The Supporting Exemplary Leaders & Freedom Fighters (SELFF) Care Sabbatical – Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation

The Supporting Exemplary Leaders & Freedom Fighters (SELFF) Care Sabbatical provides Black and Latinx women with an essential, much-needed break for rest and renewal.

RFP Release: March 10, 2023
Info Session: March 21, 2023
Full Application Deadline: April 14, 2023
Funding Decision: June 23, 2023
Announcement: June 30, 2023

Background

The Supporting Exemplary Leaders & Freedom Fighters (SELFF) Care Sabbatical provides Black and Latinx women with an essential, much-needed break for rest and renewal. Sabbaticals recharge nonprofit leaders and empower leadership throughout an organization, allowing community leaders to take time from their day-to-day work to pursue a self-directed course of learning, travel, observation, and reflection. The result is stronger and more resilient leaders who are better prepared to meet the unsustainable stress and overwhelming demands of rising community needs, inadequate budgets, and understaffed teams. The SELFF Care Sabbatical identifies and nurtures outstanding nonprofit and public sector leaders and awards up to $10,000 in unrestricted personal development funds. The grant will be used for self-care measures to help grant recipients better serve the residents of Chicago’s most traumatized, disinvested communities. Recipients will also attend a two-hour sabbatical introductory session and receive a self-care starter package.

Need/Opportunity Statement

High levels of stress, depression, and anxiety are significant components of today’s society. The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected life as we knew it, not just in Chicago but across the globe. A survey conducted by the American Psychological Association in 2021 found that roughly 80 percent of U.S. adults suffered from the repercussions of extreme stress at work and in their personal lives. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Chicagoans – particularly in South and West Side neighborhoods – have been busy coping, pivoting, and re-directing significant aspects of life under tremendous, unprecedented amounts of stress, all while raising families and fighting for jobs to keep food on the table.

Sabbaticals offer nonprofit leaders the opportunity to refuel and reconnect with their passion, creating a perspective shift away from the constant juggle of management and stress toward more expansive thinking around their organization’s sustainability and growth. This sabbatical supports nonprofit women leaders’ dire need to step back from the challenges, exhaustion, and stresses of work to rest deeply, cultivate healing, and reconnect to their vitality and balance. Understanding that women leaders of color are disproportionately and adversely impacted across Chicago’s South and West sides, prioritizing rest and renewal for Black and Brown women nonprofit leaders is vital to dismantling normalized oppression and burnout.

Goals & Outcomes

The purpose of this grant initiative is to provide time, space, and connection for leaders to reflect on the direction of their organization and rejuvenate. As part of this work, selected grant recipients will be asked to share their progress toward the following organizational outcomes and associated measures of progress.

Outcome: Increase Coalition, Constituent, and Organizational Power

Measures of Progress:

Changes in organizational or constituent attitudes, skills, and knowledge
Changes in organizational or constituent power

Priority Strategies & Activities

Principles for Peace:

To honor nonprofit leaders for their dedication, contributions, and accountability to the communities they serve.
To assist Black and Brown women leaders to take much-needed breaks for personal and professional growth and renewal.
To advance leadership skills throughout nonprofit organizations by supporting an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset.
To strengthen the stability and sustainability of sabbatical organizations by promoting shared leadership, self-care, professional development, and succession planning.
To generate a wide net of love and appreciation for the critical value of Black and Brown women nonprofit leaders across Chicago’s South and West sides.
To help struggling nonprofit Black and Brown leaders think beyond survival into wholeness.

Grant Type

Project Based: Sabbatical

Grant Amounts Available & Grant Term

This pilot sabbatical program identifies and nurtures outstanding nonprofit and public sector BIPOC women leaders and will award up to 10 women up to $10,000 in unrestricted personal development funds. The grant will be used for self-care measures to help grant recipients better serve the residents of Chicago’s most traumatized, disinvested communities.

Grant Term: Six months, non-renewable.

For More Information

Please register for the upcoming in-person info session here, or visit GrantCentral, The Chicago Community Trust’s online grants management system, to view the criteria and access the application for this RFP.

If you have additional questions, contact Pilar Audain, TRHT’s Associate Director, at paudain@cct.org.