Mission
and Impact
About Us
Each night, we keep 181 families close to the care and resources they need through six Ronald McDonald Houses and four Ronald McDonald Family Rooms.
Enabling families to stay close to their hospitalized child supports the child’s health and well-being while saving families more than $10 million in hotel and food costs each year.
Join Our Team
Our team is a committed community of professionals who work together each and every day – whether in direct contact with our mission at our Houses or supporting our business functions. Our culture reflects an environment of learning and growing to help our staff reach their full potential.
Our History
For over four decades, Ronald McDonald House Charities® of Chicagoland & Northwest Indiana has helped more than 100,000 families stay together with their hospitalized children.
Our first house in Chicago and the second in the world, opened in 1977. Charlie Marino and Ed Baum, MD conceived the idea to open the first Ronald McDonald House in Chicago on Deming Place when Charlie’s daughter Gage was receiving treatment at Children’s Memorial. Charlie experienced first-hand that the need for housing for families with sick children was critical.
To help open the house, they rallied support from McDonald’s Operators of Chicagoland & Northwest Indiana (MOCNI) and Bill Chunowitz, MOCNI President at that time, to provide funding. The new Ronald McDonald House welcomed the Morrisey family as its first guests in 1977.
For more than 45 years, our programs have grown as families of children with complex medical issues continue to need comfort and care.
Our Locations
Our Ronald McDonald Houses are located near:
- Advocate Children’s Hospital
- Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
- Loyola University Medical Center
- Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital
- UChicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital
- Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital (inside hospital)
Our Ronald McDonald Family Rooms are in:
- Advocate Children’s Hospital, Park Ridge
- Edward Hospital, Naperville
- Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
- UChicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital
In addition, our Ronald McDonald Care Mobile program, in partnership with Advocate Children’s Hospital, provides medical care to children in under-served areas throughout the Chicago area.
Our Locations
