7 Ways to Celebrate International Women's Day

Sunday, March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD). It’s a day to inspire women and celebrate their achievements. This day has been observed since 1910, when a woman named Clara Zetkin proposed the idea at the Second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. She thought there should be a day when women in every […]

Skokie’s Turning Point Launching Drop-In Program for Homeless

A $90,000 Community Development Block Grant from Cook County will allow Turning Point’s Behavioral Health Care Center to begin developing an innovative drop-in program for the homeless. Next comes the exciting work of identifying the full range of social services to be offered. The grant money will be used to rehabilitate a 3,500-square-foot space in Turning […]

2014 Philanthropy Awards

We founded Make It Better to connect and help our audience amplify their philanthropic efforts. We found this leads to more connections and ideas, a heightened feeling of community, more money raised by good people, and better business for everyone. It’s a virtuous circle. To amplify this feeling of good will, we established our annual Philanthropy […]

2014 Philanthropy Awards: SitStayRead

Almost everyone likes dogs—the cuddling, the love. SitStayRead, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the love of learning and improving literacy proficiency for at-risk kids, capitalizes on that idea. Dogs allow SitStayRead (SSR) to tackle the sobering issue of childhood literacy with a positive spin: they address reading fluency in a fun way by incorporating reading […]

2014 Philanthropy Awards: RefugeeOne

Most recently updated: December 2020 Imagine fleeing your home because of war, terror or persecution, only to find yourself in a foreign land with few resources. For the many refugees who come to the Chicago area each year, RefugeeOne provides crucial assistance during that difficult transition. The Chicago-based resettlement organization helps refugees find housing, acclimate […]

2014 Philanthropy Awards: Crushers Club

Crushers Club
 is a most improbable and quite remarkable story. Mother of three Sally Hazelgrove moves her family to Englewood—one of the most challenging neighborhoods in the country—because she feels called to help. Gang banging and shootings abound there; opportunities to escape that life do not. Hazelgrove asks young males loitering on street corners what […]

2014 Philanthropy Awards: Horizons For Youth

Horizons for Youth is an organization that believes that every child, no matter his or her academic ability or socioeconomic background, can graduate from college and successfully pursue a career. They believe the key is the right personalized support. “People come to our program with a wide variety of academic abilities and personal experiences,” says […]

2014 Philanthropy Awards: Skin of Steel

Susan Steel was given a timestamp of 12 months on her life in January of 2008. She was battling melanoma, and at the time she had already completed three years of intensive treatment at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. It is the world’s largest and top-funded melanoma clinic. Steel is a now a […]

2014 Philanthropy Awards: Solidarity Bridge

In much of the United States, access to health care is often taken for granted. But in many South American countries, that access is far from a given. That’s where Solidarity Bridge comes in. Their mission is to train, equip and empower the medical communities in Bolivia and Paraguay to serve the most needy. This […]