As a foundation, our work is to identify, build, and leverage strengths—our own, our grantee partners’, and our community’s—to achieve a shared goal: health.
To do it, we use three basic tools: collaboration, continuous learning, and grant making.
Collaboration
Working with others across issue areas and organizations—whether to provide assistance, pool resources, or leverage complementary interests—increases our impact as funders and problem solvers.
As important, it helps us develop cross-sector networks of expertise, influence, and common interest. We believe these networks are essential to success in the complex work of improving health.
Continuous learning
Michael Reese Health Trust was founded by the community that built and directed Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center, an institution whose legacy of service was matched only by its commitment to groundbreaking knowledge and innovation.
It’s a path we have tried to follow, one that demands continuous learning: studying issues and emerging solutions, getting to know providers and the communities they serve, assessing needs, evaluating outcomes, measuring progress, and being willing to try new approaches and take risks.
As a public charity, we have two key responsibilities: to be careful with the funds entrusted to us, and to deliver the maximum return we can on those investments. When the data show that current “treatments” to improve health aren’t working, we believe we must use our knowledge and experience to develop or fund new ones. It’s a belief that has more often led to success than to failure. Many of our most experimental funding initiatives—innovative ideas such as Cure Violence (formerly CeaseFire), Becoming a Man, and the Chicago Housing for Health Partnership—have produced outstanding results. We are proud of the part we have played in turning these new ideas into nationally recognized and replicated models.
Grant making
Within our funding focus areas, we address multiple needs with investments whose returns span multiple time horizons.
We support direct service—what clients or patients need to improve their health or the health of their community, whether that’s treatment, counseling, education, or connection.
We support planning and capacity building—what our partners in the field need to evaluate, improve, or extend their knowledge, skills, efficacy, and reach.
We support knowledge building and systems change—what all of us need to ensure that what we do today and the infrastructures we depend on to do it are getting us closer to our goals.