Participants

Catherine Brown

Senior Director, Communities Program, McCormick Foundation

Ms. Brown joined the McCormick Foundation as director of the Communities Program in 1994 and was promoted to senior director in 2006. The Communities Program is the largest giving area of the Foundation; it granted more than $33 million to hundreds of nonprofit organizations throughout the United States in 2008. The Communities Program has two broad goals: to increase local philanthropy, and to improve the social and economic conditions of the communities in which it operates. The only program of its kind in the country, the Communities Program works with its 20 fund partners—newspapers, broadcast outlets, sports teams, and other businesses and civic groups—to raise money from the general public. In order to stimulate local giving, funds raised are matched with dollars from the Foundation’s corpus and then re-granted in the communities where they were raised. The funds are directed toward each community’s most pressing priorities.

Ms. Brown is on the board of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance and is a volunteer at Young Chicago Authors. Former board appointments include Cook County CASA; Whirlwind, a children’s performing arts group; and the Chicago Council on Urban Affairs.