New Orleans

The Fry Foundation is focused on helping low-income families in the city of Chicago, but as Lloyd A. Fry, Jr. eloquently explained, while we are residents of Chicago, we also are citizens of the world. And so every year the Foundation makes a handful of grants for world relief efforts responding to international emergencies. In recent years, this support has helped organizations address the tsunami in Asia and the earthquake in Pakistan. While relief efforts in the United States had never been contemplated, after the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina, the Fry Foundation Board of Directors decided to direct some of the Foundation's attention to rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. In August 2006, the Foundation awarded four grants to New Orleans organizations working to rebuild health care services serving low-income residents affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Foundation chose to support groups working in the health arena because of our own experience in supporting access to quality health care in Chicago.We want to acknowledge special thanks to Baptist Community Ministries in New Orleans for its help in identifying key organizations working on the health care issues unique to the New Orleans community.

The Foundation provided grants to Kingsley House, Latino Health Access Network, Louisiana Public Health Institute, and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Foundation.

• Kingsley House, founded in 1896, is the oldest Settlement House in the South. Through its Health Care for All program, Kingsley House was able to help New Orleans families enroll in Medicaid and the Louisiana Child Health Insurance Program.

• Through its Hispanic Health Promoters program, the Latino Health Access Network conducted bilingual health education and medical referrals to members of New Orleans' growing Hispanic community.

• A grant to the Louisiana Public Health Institute provided support to help improve mental health services and for the planning and development of a citywide digital health information system.

• The Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Foundation received support for its Louisiana Breast and Cervical Health Program to replace mammography equipment and implement a new medical records system that allows patients to store medical records on portable flash drives.

Investment Grants

The Fry Foundation is proud of its long history supporting organizations that serve Chicago's low-income communities. In 2003, the Foundation began a conversation about how our funding could have greater impact in helping grantees develop innovative strategies, strengthen their capacity, collaborate more intensively with others, and share information about what works. These conversations have resulted in a small group of grants that are special investments in organizations and ideas with exceptional potential for making a difference in the Foundation's four grantmaking areas. These Investment grants tend to be distinguished by several characteristics, including rigorous program design, a focus on evaluation, collaborative partnerships, and the promise of developing new information or program innovations that can be useful to other organizations, institutions and policymakers. When these characteristics are in place, the Foundation is prepared to make grants which are larger and longer term than is otherwise typical.

This year the Fry Foundation made six Investment grants in three program areas.

Arts Education Program
Columbia College of Chicago
$160,000 (over two years)
For Evaluation of Arts Integration Initiatives, the Museum of Contemporary Photography Picture Me Program, and the Teaching Artists Research Project

Education Program
Chicago Public Schools
$75,000
For the High School Transformation Leadership Development Project: to improve the capacity of high school principals to implement instructional reform in their schools and to create a professional development model for experienced principals

University of California, Santa Cruz
$200,000 (over two years)
For the New Teacher Center to improve practices in the fields of new teacher induction and teacher professional development in Chicago

University of Illinois at Chicago
$75,000
To establish a high school Principals' Network at UIC's Center for School Leadership and help it improve its capacity to prepare highly skilled principals and improve Chicago public high schools

Employment Program
Instituto del Progreso Latino
$150,000 (over two years)
To help Instituto del Progreso Latino build the capacity to expand Carreras en Salud, its health care bridge program, to additional community college sites

Partnership for New Communities
$150,000 (over two years)
For Opportunity Works employment initiative to increase the availability of high-quality job training programs and help 3,000 public housing residents become employed

Arts Education

In an effort to offer a more current description of the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation's funding interests in the arts, we have changed the name of the Arts and Culture Program to the Arts Education Program and created a more detailed description of our grantmaking guidelines in this area. The Foundation has a long-standing commitment to supporting arts education opportunities for Chicago's low-income children and youth. That focus and commitment are now reflected in the program name.

The modifications to the program guidelines are meant to clarify the Foundation's ongoing funding priorities in the Arts Education program. These updated guidelines emphasize our interest in supporting high quality, rigorous, and engaging arts education experiences, in supporting in-depth professional development for arts educators, including classroom teachers, in-school arts instructors, and teaching artists, and our interest in helping organizations assess student learning in the arts.

We think that these modifications respond to both the strengths and interests of Chicago's rich arts education community. The new guidelines are included in the Grantmaking Programs section on page 12 of this annual report.