Fresh Taste membership unlocks outsized impact for your philanthropic activity. As a group, Fresh Taste members learn and work together to build stronger grantmaking initiatives, advance our collective work, and increase impact.
As a staffed funder initiative, Fresh Taste helps develop strategy and secure resources for our member-championed funding initiatives. We serve as a collaborative think tank by conducting research, helping to educate foundation staff and trustees, developing strategy, engaging community groups around the work, and securing additional resources.
Members and staff stimulate innovation that builds the field, breathing life into ideas and initiatives that can change the food system for the better. Through membership in Fresh Taste, you and your foundation can:
Learn
Learn about effective and innovative work in the Chicago region—and how your work can advance existing and new initiatives—through site-based and issue-focused experiences.
Contribute
Share your funding approaches with others and, where purpose is shared, align grantmaking to support mutual priorities.
Connect
Build your professional network with a vibrant peer group of local, regional, national, and international funders and initiatives.
Strengthen
Gain access to grantmaking expertise of fellow Fresh Taste members and staff to strengthen your funding strategies.
“Foundations can achieve more when we collaborate, and Fresh Taste offers a vital perspective on where to engage, when to test new strategies, and how to align our grantmaking for greater impact.”
Bruce Karmazin
Lumpkin Family Foundation
Our Members and Partners
Fresh Taste Members
- Builders Initiative
- Christopher Family Foundation
- Food:Land:Opportunity, an initiative of Kinship Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust
- Little Owl Foundation
- The Lumpkin Family Foundation
- Margot L. Pritzker Fund
- Walter S. Mander Foundation
Participating Funders
Funders interested in the food system who are not Fresh Taste Members provide crucial support for individual funds.
- Manaaki Foundation
- Steans Family Foundation
- Walder Foundation
- Walton Family Foundation
Former Members
- Anonymous
- The Chicago Community Trust
- City of Chicago Dept. of Planning/Dev.
- Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation
- Hanley Foundation
- JR Albert Foundation
- Kinship Foundation
- The Leo S Guthman Fund
- Liberty Prairie Foundation
- Lutsey Family Fund
- New Visions Foundation
- Stuart Family Foundation
- WK Kellogg Foundation
Former Fresh Taste Staff
- Karen Lehman, Director
- Melissa Hernandez
- Julia Leis
- Kassia Perpich
Partner with Fresh Taste
We believe that when you join together to support an equitable food system, the broader community and environment benefit, and we welcome new collaborations for building a stronger food system.
Photo credits: Just Roots, Growing Home