Conant Family Foundation

Founding and History

The Conant Family Foundation was founded by Doris and Howard Conant, left-of-center activists, political organizers, and businesspeople who lived in Chicago. ¹ Howard Conant passed away in May 2011 and Doris Conant in June 2017. ¹ The Conant Family Foundation is now run by executive director Leslie Ramyk, formerly a fellow at Chicago United for Equity, ³ an activist organization focused on left-wing ideas of racial inclusivity. ¹

Upon her death, Doris Conant direct that from her family’s foundation give annual grants to nine organizations that she “cherished.” These included a $50,000 grant to abortion advocacy group Planned Parenthood of Illinois as well as a $50,000 grant to advocacy group Human Rights Watch. ²

Grantmaking

The Conant Family Foundation announced that from 2023 through 2025, it would focus on three main issue areas in its grantmaking: abortion, racial equity, and environmentalism. ⁴

Abortion Access

The Conant Family Foundation supports abortion that is “safe, affordable, and legal.” ² The Foundation called the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court Decision overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to restrict abortion “devastating,” stating that the “The Conant Family Foundation prioritizes abortion access for all.” ⁵

To that end, the foundation supports efforts to expand self-medicated abortion, funds abortions in the Chicago metro area, and assists women in states with abortion restrictions to terminate their pregnancies. In 2022, The Conant Family Foundation reported giving $270,000 to abortion-access related causes. This included a $50,000 grant to the Chicago Abortion Fund, ² which provides financial and logistical support for women seeking abortions throughout the Midwest, ⁶ as well as $40,000 to increase the practice of at-home abortions. ²

Racial Advocacy

The Conant Family Foundation also provides race-based grants to non-profits to address what it perceives as “anti-Blackness” within society. ⁷ In an attempt to, in its words, “decoloniz[e] wealth,” the Foundation created a race-based grant review board to create “a more equitable process than three white people [on the board] with wealth privilege deciding who should get funding.” ⁸

In 2021, The Conant Family Foundation reported donating $250,000 to racial equity causes, including $20,000 to Equity and Transformation, a left-wing nonprofit that advocates for government-controlled social program and organized protests against alleged police brutality of African Americans, as well as $20,000 to Organized Communities Against Deportation, ² a group that seeks to disrupt enforcement of laws against illegal immigration which it deems “the criminalization of immigrants and people of color.” ⁹

Environmentalism

Based on the proposition that “communities of color experience disproportionately higher levels of air, water, and soil pollution and contamination,” in 2022 The Conant Family Foundation donated $255,000 to left-of-center environmentalist organizations. This included a $35,000 grant to the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), a race-focused environmentalist group that believes people of color must “understand the root causes of their experiences of oppression.” ^{10 2}

Funding

In 2020, the Conant Family Foundation received the bulk of its income, totaling $1,556,565, from the Conant Income Charitable Fund. ¹¹It also received $15,000 from Howard Conant, ¹¹ the son of foundation creators Doris and Howard Conant Sr. ¹