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 3251–3258 of 4630 results
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Grant Recipient
Community Desk
Apple Runway is a nonprofit organization seeking to improve the quality of life and promote a fulfilling educational experience for students and teachers in the Chicago area. We believe that an equal opportunity to a quality education is extremely important, especially at an early age, and focus all of our programs around this core goal. We also set out to create a sustainable organization and structure that could ensure that donor funds are managed responsibly and with the highest impact possible. When we founded Apple Runway in 2020, we set out a target of 100% of donor funds going directly to our programs and the communities we serve, with none being allocated to overhead, salaries, or other operational expenses, we’re proud to report that this is still the case. We’ve achieved this through a unique organizational structure, focusing on a remote first approach to providing aid, and leveraging a custom built online portal to manage the flow of requests and sourcing with our partner schools, created and maintained by our team and board of directors. Apple Runway works in tandem with the trust’s vision, with our area of focus being the Chicago area, generally partnering with CPS district schools. Our core program, providing direct support sourced via requests to our partner school portal, is our key factor in working towards this goal. Via our direct support process, we ensure that students and teachers in supported schools are able to request exactly what they need to be successful, and do not need to wait on a fundraiser, budget approvals, or put themselves at financial risk to get there. We are also working to pilot a “Young Leaders Program” this year. This new program will have the goal of helping students build stronger bonds with their communities, and have the opportunity to be their own agent of change. They’ll achieve this by getting an opportunity to come up with their own idea of how they would make their school and local community better, and then through the help of local leaders and mentors, be able to go from pitching an initial idea, to creating and delivering an implementation plan, to really seeing their idea become implemented within their community. We feel that this will be an extremely impactful program, as it will give a unique early leadership opportunity to students, that will help set them up for further success through their educational journey and the rest of their lives.
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Grant Recipient
Rose of Light MBC
Camp 1302 is a summer day camp that was founded in 2012 as an outreach of the Rose of Light M.B.C. (ROL). located in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. Camp 1302 has become a vital resource for the families in the neighborhood. Since its founding, Camp 1302 has served more than 500 campers. We provide a safe environment for children during out-of-school times. We begin each day at 9:00 a.m. and end at 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Daily, we serve the campers breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snacks at no additional cost to their families. To ensure we are meeting the needs of families throughout the summer months, our program is in session for five to six weeks. Each day each camper will be sure to have the best day camp experience of their lives through activities that provide campers with academic enhancement and creativity through reading, visual, and performing arts, including martial arts, field trips, team building, and life skills through group play and recreation, including activities such as archery. The Soul Garden We are requesting funds for our community garden. In 2021, we implemented a community garden, which we have named The Soul Garden. The Soul Garden was created on a lot that sat empty and dormant for about nine of the 10 years we have been in operation. Finally, the Executive Director and one other volunteer, with a little elbow grease, determination, and plenty of salon pas, cultivated the land until the Soul Garden was created. We saw that there was a need for our campers' social and emotional health to be addressed, especially coming out of the COVID-19 lockdown and strict social limitations. The first year, the garden did not yield food, but it did yield a sanctuary and an open space for the campers to have a serene moment in the Serenity Garden and relax by the large fire pit that was built in just a few days by a community member, along with a field for archery and lots more space for playing, or sitting and chilling, as the campers would say, with friends. Camp 1302 is approaching youth and public safety by providing a place that is conducive to learning and is filled with people who care deeply for the youth and their ability to become change agents no matter where they stand in life. We give them a chance to be kids with agency. We give them structure and introduce them to things, people, and places that may have felt intimidating or threatening. Each year, our campers get to meet with the officers in the local community policing program so that they can prove to the youth that they are human and have their best interests at heart while debunking the myth that police are heartless individuals that only hunt our black and brown children.
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Grant Recipient
The Black Star Project
This is an excellent opportunity to extend The Black Star Project's (TBSP) current Phillip Jackson Youth Mentorship Program (PJYMP) that is set to end May 26, 2023. PJYMP provides safe space for middle school and high school students who engage with University of Chicago and other Chicago-area college and university mentors. TBSP has several activities planned during the grant period (May-July, 2023), including neighborhood clean-up projects with community activist Sel Dunlap (May 20 and June 20); a pre-Memorial Day WNBA Chicago Home Opener-Closing Celebration for the Phillip Jackson Youth Mentorship Program (May 26); a Juneteenth Celebration (June 17); a tour of Bronzeville (June 20); a STEM project with staff and officers of the SC Johnson Company (Date TBD); essay and reading competitions; a visit with Citibank staff and volunteers (Date TBD) and more. PJYMP provides opportunities for young people from the South and West sides of Chicago to get to know and work together as one Chicago community in alignment with the Seven Field Principles (7FP). The Black Star Project is grateful for this opportunity.
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Grant Recipient
CHI-RISE
The CHI-RISE Love In Auburn Gresham Memorial Day Block Party will take place on Monday, May 29th at Foster Park District from 11am-3pm. There will be FREE BBQ, Bouncy Houses, Sip n Paint, Arts N Crafts, 3 vs. 3 Basketball Tourney, Gaming Stations and More! Teens and young adults will be hired to market and work the event.
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Grant Recipient
Little Village Community Council
Little Village Ambassadors program will focus on teaching our youth the importance of keeping our neighborhood clean. How can we educate the community on reused, recycle and not polluting the earth.
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Grant Recipient
MPAACT
MPAACT is seeking general operating support funding to help maintain an ongoing effort to make our productions more accessible to audiences in the audio format.
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Grant Recipient
Community First Foundation Inc
Community First is committed to executing its mission by providing healthy cooking and eating classes, informative sessions on how to treat and manage chronic medical conditions, and offering courses on how to create your own garden so we all can access fresh produce. During the pandemic, we saw a decrease in connection in our communities and the isolation that many of us experience because of Covid-19. To help address these problems, Michelle created The Community First Foundation, which seeks to strengthen the bonds of community in Chicago’s most vulnerable areas, and to spread knowledge about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Our amazing team of giants is committed to helping others. We take our convictions and turn them into action..
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Urban Art Retreat Center
Chicago Urban Art Retreat Center (CUARC) is registering youth & adults for our FREE summer programming, offering a variety of programs from Memorial Day through September 16. Our programming will be on Saturdays plus some Mondays, Wednesdays, & Fridays. We will offer special daily programming during Memorial Day weekend & through the middle of June 2023. We are planning a big Memorial Day Party for teen youth at our site on May 26 & 27 in our outdoor space. These dates are Friday and Saturday evenings. We will have food and music. There will be an open mic stage. We will have adult mentors on hand. Youth will be able to eat, drink, dance, and have fun. We will have adult mentors on hand. The following days of our programming, we are encouraging adults and youth to be involved and offering stipends. Youth will be students and adults will be mentors. The adults from the neighborhood learn valuable skills and experience as will the youth. Daily opportunities to have fun, learn new skills, have chances to meet new people, and make an impact in the neighborhood will bring people together. Everyone loves murals, and during this time we will be creating a mural that encourages the Hispanic community and supports the Ukrainians. Together we will create a large sculpture in the Peace Park that honors a black hero. We will also be creating masks that people will be able to take home and hang on their walls. At other times, we will play in the garden pools of water and cool off when not gardening, playing games, making art, and writing poetry.