Paving the Path to Homeownership for Housing Choice Voucher Holders
Since the mid-20th century, homeownership has been one of the most important vehicles for building wealth in the United States. According to research from the…
Grants
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Our Grantmaking Strategy
For more than 100 years, The Chicago Community Trust has convened, supported, funded, and accelerated the work of community members and changemakers committed to strengthening the Chicago region. From building up our civic infrastructure to spearheading our response to the Great Recession, the Trust has brought our community together to face pressing challenges and seize our greatest opportunities. Today, that means confronting the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
Explore Our Discretionary Grants
Showing 1811–1818 of 4447 results
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Grant Recipient
Gads Hill Center
Gads Hill Center humbly requests a grant sum of $25,000 to support the implementation of our agency-wide solidarity campaign. This grant will directly fund civic engagement and professional development efforts to foster cohesiveness within our organization while providing a path toward racial healing, solidarity, and transformation.
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Grant Recipient
Urban Growers Collective Inc
This project builds on our partners’ past work to support UGC’s updated emerging grower training program to more adequately meet the needs of emerging growers who are interested in starting their own farm businesses. UGC’s Grower Apprenticeship Program will prepare emerging growers with the fast pace needed to meet commercial demands, while emphasizing learning and community building. Apprentices develop their farm technical and farm business management basics across the 3 year curriculum, until they ultimately graduate from the program with a solid network and foundation of skills to launch their own businesses. Meanwhile, UGC and our project partners are developing sustainable pathways for future procurement and larger scale commercial distribution as accessible next steps after program completion.
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Grant Recipient
LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
LCDC requests funding to help close the racial wealth gap through creating Black homeownership. LCDC will do this with new construction, manufactured housing, rehabs for ownership, and homeownership counseling to ensure Black working families can access safe and affordable financing and are ready to purchase and retain their homes. North Lawndale is on the brink of extensive redevelopment and it is essential to increase homeownership now before prices are driven too high. In addition to other pending developments, Invest South/West is supporting two large scale developments and a 606-type project is unfolding near Homan Square. We are standing at a tipping point that will determine the future of the community.
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Grant Recipient
Afamefuna Inc.
Okpara House is a 12,000 sq ft multipurpose Igbo Cultural center that is being developed in Humboldt Park, Chicago, envisioned by Nigerian architect Obiora Nwazota. The development seeks to serve the racially and ethnically diverse population of Humboldt Park, paying special attention to supporting the community’s black and Hispanic populations through cultural programming, safe arts focused events, delicious West African food, and the maintenance of a publicly open nature focused courtyard space. Okpara House transforms a currently undeveloped building into an elegant, inspiring homage to West African culture, focused around traditional Igbo architecture. The multifaceted project simultaneously bridges West Africa’s traditional sculptures, paintings, and design styles, with the vibrancy, and artistry that has been cultivated in Chicago’s African American communities for generations, through creative collaborations and partnerships. Due to its carefully envisioned indoor/outdoor design, the Okpara House project will support gathering and community engagement year round. As such, we expect to serve at least 70,000 people per year, numbers based around comparable carefully curated, similarly sized cultural centers in other cities around the US. Our visitators will be drawn in from all over the city of Chicago, and other major cities in the United States, through a combination of restaurant visitation, free programming, paid events, conferences, dinners and academic seminars. However, the digital component of the Okpara House project, which can be viewed on our project website at https://www.okparahouse.com/, has the potential to serve a far wider population, both in the United States and abroad, through online teaching opportunities, digital seminars, and the selling of sacred objects, books and cultural items. In addition to the outdoor courtyard, and indoor/outdoor dining experience, the project will be complete with a Nigerian restaurant, an indoor event space, outdoor performance spaces, and a retail shop. Okpara House’s profitability will stem not only from the wide variety of events and performances held there, but from elevated catered dinners, art showcases and large scale academic conferences. These conferences will be especially significant, because they will draw together leaders in the field of African and African American Indigenous studies around the globe, from HBCUs in the United States, to renowned universities in West Africa like the University of Nigeria. The mission of Okpara House is to create a deep sense of rootedness and connection, by harnessing the powers of design, dialogue, and academic research as transformative agents to stimulate, reactivate, elevate, and reimagine black culture. What Okpara House needs most are the pre-development funds to be used towards producing architectural plans and designs that fully capture the vision of the project (we have a simple preliminary concept, but not a full out project design), business consulting, program planning, environmental strategy (we are looking to design an environmentally sustainable project, and would like to work with black owned Chicago based Environmental Strategy firm Sesenergi Eco Solutions ), legal expenses, and construction planning. Founder Obiora Nwazota already own the building and courtyard space in which Okpara House will be located, but we have not begun any construction whatsoever.
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Grant Recipient
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Grant Recipient
Urban Growers Collective Inc
Urban Growers Collective is requesting $100,000.00 for the development and implementation of the cooperative model for farm business development via UGC's Grower Apprenticeship Program. The Grower Apprenticeship Program is a 3 year farming and farm business-training program that will allow participants to learn the hands-on fundamentals of farming, while working towards commercially viable farm operations via cooperative growing, aggregation and profit sharing. This practical adult education-training program is structured to introduce participants to farm foundations, through workshops, mentoring and repetitive practice, so that the basic hands-on skill are understood, while also providing scaffolded opportunities for apprentices to refine core values; build business aptitude and work toward financially, environmentally and socially sustainable farming operations.
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Grant Recipient
Foundation of Little Village
The Xquina Entrepreneurial Ecosystem partnership collective works to build community wealth through the strategic alignment of entrepreneurial resources. By equipping local businesses–both current and emerging–with expanded access to a network of culturally relevant, Spanish-language programming, mentorship, resources, and capital support, they are better positioned to make informed business decisions that, in turn, enhance the economic vitality of Little Village as a whole.
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Grant Recipient
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center