December 2025 — Moving the Needle // Woods Fund Chicago

In July of this year, care advocate and organizer Ai-jen Poo co-wrote a piece entitled, “Three Earths: A way of understanding our present moment.”

The essay proposed a framework for organizers grappling with the tumult of 2025 and the sense that our collective response was buffering, that we couldn’t grab hold of our current circumstances firmly enough to see and build a way forward together. The Three Earths of the title provide a scaffold to work from, the idea that we’re working in three intertwined political realities: Earth One, the world of liberal democracy that has been ruptured; Earth Two, the authoritarian breakthrough we’re in now; and Earth Three, the future world we can fight for together.

This fall, Ai-jen presented the framework to a gathering of Chicago philanthropic leaders, including Woods Fund Chicago President Michelle Morales. Many of those leaders have since found the Three Earths framework a critical tool, and in November, Michelle and Ai-jen sat for a conversation on Zoom to talk about using the framework to align and move forward, the internal reckoning required on organizing working people, and the fierce power of community in this moment.

Michelle Morales: My colleagues and I — ever since you walked us through it, we’re all still talking about this framework. It gave us language; it gave us a container. That’s the first thing that struck me. I could envision specific people: colleagues who are stuck on Earth One, allies in Earth Two, trying to figure this moment out together, grantees who are already working on Earth Three. It’s an incredible way of making sense of everything right now.

Ai-jen Poo: It was really practical for me, because I needed a way of helping my team actually plan forward, and it had to be grounded in an assessment of the conditions. And it was so hard to assess the conditions [laughs].

It also offers different lanes. Some people have to do Earth Two work, in the short term, with a totally different sense of urgency and time horizon. And we do need some people working on Earth Three solutions and vision, because part of how we get out of Earth Two is offering a very clear vision for Earth Three that acknowledges there's no going back to Earth One: that movie's played and the credits are running. And it acknowledges that this could be an opportunity, because Earth One was profoundly imperfect. So many of the Earth One policies that we rely on as foundational; we need them because it's all we have, and they're not what we deserve.

Being able to offer a vision that gives us a reason to fight for the future amidst so much despair feels like necessary work for now, too.

READ THE FULL CONVERSATION HERE

READ THE FRAMEWORK HERE

For those who don’t know Deborah Clark, she has served as the Director of Grants Management and Assistant Corporate Secretary at Woods Fund Chicago for the past 23 years. At the end of this year, she’ll be retiring, and it’s hard to overstate what she has meant to this foundation.

I’m not sure we always recognize just how essential grant managers are to philanthropic organizations. They’re the tether that holds everything together — across program work, the funds we distribute, our data and reporting, and making sure our teams have what they need to move strategies forward. That is a lot. And the right person makes it look effortless. For the six years I’ve been at Woods Fund Chicago, Deborah has made it all seem like no big deal.

Deborah is constantly thinking about what our program team needs, how to make processes clearer and easier, and how to ensure people are equipped with the information that helps them do their jobs well. Part of her role is helping me manage our Board of Directors, and she makes sure I have what I need, too. After 23 years at Woods Fund, she carries a treasure trove of institutional knowledge — knowledge that helped me get up to speed quickly as a new leader and a newcomer to the philanthropic sector.

But beyond all of that, Deborah has been a friend. She brings joy to the workplace every single day. She is one of the most positive, generous people I’ve ever met. No matter what challenge came her way — and we’ve had many shifts over the past five years — Deborah met each one with intent, humor, and joy (and always figured things out).

Photo Caption: Colleagues and loved ones gathered to celebrate Deborah on her retirement this winter.

When I doubted whether I was cut out to lead a private foundation, Deborah reassured me that I was. When I worried I wasn’t doing things “correctly” (philanthropy isn’t always the easiest sector to navigate), Deborah grounded me. I credit so much of the confidence I have today as a leader to her. She invested in me in ways she didn’t have to, and I hope over these six years I’ve been able to invest in her, too.

We will miss her — her smile at every staff meeting, her infectious laugh, her deep sector knowledge, and her generosity. She shares what she knows freely and fully, which is one reason she has become such a respected trainer among grants managers across the field.

I hope this paints even a small picture of Deborah: someone full of love, joy, laughter, brilliance, and heart.

Deborah — we love you, and we will miss you. It’s almost impossible to imagine Woods Fund Chicago without you, but know the work we do in the years to come will be a credit to your legacy.

Michelle Morales

President, Woods Fund Chicago

In each of our newsletters, Woods Fund Chicago shares pieces we’re reading, watching, or listening to. Often, we’re drawn to them because the work — be it a news piece, explainer, or essay — speaks to the urgent present. But as we end the year, the pieces below feel particularly ripe for re-visiting: evergreen thinking on philanthropy and organizing, or dispatches from moments of 2025 that serve as potent reminders as we enter 2026.

ON PHILANTHROPY'S WAY FORWARD —

Throughout 2025, Woods Fund Chicago has been a recurring voice on trust-based philanthropy and the urgent need to increase payouts. In an Inside Philanthropy Q&A and an essay in The Stanford Social Innovation Review, Woods Fund Chicago’s President Michelle Morales underlined the call to action: “If we believe in our partners, we cannot preserve our endowments at the cost of their survival.”

Another angle: as nonprofits and philanthropies weigh the risks of explicitly engaging with identity, Co-Founder of the Black Feminist Fund Tynesha McHarris offers a clarion call to re-align with our values, one as relevant now as it was last summer. “Retreating to the middle will not unify us,” she writes, “it will only abandon those who have always been asked to wait their turn.”

DISPATCHES FROM THIS YEAR —

Last spring, a sweeping investigation from the New York Times found that tenants across Illinois have faced mandatory evictions after misdemeanors or even 911 calls. “One in four Illinois residents now lives in a place that compels renters to sign a lease contract that states a tenant can be evicted if accused of a crime.” Legislation to significantly regulate these laws — more than 100 are on the books statewide — passed out of committee in May thanks to the work of advocates, including several Woods Fund grantee partners: Housing Action Illinois, Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness, Illinois Justice Project, and Shriver Center on Poverty Law.

This summer, as the City Council debated a potential Snap Curfew ordinance, the South Side Weekly published a series of pieces exploring the roots and impact of legislation that would give CPD the authority to declare a teen curfew with 30 minutes’ notice. In his piece, “Who Benefits from a Snap Curfew?” University of Chicago Professor Robert Vargas connected the Chicago ordinance to a broader, ongoing moment of protest and surveillance.

Know Your Rights resources have been a recurring element of our newsletter, amid violent ICE escalation and increasing violations of civil liberties in Chicago and across the country. Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has Know Your Rights reference sheets in multiple languages for a wide variety of scenarios.

AND A BROAD AND EVERGREEN CALL TO ACTION —

In the wake of sweeping, profoundly harmful national budget cuts, longtime organizer (and Chicago Freedom School co-founder) Mariame Kaba offered a reminder that small, hard-fought victories are happening all around us.