Grants

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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

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Showing 1431–1438 of 4630 results

  • Grant Recipient

    Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $100,000

    Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) respectfully requests renewed funding for its advocacy work to prevent and end homelessness. As a systemic advocacy nonprofit, CCH leads campaigns to address the causes of homelessness, including lack of affordable housing, fair wage jobs, health care access, and equal opportunity for systemically marginalized communities. By combining organizing, policy advocacy, and legal aid, CCH strives to center the experiences and expertise of people with lived experience to build power and make change. General operating support from the Trust would support: Bring Chicago Home (BCH): BCH advocates a progressive real estate transfer tax (RETT) increase on property sales over $1 million, with funds dedicated to permanent supportive housing and homeless services. State Legislation: CCH is leading advocacy on HB5265 (waives school fees for low-income charter school students); HB4432 / SB3123 (increases in grant amounts / equity reforms to TANF); HB2775 (removes source of income discrimination in housing); and SB3747/HB4242 (ensures childcare for parenting youth in the child welfare system). State Budget: CCH advocates level or increased funding to all homelessness line items in the Illinois state budget (Homeless Youth, Homeless Prevention, Emergency and Transitional Housing, Permanent Supportive Housing).

  • Grant Recipient

    Michael Reese Health Trust

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $75,000

    Chicago Funders Together to End Homelessness (CFTEH) seeks renewed funding from CCT to advance its cross-system and cross-sector goals in partnership with people most impacted by homelessness. CFTEH is a community of 30 funders in the Chicago region, including The Chicago Community Trust, working to prevent and end homelessness. The collaborative works closely with government partners, policymakers, system leads, and advocates to align funding and priorities, improve housing policies, and build public and political will to address homelessness.

  • Grant Recipient

    Association House of Chicago

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $50,000

    Association House of Chicago respectfully requests $50,000 in general operating funding from The Chicago Community Trust to support essential services offered at the agency. Services are designed to address unemployment and lack of income, food insecurity, lack of health insurance, health/mental health needs, and youth trauma. Throughout a 123-year history in the city of Chicago, Association House has remained dedicated to providing high-quality services in areas of high economic hardship. Using a trauma-informed, culturally responsive service model, we fill the gaps that leave low-income individuals and families struggling. Association House serves thousands of community members each year through direct services in four divisions that work collaboratively to meet the varied needs of those we serve: Association House High School, Child Welfare, Behavioral Health, and Community Health & Workforce Development.

  • Grant Recipient

    Southland Human Services Leadership Council

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $75,000

    The Southland Human Services Leadership Council has been in existence for 10 years and incorporated for the last 4. The Council has achieved enormous successes for the region, networking 70+ human services agencies, coordinating a news and advocacy resource for members and the populations they serve, and getting people to think regionally about the South Suburbs. But in 2019, the SHSLC hit a plateau - and COVID-19 has been a near-death experience for service coordination in the region. The organizations directed by Board leaders have been in survival mode, and this application describes discovering a path to greater sustainability and impact. This funding proposal is being submitted because since its inception, the capacity has not existed for the SHSLC to define needs more comprehensively with the participation of those who are being served.

  • Grant Recipient

    Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $125,000

    Access Living respectfully requests $150,000 in support of our policy and advocacy work advancing the rights and promoting equity for people with disabilities in Chicago. Our efforts embody our philosophy of “nothing about us without us,” prioritizing the participation and leadership of people with disabilities in all aspects of our campaigns (i.e. strategy and tactics, circulating petitions, involvement in demonstrations, meetings with government officials, offering testimony etc.). Our goal is to build the collective power of the disability community to create systems changes that positively impact the well-being of Chicagoan’s with disabilities.

  • Grant Recipient

    Economic Security for Illinois

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $150,000

    In response to the worsening economic climate, there is growing public and political support for using cash to help Americans make ends meet. Research has shown that when given unconditional cash, the financially vulnerable take care of their needs and focus their energy on climbing up the economic ladder. As the leading organization in Chicago/Illinois focused on cash, Economic Security for Illinois is leveraging its IL Cost-of-Living Refund Coalition and IL Guaranteed Income Community of Practice to put more cash in the pockets of low- and middle-income Chicagoans by expanding the Illinois Earned Income Credit (EIC) as the Cost-of-Living Refund and securing other forms of cash-based support.

  • Grant Recipient

    International Neighborhood Collaborative

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $25,000

    From Spring 2022 to Spring 2023, The Dovetail Project will focus on revamping our fatherhood programming and increasing our recruitment efforts to safely return to pre-pandemic application, enrollment, and graduation levels. As a family-centered organization that takes a place-based, people-of-color-led, intergenerational approach to fatherhood services -- impacting two generations of youth at once (young fathers ages 17-24 and their children ages 0-5) -- we would be honored to receive general operating support from the Chicago Community Trust to support us in re-scaling our programming to impact more students. Among the pandemic's many long-term effects is increased stress for young parents, and this summer we are amplifying our recruitment efforts to get more young men back in the classroom and back to work to strengthen themselves, their children, their families, and their communities.

  • Grant Recipient

    Annie B. Jones Civic Arts Center

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $25,000

    Annie B. Jones Civic Arts Center (ABJ) requests funds to offer mental, physical, and emotional health, and wellness, as well as recreational activities through its Project LIFT↑ program. This unique and highly specialized Youth Development Program, which crosses three (3) Chicago Police Districts, addresses the unprecedented and extreme incidents of violence in Chicago that stem directly from unfair systems and oppressive policies. The Project LIFT↑ program is developed to provide love and care for community youth while de-programming and detoxing them from trauma and violent acts that they may have experienced or are at serious risk of experiencing. This program uses prevention and intervention measures to focus on peace, safety, healing, and wholeness. The program is designed to LIFT↑ these youth out of harmful conditions. It is a self-actualizing program that is rooted in love of self, love of others, and love of the community. The love of self, addresses biological or psychological behaviors; the love of peers/family focuses on the interactions between youth and two or more closely related people; and love of the community which addresses the health and safety of the greater community. The program is designed to help youth develop inner tranquility and replace emotional hurt and trauma leading to street and domestic violence with healing and self-acceptance which lead to paths of peace. This then, will enable them to project and express that same state of wholeness and peace through behavioral shifts. Through the proposed grant we will expand the program to include workshops in yoga, peace-breathing, healthy eating, psychology of music; a community music/dance ensemble; peace and healing circles, recreation, field trips; and social media challenges that promote positive/healthy attitudes toward one self, family/friends, and the community.