The Eleanor Blog

My readers know that the Eleanor Foundation seeks to help female heads-of-households with in­comes between $10,000 and $40,000. But you may not know how the Foundation arrived at the $40,000 figure.

My answer? $40,000 in annual income falls well within several well-regarded mea­sures of the minimal livable wage needed to cover basic, day-to-day living expenses, especially for families with children, in the Chicago market today—well regarded measures because they are based on years of painstaking research by scholars and others who are interested in helping this population to succeed.

For example, the Family Self-Sufficiency Standard (FESS), developed jointly by the national organization Wider Opportuni­ties for Women (WOW) and Washington University in St. Louis, is one of the most well-respected. Adjusted for fam­ily size and conditions in local markets, FESS offers a conservative measure of the minimum living wage needed to cover the bare essentials of shelter, food, child­care, transportation, healthcare and cloth­ing.

FESS establishes the baseline income that women in our target population need to merely survive. It includes no allow­ance for savings of any kind, none for any vacation time, nothing for eating out, and nothing for entertainment – not even basic cable TV.

In late April, I attended the national partner summit of Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) in Washington, where the organization released a study building on its FESS findings. This new study was based on the premise that even lower-income working mothers and others should be able to do more than simply survive day-to-day—and that they should be able to build toward lasting economic security. The study sought to measure the minimum amount needed to cover the essentials, build a two-month emergency reserve in case of job loss, and save toward retirement and their children’s college education.

The Eleanor Foundation isn’t ready yet to adjust our $40,000 grant-making guideline in response to this new study. We remain committed to ensuring that working female heads-of-households—many of whom make far less than $40,000 a year—can achieve lasting economic independence. But the FESS study serves as an important reminder that working single mothers worry about their kids’ safety, health and future just as all parents do. Shouldn’t all women have the opportunity to realize such aspirations—for themselves and their children? We certainly think so.

Kelly Haley and Courtney Van Lonkhuyzen, two terrific women who are leading volunteer efforts for the Eleanor Foundation, highlight their appreciation of these aspirations in a jointly au­thored guest column.

The story of Kamilyn Baskerville shows how well our programs support women with such aspira­tions. Resourceful, committed, and successful, Kamilyn’s success is due to her own hard work—but she herself acknowledges how much she benefited from programs we created and continue to support.

Kamilyn is the beneficiary of one of the first Eleanor Founda­tion programs launched under our Self-Sufficiency Initiative (SSI) five years ago. That initiative recognized that, first, work­ing single mothers earning less than a livable wage were vastly underserved—with fewer than 6% accessing public benefits or programs. Second, it reflected the findings of our own research—that meeting the needs of these women presented a unique set of challenges that demanded a new set of strategies and programs.

To date, and thanks in large part to our donors, we have com­mitted over $5 million in grants over the past five years to estab­lish the Eleanor Network: a citywide infrastructure of services that seeks to help this growing population of women.

The Eleanor Foundation just announced our latest set of grants to Chicago-based organizations, eleven awards that total over $1.2 million. Most are renewal grants, reflecting how our Eleanor Network has matured and how much we have learned about what works in these past five years of grant-making. They reflect our growing convic­tion that the path to sustained economic self-sufficiency lies in skills-based training, which in turn leads to productive careers. But to be successful for the women we seek to serve, such training must be accompanied by certain criti­cal wrap-around support services, including access to stable, affordable housing, dependable childcare, and financial coaching.

Our latest grants continue to expand the Eleanor Network. And since our research shows that our target population is growing throughout the Chicago region, we are striving to reach out farther to women in these communities. As always, we are grateful for the ongoing support of donors and partners who continue to make the success of our women possible.

Rosanna A. Márquez is President & CEO of the Eleanor Foundation—a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on developing and building innovative programs to meet the needs of female heads-of-households striving for economic independence.