About Us
Summer Oaks Fund provides unrestricted, multi-year funding to organizations directly offering social and economic support for underserved girls, women, birthing people, and LGBTQ+ youth from adolescence through early adulthood. Through funding service organizations, and organizations advocating for systemic change, the Fund aims to ensure these communities have equal access to the education, tools, and support needed to succeed on their terms.
Impact Focus
Pictured: Teen Parent Connection
History
Summer Oaks Fund was created by a single-family donor in 2015. After the family members spent several years in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Fund was initiated to provide greater and more strategic support. The Fund’s efforts are inspired by seeing the fundraising struggle and lift for small to medium-sized organizations working in gender issues first-hand, and by the developing reproductive health crisis across the U.S. and beyond. In its initial years, the Fund provided small gifts to numerous local, national, and international organizations focusing on empowering girls, women, and underserved youth through reproductive health access, access to education, plus leadership and entrepreneurship training.
Over the last several years, Summer Oaks Fund has increased its focus in the Chicagoland area after the donor family returned to their hometown. In 2022, the Fund began significantly increasing its annual giving based on a new, trust-based giving strategy, focused on supporting grassroots organizations in Illinois serving their communities around birth equity, reproductive health, abortion access, perinatal and LGBTQ+ mental health, and animal companionship.
About Our Founder
Kendra (she/her/hers) is the Founder of Summer Oaks Fund leading the Fund’s focus areas and giving strategy. She currently lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family including two young children, her husband, and their Labrador-German Shepherd rescue dog.
The Fund was inspired by a decade of Kendra’s work, volunteer, and board service experiences in the women- and gender-serving nonprofit space in San Francisco and Chicago. She focused on grantwriting, development, grantmaking, young professional nonprofit engagement, and advocacy on both the local and international levels. She saw firsthand the dedicated work of nonprofit leaders and teams, the value of grassroots organizations serving their own communities, plus the huge lift required in fundraising. During this time, she also experienced the joys and challenges of pregnancy and new parenthood. This brought forth a passion for supporting people of all walks of life through their reproductive life cycles, particularly perinatal.
Through Summer Oaks Fund, Kendra aims to support and partner with key organizations serving women, girls, and the LGBTQ+ community during what has become an increasingly critical time for gender equity and freedom. In addition, having adopted two sweet and separation-anxiety-prone dogs shortly before having children, she and her husband have a passion for animal rescue and support.
Kendra currently serves as co-chair for her local women’s giving circle, a member of two international gender-equity-focused leadership councils, a member of her community foundation’s grants committee, and a member of a local funder’s circle. In her free time, Kendra will most likely be found building Legos, making slime, playing Minecraft with her family, or trying to get her watchdog to snuggle - but hopefully also finding time for her loves of reading, writing, and travel.
Staff
Marissa oversees Summer Oaks Fund gifting initiatives and operations. She is a Midwest transplant, originally from Seattle, WA who previously spent her career working in community-based nonprofits in San Francisco. Her work has focused on the spaces where people, the environment, and health meet, and she is excited to bring this intersectional lens to growing the work of Summer Oaks Fund.
Marissa Alexander
ma-ree-sa, she/her/hers
Managing Director
Having worked in fundraising and leadership positions at grassroots organizations, she’s passionate about being part of the shift in philanthropy towards trust-based, relationship-first giving that centers the needs and expertise of those closest to the issues. In her free time, you’ll probably find her at the lake, on a bike trail, or explaining to anyone who will listen the 22 different breeds that make up her rescue pup, Lucille.