Building a Network of Diverse Developers
City environments are made up of buildings, transit stations, streets, parks, and other man-made structures. Also called the “built environment,” these systems shape our lives…
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. Today, that means confronting the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
Explore Our Discretionary Grants
Showing 21–28 of 3404 results
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Collaboration On Youth
For more than 45 years, the Illinois Collaboration on Youth has advocated on behalf of children, youth, and families, and the community-based organizations that serve them. Our mission is to promote the safety, health, and success of Illinois’ children, youth, and families by acting as a collective voice for policy and practice, and by connecting and strengthening the organizations that serve them. Over the past two fiscal years, we have worked intentionally to make our coalition and advocacy agenda more inclusive of the communities that our members serve by establishing the Equity and Access Fund, in which our members subsidize memberships for BIPOC-led CBOs that otherwise would not have the resources to join a membership association.
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Grant Recipient
DISABILITY LEAD
With generous support from The Chicago Community Trust as our founding sponsor, ADA 25 Advancing Leadership (AL) has established itself in the last year as an independent nonprofit organization running the nation’s first and only leadership development and civic engagement program for leaders with disabilities. This successful nonprofit start-up grew from a program in incubation at the Trust to a growing regional network of nearly 170 diverse positive disruptors with disabilities leading and serving with power and influence in their communities. A three-year grant from the Trust – now in its second year of general operating support – will allow AL to continue to scale its programs and impact while centering racial and disability justice.
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Partners for Human Service
Illinois Partner’s current priorities are to: - Advocate for robust, sustainable, and equitable state funding of human services; - Advance systems that center equity in policy making and funding, and secure access for service providers and clients with lived experience to decision making forums; - Address systemic racism within our sector and empower our coalition to challenge established policies that perpetuate white supremacy. Our priorities are rooted in community informed initiatives built through engagement with our coalition partners. This year, we will add a new Grassroots Partnership Director who will focus on our Chicago area partners and amplify the work of grassroots leaders in Black and Latinx communities.
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Grant Recipient
LATINO POLICY FORUM
Working with our very broad range of more than 150 multi-sectoral membership relationships, partnerships, and coalitions, we will apply our core skills of analysis, advocacy, leadership, and collaboration to the goals of ensuring that governmental policies are fully responsive to the needs of Latinos, that the underlying systems and practices that affect policies are shifted toward greater responsiveness and inclusivity, and that an increased capacity to effect policy and systems change is developed within Latino-serving nonprofits. We plan to address systemic inequality that has been exacerbated by COVID for Latinos and immigrants in the areas of housing, social services, and economic redevelopment.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Arts Work Fund
AWF provides capacity-building grants and peer knowledge sharing opportunities to small arts and cultural organizations. In September, we launched Think • Explore • Share. These grants enable arts organizations to develop and test solutions to challenges posed by COVID-19 or challenges that hampered arts nonprofits before the pandemic. Challenges can relate to management, production, technology, fiscal planning, or artistic mission. The AWF Connect a listserv has grown in vitality as grantees are now asked to post lessons learned from their grants on the listserv so that the field can benefit from the knowledge gained and lessons learned.
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Grant Recipient
Corporation for Supportive Housing
CSH will advance our efforts to connect individuals to housing solutions that break the cycle of chronic homelessness. We will expand our work with the Chicago/Cook Co. Flexible Housing Pool—a coordinated body that is re-orienting the crisis response system by funding supportive housing for people with complex health needs and cycling through homelessness and costly health crisis services. We will also work to improve the IL Justice System’s process for reentry of returning citizens at risk of homelessness through a robust quality improvement effort surrounding housing placement, as well as improved standards for transitional housing—key steps in ensuring all returning citizens are connected to safe, stable housing upon exiting prison.
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Grant Recipient
LATINO POLICY FORUM
Building on the success of four years of the Multicultural Leadership Academy and six years before that offering the Illinois Latino Leadership Academy, we will create a network of up to 220 African American and Latino graduates of those academies, providing them with training that will develop their transformative leadership skills, particularly their ability to apply those skills to heal and unite in a multicultural society that is experiencing discord and distrust. We will also offer networking events to build lasting bonds among the participants, and the participants will have opportunities to engage in cross-cultural community-based civic improvement projects.
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Grant Recipient
Greater Chicago Food Depository
The prevalence of hunger in Cook County demands a need for a strong network of community partners working to distribute healthy food to individuals and families in need, as well as comprehensive public policies that address food insecurity and its root causes. With the support of the Chicago Community Trust, the Greater Chicago Food Depository will continue to advance our hunger relief policy agendas and provide capacity building and technical assistance to strengthen our network of 700 food access partners – especially those in communities of color – to ensure everyone in Cook County has access to the food needed to lead healthy, stable lives.