Wealth Our Way Grantee Five Point Holistic Health
December 11, 2025
Five Point Holistic Health is completing the buildout of its second floor at its Avondale location to expand holistic services and create a fully accessible community space. Wealth Our Way funding will support the installation of an ADA-accessible lift, renovation of two restrooms, construction of additional treatment rooms, refinishing of damaged floors, and the completion of a second-floor kitchenette for community use. These improvements will make the clinic’s upper floor fully functional for community meetings, group workshops, cooperative education, and expanded health services, allowing Five Point to complete its long-term vision for the site.
Five Point was founded in 2014 by five recent graduates seeking to create an affordable, accessible holistic health clinic for their community. In the decade since, the organization has grown into one of Chicago’s longest-standing worker cooperatives, offering acupuncture, herbal medicine, bodywork, massage therapy, and psychotherapy. The project upgrades will complete their vision of becoming not only a thriving holistic clinic but also a community asset and resource for peer cooperatives across the region.
This model of worker ownership is essential to Five Point’s mission. As a cooperative, the clinic is owned and governed by the people who work in it, not outside investors. Ownership is open to all employees after 1,500 hours of work. Currently, seven of their twenty-two employees are worker-owners, and the organization aims to increase ownership to 50 percent of staff within two years. This democratic structure ensures that decisions remain rooted in the needs of practitioners, patients, and the broader community.
Community engagement is central to Five Point’s identity. Between 2023 and 2025, Five Point participated in more than a dozen community events, reaching over 650 residents through free acupuncture, herbal tea tastings, mindfulness activities, and health education. The clinic also provides ongoing free classroom space to the La Leche League breastfeeding support group and maintains low rental rates for emerging practitioners and nonprofits. With the second floor completed, the clinic aims to strengthen partnerships, host more cooperative education, and become a central hub for wellness, healing, and community-building in Avondale.
Interview with Five Point Holistic Health
What does community wealth building mean to you?
Community wealth building is central to our mission and aims for economic equality between practitioners and the community. We achieve this by pooling resources, sharing risks, and distributing profits among the people doing the work. When a business succeeds, that success should translate into shared wealth and stable livelihoods for its workforce.
As one of Chicago’s longest-standing worker co-ops, what are the ingredients for a successful partnership?
Assuming the best of your partners and committing to transparent communication are key. In a cooperative, it’s important to unlearn capitalist frameworks—the collective is always more important than any individual. Once this is unlearned, you must relearn how to engage responsibly in a position of power. One major benefit of the co-op sector is the amount of resource sharing with organizations that have navigated similar challenges.
What impact do you hope this project will have for the Avondale community and beyond?
Healthcare is neither affordable nor accessible for many Chicagoans. By improving our space and expanding our service offerings—including future physical therapy—we hope to increase access to high-quality, community-centered care while creating more jobs and ownership opportunities.