 2024 recipient of the HPCF Golden Apple Award!

Highland Park Community Foundation established the HPCF Golden Apple Award in 2010 to honor outstanding teachers in the Highland Park public schools. The award rotates among the elementary, middle school, and high school levels of teaching. This year, nominations were accepted for full-time HPHS teachers.

Sarah teaches physical education, adaptive physical education, team sports, and traffic safety for grades 9-12. She is a general education teacher who has stepped into the role that is usually expected of a special education teacher, serving as an inclusion and modification specialist. She not only promotes inclusion but fosters it in a way that helps students accept inclusion as the norm. It is rare for a teacher to be equally valued by all the demographics of a school in the way that Sarah is respected. Sarah has made a tangible, concrete, and lasting impact on the Highland Park High School community. She is a teacher who connects with all her students, motivates them to try and learn new things, generates confidence, inspires them to be better people, and supports them through that process.

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Last week, we shared our Impact Report, celebrating the meaningful progress we’ve made together in supporting Highland Park and Highwood’s most vulnerable neighbors. Your generosity fueled that success—and we are deeply grateful.

But as we continue our mid-year check-ins with our nonprofit partners, we’re hearing about new and growing challenges that call for our attention, compassion, and action.

Recent policy changes, economic uncertainty, and funding disruptions are making it even harder for local families to access the resources they need. Our grantees are reporting:

Threats to Essential Programs
Frozen or eliminated federal grants and potential Medicaid cuts are putting long-standing programs at risk—including those focused on affordable housing, food insecurity, early childhood education, and care for our most vulnerable residents.

Increased Fear & Barriers to Access
Concerns related to immigration status and newly mandated language restrictions are preventing residents from seeking critical help—especially for mental health, housing, and domestic violence services.

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As we begin 2026, we do so with deep gratitude and a clear sense of both progress and purpose. Thanks to your generosity, 2025 was a milestone year for HPCF, with $1,012,240 in grant awards distributed to organizations working every day to improve and enhance lives throughout our community.

We also enter the new year with new Board leadership, renewed momentum, and the distinction of being re-certified as a Qualified Community Foundation under the Illinois Gives Tax Credit Act — allowing individual and business donors to receive a 25% state tax credit for donations to the Foundation. More information follows below.

At the same time, we know many of our neighbors are facing increasing challenges. Economic pressures are growing, people are losing health insurance, and SNAP benefits are being cut. Funding for nonprofits continues to tighten as well. While we remain hopeful about the year ahead, your continued support — at the start of and throughout the year — will be essential to sustaining the vital work of the local nonprofits we support.

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