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
Featured
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.
Explore Our Discretionary Grants
Showing 2411–2418 of 4630 results
-
Grant Recipient
Network for Young Adult Success
UtmostU, a post-secondary success program operated by the Network for Young Adult Success, empowers young adults from low-income backgrounds to realize their educational and professional aspirations by supporting them as they earn college degrees, certifications, and launch their careers. The Bridges to Success - 2022 initiative will utilize our post-secondary coaching model to support 125 students in the City Colleges of Chicago system. Our program will ensure that young adults from under-resourced Chicago neighborhoods have the tools and guidance to earn degrees and attain careers of their choosing. Through a combination of strong partnerships, structured student interactions, and the use of technology, Bridges to Success - 2022 will continue to have a city-wide economic and social impact.
-
Grant Recipient
The Land Conservancy of McHenry County
The main goal of this project is to help get more food farmers on the land. We will build upon the success of our work in facilitating the transfer of a long-abandoned farm to a beginning organic food farmer by working with more farmers to help them achieve their land access goals. We will increase staff time to help expand our current land access work, including development of a community food forest, as well as take on a new project, Raices Latinas: Agriculture in McHenry County. Our work with Latinx, women and other underserved farmers will increase as a result of new partnerships.
-
Grant Recipient
Mujeres Latinas en Accion
Mujeres Latinas en Acción (Mujeres), in the last three years, has focused and grown our advocacy. We’ve strengthened the pipeline between our Latina Leadership grassroots training and our Community Engagement & Mobilization Program and have responsively increased our coalition participation to address Chicagoland’s Latinx immigrant needs, especially those impacted by COVID-19. This past year, with our partners in the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights, this advocacy directly led to securing the largest commitment in the Illinois state budget’s history to the Immigrant Services Line Item which included direct cash assistance to undocumented individuals left out of the federal stimulus package. With this grant’s support, Mujeres seeks to fund a major expansion to its advocacy efforts: the hiring of a full-time bilingual Advocacy Manager. Such expansion will impact both the short-term and long-term trajectory of Mujeres’ advocacy as we respond to the shifting needs of our Latinx and immigrant communities, including but not limited to the creation and dissemination of the Position Paper, the improvement and expansion of coalitional relationships with ICIRR, ICADV, and ICASA, and the support of our Community Engagement and Mobilization Program.
-
Grant Recipient
Black Researchers Collective
In the second year of our funding with CCT, we would like to spend time deepening our engagement with the south side communities that we've been engaging with. We plan to select one community project from each neighborhood to amplify with the accessible data platforms and research skills of the Collective. In addition, we plan to host a Black Researchers Thought Summit where we can bring together funders, researchers, community partners, and program participants who will present to the public on how they've been leveraging research and data to strengthen and sustain their communities.
-
Grant Recipient
YEAR UP INC
At Year Up, we believe every young adult deserves equal access to opportunity and racial and economic justice. Year Up’s mission is to close the Opportunity Divide by ensuring that young adults gain the skills, experiences, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through careers and higher education. In 2010, Year Up Chicago launched as the local branch of the national Year Up organization to reach young adults across Chicagoland. To date, Year Up Chicago has served more than 2,500 students on their journeys to economic empowerment and welcomed 1,500 graduates to our alumni network. Now in 2022, we aim to serve 120 students in our Information Technology (IT) and Data Analytics training tracks and operate our workforce development program at two sites: our downtown Chicago site in the Loop, and our college-embedded site operated in partnership with Harold Washington College. To ensure students’ success and progression through the program, we provide wraparound supports such as financial assistance, a Student Services team of social workers, and a dedicated Employment Placement team. Through this work, we will help young adults secure full-time jobs with strong wages and promising career pathways, lifting more young adults toward economic stability and progressing toward closing the Opportunity Divide in Chicago.
-
Grant Recipient
Illinois Arts Alliance
Arts Alliance Illinois respectfully requests $25,000 from the Chicago Community Trust’s Policy and Advocacy Open Call to support our general operations this year as we continue to address the impact of COVID-19 on the arts and culture sector of Chicago and Illinois, specifically advancing policies that help steward a stronger and more equitable sector for the long term and align with the Trust’s priorities around closing the racial wealth gap. Grant support would be general operating, as we have multiple policy activities and initiatives that align with the Trust’s interests. Our policy and advocacy work supports the Trust's interests in equitable economic recovery, access to capital, and civic engagement and representation. We are beginning an annual process of convening the creative sector in collaborative policy agenda setting, to document current needs, challenges, and opportunities that can be translated into program and policy change and collective action at local, regional, and state levels, with a focus on equity, access, and racial justice. This process will influence all of the policy issues and advocacy approaches outlined below. In addition to this policy agenda setting process, this general operating grant would support the redevelopment of our Advocacy 101 program through the engagement of BIPOC creative workers, the pilot of a Local Culture Bearers Network in long divested Chicago neighborhoods, and our organizing work ahead of the 2023 state legislative session, with a specific emphasis on equitable access to resources for BIPOC and rural creatives in Chicago and throughout Illinois in addition to the other policy areas outlined below.
-
Grant Recipient
Elawa Farm Foundation
To strengthen a network of Northern Illinois farmers to collaborate on market opportunities, build the supply of local food in the Chicago region through aggregation, and advocate for policy and access to resources as a unified group by supporting the Northern Illinois Young Farmers chapter.
-
Grant Recipient
LIFT INC
LIFT-Chicago's mission is to break the cycle of poverty by investing in parents. We do this by partnering with parents to achieve economic stability and mobility through our holistic, two-generation coaching model with wraparound support, including financial capabilities workshops and quarterly cash infusions. With the support of Bridges to Brighter Futures, LIFT-Chicago will: (1) Engage 70 student-parents in LIFT’s coaching program to provide cash assistance and help young parents enroll and persist towards their education goals (2) Expand our capacity to track members’ education outcomes so that data can be leveraged to support policy and advocacy centered on the experiences and needs of student-parents.