Income Growth Solutions – Growing Household Wealth

The Income Growth Solutions funding program intends to support and learn from the connections between education, employment, and the financial health needed to turn income into wealth.

Photo Credit: UtmostU

RFP Release: March 22, 2023
Info Session: March 30, April 5, April 11
LOI Deadline: April 17, 2023, at 11:59 p.m.
Full Application Deadline: June 1, 2023, at 11:59 p.m.
Funding Decision: August 18, 2023
Announcement: Late August 2023

Download the Full RFP

Background

The Trust organizes its Growing Household Wealth strategy around a simple equation: income plus assets minus debt equals wealth. The Income Growth Solutions funding program intends to support and learn from the connections between education, employment, and the financial health needed to turn income into wealth.

Need/Opportunity Statement

Though we would like there to be a cure-all for closing the racial and ethnic wealth gap, no one thing will address the generations of policies and practices that have put our region in the position it is in today. It is frustrating for our communities to hear stakeholders constantly point to the cracks in their pathways to economic mobility without offering solutions that make income growth a viable road to wealth building. Years of disinvestment and faulty systems cannot be met with a patchwork of a good job here or a student with a full ride to college there. It can be met with a supportive ecosystem that provides people with the cushion to move along a career pathway with financial self-sufficiency and eventually to a state of economic stability essential to building wealth. An ecosystem built to ensure Black and Latinx Chicagoans can achieve income growth no matter their path will leave them financially healthy and ready to access asset-building vehicles such as homeownership. This funding program seeks to identify and support income growth solutions that move wealth building and maintenance from a goal to an attainable reality.

Goals & Outcomes

This RFP advances the Growing Household Wealth goals to:

Increase access to financial solutions that improve individual and household economic stability
Expand economic opportunities for Black and Latinx Chicagoans to access careers

Priority Strategies & Activities

Quality employment opportunities
- Increasing quality employment opportunities that provide for worker power, advancement, and retention
Quality education opportunities
- Supporting student postsecondary and credential completion with limited debt burden.
Quality financial health opportunities for workers and students
- Implementing programs and pilots that address financial challenges facing students and workers by growing financial security and health.

Grant Type

Project Support

Grant Amounts Available & Grant Term

The Income Growth Solutions grant opportunity is for one year of project support. The Trust will award up to 10 grants between $100,000 and $200,000 in this grant cycle.

Contact

For technical questions about your GrantCentral application, please contact our grants management staff at grants@cct.org.

For questions about this funding opportunity, please contact Caleb Herod at cherod@cct.org.