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.
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Grant Recipient
Advocates for Urban Agriculture NFP
Advocates for Urban Agriculture is requesting continued support of its initiative to provide capacity-building grants to Chicago area growers, with particular emphasis on small, emerging, and BIPOC owned/operated growing operations, contributing to the expansion of grower’s ability to produce and distribute locally grown food.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation
CAASE seeks funding for its Policy department, which leads our pursuit of public policies and systems change that advance the power and safety of communities impacted by sexual harm in Chicago and IL (disproportionately Black and Latinx). CAASE has expertise in advocacy at the state and local level; we’ve led passage of 6 laws that transformed IL’s response to sex trafficking, and have improved local criminal justice and social responses to rape. In 2021, we achieved increased safety for student survivors of harm via state legislation, in addition to passing 4 more laws to increase survivor safety and justice. Chicago routinely underinvests in the safety of Black and Latinx survivors of sexual harm, but CAASE centers this population in our work, and is dedicated to helping them achieve justice.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Refugee Coalition
The work of Chicago Refugee Coalition is well-aligned with Chicago Community Trust’s commitment to addressing the critical needs of individuals and families in order to close the racial and wealth gap that undergird economic inequity in our region. Our two core programs, Food Banking, and the Refugee Resource Center, fall under CCT’s strategic priorities of food insecurity, supporting immigrants and refugees, and youth exposed to trauma.
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Grant Recipient
Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights
We seek renewed support for our Impact Division, which leads our policy work to close the racial and ethnic wealth divide in Illinois, such as work on economic security, income supports, asset building, ending wealth stripping, consumer protections, and fines/fees reform. This has included retirement and Children’s Savings Account programs, earned income credit and child tax credit expansion, lending/debt reforms, and driver's license suspensions. Our priorities are developed in coalition and with an equity lens. We use data to understand racial disparities, and center and engage impacted people in our work. We seek support for leading the coalition Financial Inclusion for All Illinois, and providing advocacy and subject matter leadership in other coalitions connected to these issues.
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Grant Recipient
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND FAMILY ISSUES
COFI exists to build the power and voice of parents, primarily mothers and grandmothers from Black and Brown communities, to shape the public decisions that affect their lives and the lives of their families. Through COFI, over 5,000 low-income parents of color have been trained as civic leaders in communities and, with POWER-PAC IL, in policy advocacy at city/state/federal levels. Closing the racial wealth/income gaps are top priorities of POWER-PAC IL, with particular focus on reducing debt burdens and increasing wages/savings opportunities – especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This grant will help us continue to ensure that low-income parents are full, participating members of coalitions fighting the racial wealth gap.
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Grant Recipient
Angelic Organics Learning Center Inc
This project facilitates collaboration between farmer training organizations and supports high impact educational resources which increase access to training, connections and markets that beginning farmers need to grow their business.
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Grant Recipient
Health and Medicine Policy Research Group
We seek support for our work to advance the development of a Strategic Action Plan for Aging Equity for Illinois that builds on our partnership with the IDOA to develop their State Plan on Aging. We have been and will continue to engage and organize with communities to develop and support a comprehensive vision for an age-friendly city and state that focuses on policy and systems change emerging from lessons and gaps and responds to health inequities that were illuminated by COVID-19. We’re conducting outreach and building relationships with groups that often do not engage directly with the aging sector or aging organizations. We are conducting outreach and have hosted roundtables specifically to include Black-, Latinx-, and Asian-led organizations in Chicago, Cook County, and throughout the state to become engaged in this movement. Fueled by structural racism coupled with class and gender inequities, health inequities and a variety of injustices harm people of color and reduce quality of life and life expectancy. So, countering ageism includes the struggle against these other inequities concurrently.. This project seeks to build power for health and aging equity at a time when we are experiencing historic growth in the older adult population. Not only do racism and ageism combine with other structural inequities to cause health inequities, service gaps for seniors cost lives and reduce quality of life, especially in Black and Latinx communities.
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Grant Recipient
Southland Juvenile Justice Council
The Cook County Southland Juvenile Justice Council (SJJC) Violence Prevention, Reduction & Restorative Program’s sustainability plan, is designed to address the pressing need for better education, thriving community resources, and inclusive community support in South Suburban Cook County. The Cook County Southland Juvenile Justice Council (SJJC) deems youth that have experienced a series of traumas from violence, disinvestment, pandemic, economic crisis, etc.; are in dire need of early interventions which are imperative and critical components to intervene and prevent youth and their families from entering into a place where they act out their traumas. Referring youth and families into therapeutic programs will foster sustainable youth development programs which are imperative to break the cycle before it begins.