Our Non-Profit Partners

Episcopal Charities exists to seek grassroots solutions for the many social needs across Northern Illinois and to help transform the lives connected to them. This dynamic of response and transformation forms the core and mission of Episcopal Charities.

To fulfil this mission, Episcopal Charities strengthens and supports its partner agencies, congregational outreach programs, and other faith-based ministries of Christian service that offer hope to all people in the region.

Episcopal Charities stands with its partner agencies through annual financial grants and a capacity building program that helps them increase their own fundraising, raise visibility for their work in Northern Illinois, and build more effective governing boards.

Every year since its founding in 1960, Episcopal Charities makes annual grants to non-profit partners. These grants are especially valued because they are for general operating support, providing the resources agencies use to ensure excellence in their ministries. The average grant in 2016 was more than $40,000. Over the past ten years, Episcopal Charities has granted nearly $7,000,000 in unrestricted support as the largest single donor of general operating grants.

Ravenswood Community Services

Ravenswood Community Services (RCS) provides the basics of food and supplies to our neighbors, respecting the dignity of all and creating community throughout Ravenswood and the surrounding neighborhoods. We strive to offer services and connections to resources that can help people realize health, stability, and self-sufficiency.

Vision: Neighbors helping neighbors.

RCS strives to be a place where people, neighbors – whether those in need or those of means – are fed, welcoming all who come to our doors, treating each with dignity. Our hunger relief programs work to provide nutritionally balanced bags of groceries and meals of the same quality we all want for our own families. We include fresh milk and bread each week and offer alternative items for those neighbors without access to a kitchen.

RCS' programs bring together people from all sides of the economic divide in our changing neighborhood. Through our common goals, individual gifts, and shared vision for the future of our neighborhood and the wider community, Ravenswood Community Services strives to be force for positive change in our corner of the world.

Cathedral Counseling Center

Cathedral Counseling Center helps people make sense of their lives during difficult times through professional, affordable mental health care. We offer one-to-one, couple and group therapy, and psychiatric services. All counselors are licensed professionals with extensive post-graduate clinical experience. Our sliding-scale fees are based on the client's ability to pay.

Holy Family Ministries

We provide opportunities for children and adults from Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods to excel academically, grow spiritually, expand life experiences and become effective leaders. 

Holy Family Ministries’ programs strengthen communities by educating youth for entrance into high performing high schools; instilling in youth the values and resilience needed to succeed in life; providing them sanctuary within struggling areas of the city; and developing young leaders within the community. 

Revive Center for Housing and Healing

ReVive Center for Housing and Healing is the trusted not-for-profit organization that is committed to ending homelessness in Chicago. For 103 years, thousands of homeless individuals and their children have turned to the ReVive Center for expert resources, award-winning programs, and a compassionate place to heal and call home.

St. Leonard’s Ministries

Believing individuals want to lead productive and whole lives, St. Leonard’s Ministries provides a setting in which men and women recently released from prison can achieve such a life. Residents are provided with an array of program services designed to assist them as they make the transition to successful, independent living. During their stay at St. Leonard’s House, Grace House and St. Andrew’s Court, residents are helped to reassess value systems, to reorder priorities and to develop socially and legally acceptable patterns of behavior.

Bishop Anderson House

Chaplaincy

• Providing full-time professional chaplaincy to Stroger Hospital

• Part-time chaplaincy to the CORE Center of Cook County—patients and staff

• Dianna’s Teddy Bear Ministry chaplain

Education

• Spiritual Care Visitor Training

• Continuing education for alumnae of SCVT

• Offering community-based Clinical Pastoral Education courses

• Clinical Pastoral Education faculty at RUSH University Medical Center

Wellness, Prevention and Spirituality: 

• Providing self–care opportunities for medical staff in the Illinois Medical District

• Retreats and workshops for caregivers

• Hosting support groups for those who have lost family members to gun violence

• Providing a welcoming space for AA, Bereavement Groups, CPE classes

East Bluff Community Center

Peoria’s East Bluff Community Center (EBCC) was established in 2013 to offer a safe and inviting place for agencies, individuals, and organizations to provide to programs and services to people of Peoria’s East Bluff, one of Peoria’s lowest income neighborhoods.  In 2013, EBCC signed a lease to occupy the 100+ year old vacant neighborhood school building with the objective of allowing dozens of organizations and groups to offer a wide range of  programs, activities, and events to support the vast social and physical needs of thousands of area residents. 

St. Augustine College

St. Augustine College is an independent, bilingual (dual-language) institution of higher education created under the auspices of the Episcopal Diocese to make the American system of higher education accessible to a diverse student population with emphasis on those of Hispanic descent; to strengthen ethnic identity; to reinforce cultural interaction; and to build a bridge to fill cultural, educational, and socio-economic gaps.

Hopeful Beginnings of Saint Mary’s

Hopeful Beginnings of Saint Mary’s provides parenting education, guidance, and support for families seeking adoption.

Here, you can receive free services, including options counseling. This is a place where you can ask hard questions without enduring judgment or embarrassment. We are here to support you through challenging situations and tough questions, allowing you to make the best decision for you ultimately.

Youth Guidance

Youth Guidance’s mission is to create and implement school-based programs that enable children to overcome obstacles, focus on their education, and ultimately, to succeed in school and in life. Founded in 1924 as the Church Mission of Help, a charity of the Episcopal Diocese, Youth Guidance has worked in partnership with CPS for over fifty years, to directly serve students within school by providing them with the network of supports and resources needed to transcend barriers, build positive identities and relationships, and become future leaders in their community. 

Care For Friends

Care for Friends provides easy access to community, food and overall wellness for Chicago’s most vulnerable and under-served people, in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.  

ElderCARE, Lake County

Improving seniors' well-being by providing free services, such as medical transports, grocery shopping, and companionship.

Primo Center for Women & Children

The Primo Center invests in resources that are key to addressing homelessness-- housing, which includes 184 units of shelter and 90 units of permanent housing; trauma-informed wraparound mental health services; early childhood services; a violence prevention program for at-risk youth in schools and community centers; and integrated health care, which matches physical health with behavioral health care homes. These core investments come from a deep understanding of the population served.

Shelter Care Ministries

Shelter Care Ministries was established in 1984 as an outreach ministry of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in downtown Rockford to respond to the growing population of homeless people in the Rockford area.  A Saturday soup kitchen and the Jubilee Center, a drop-in center for adults with mental illness who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, were the first two programs.

Lawrence Hall

Lawrence Hall annually provides highly specialized and individualized care for over 1,000 children and adolescents with severe emotional and behavioral challenges (due to trauma, violence, abandonment, or exploitation).

Waukegan to College

Waukegan to College (W2C) creates brighter futures for students, families and their community by preparing students to enroll in, and graduate from, college. To achieve this mission they provide a suite of wraparound services which support students and their families from elementary school through college graduation. W2C provides students: weekly tutoring, one-on-one homework help, literacy education, math tutoring, monthly family workshops, individual mentoring, field trips to arts and cultural venues, workplace site visits, college application assistance, SAT/ACT prep, college planning workshops, one-on-one college advising, and financial aid assistance.  

W2C was founded in 2009 as a partnership between Episcopal Charities and Lake County United. 

Episcopal Charities welcomes new non-profit partner organizations on a rolling basis. Parish Partner organizations that have received two years of grant funding are eligible to apply for non-profit partner status. We hope this encourages organizations of like mind and mission to partner with Parishes throughout the diocese for meaningful collaboration.