Advancing Equity Recap: A Three-Part Series Exploring the Homeownership Gap
In May, the Trust completed a three-part series on the homeownership gap as part of Advancing Equity, an ideas exchange that brings together various stakeholders…
Grants
Featured
Our Grant Making 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
FAR SOUTH CDC
Morgan Park Commons Housing Project is a 360-unit mixed-use housing project located at the northwest corner intersection at 115th Street and Halsted. The planned housing project will be 75 percent affordable and 25 percent market-rate rental units ranging from studio to 3-bedrooms. The project site is 12.06-acres former Jewel-Osco and Halsted In-door Mall commercial property and connects three (3) neighborhoods of Morgan Park, West Pullman, and Roseland. The project site is on a highly visible Halsted street with nearly 20,000 vehicular traffic, intermodal public transit bus lines including (CTA) and PACE, and four (4) blocks north of West Pullman Metra stop. The site is slated to incorporate the PACE pulse terminal.
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Grant Recipient
ENDELEO INSTITUTE INC
The purchase, rehab and new construction addition to a vacant commercial property on the 95th street corridor in Washington Heights is slated to become Cafe Du Bois, a combination coffee shop/laundromat. As Covid-19 festers, Endeleo is pivoting in the face of economic uncertainties by 1) leveraging dual purpose of the space, 2) creating economic synergy and 3) providing greater value to the community. Endeleo was a 2019 recipient of a City of Chicago Neighborhood Opportunity Fund Grant and this year, secured Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity funding for a laundromat. While the innovative use of space and additional no cost capital helps offset financing, the Pre-Development Fund initially keeps the project moving.
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Grant Recipient
Heartland Human Care Services Inc
In support of the Chicago Asset Building for Children initiative (Chicago ABC's).
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Collaboration On Youth
For more than 45 years, the Illinois Collaboration on Youth has advocated on behalf of children, youth, and families, and the community-based organizations that serve them. Our mission is to promote the safety, health, and success of Illinois’ children, youth, and families by acting as a collective voice for policy and practice, and by connecting and strengthening the organizations that serve them. Over the past two fiscal years, we have worked intentionally to make our coalition and advocacy agenda more inclusive of the communities that our members serve by establishing the Equity and Access Fund, in which our members subsidize memberships for BIPOC-led CBOs that otherwise would not have the resources to join a membership association.
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Grant Recipient
DISABILITY LEAD
With generous support from The Chicago Community Trust as our founding sponsor, ADA 25 Advancing Leadership (AL) has established itself in the last year as an independent nonprofit organization running the nation’s first and only leadership development and civic engagement program for leaders with disabilities. This successful nonprofit start-up grew from a program in incubation at the Trust to a growing regional network of nearly 170 diverse positive disruptors with disabilities leading and serving with power and influence in their communities. A three-year grant from the Trust – now in its second year of general operating support – will allow AL to continue to scale its programs and impact while centering racial and disability justice.
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Partners for Human Service
Illinois Partner’s current priorities are to: - Advocate for robust, sustainable, and equitable state funding of human services; - Advance systems that center equity in policy making and funding, and secure access for service providers and clients with lived experience to decision making forums; - Address systemic racism within our sector and empower our coalition to challenge established policies that perpetuate white supremacy. Our priorities are rooted in community informed initiatives built through engagement with our coalition partners. This year, we will add a new Grassroots Partnership Director who will focus on our Chicago area partners and amplify the work of grassroots leaders in Black and Latinx communities.
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Grant Recipient
LATINO POLICY FORUM
Working with our very broad range of more than 150 multi-sectoral membership relationships, partnerships, and coalitions, we will apply our core skills of analysis, advocacy, leadership, and collaboration to the goals of ensuring that governmental policies are fully responsive to the needs of Latinos, that the underlying systems and practices that affect policies are shifted toward greater responsiveness and inclusivity, and that an increased capacity to effect policy and systems change is developed within Latino-serving nonprofits. We plan to address systemic inequality that has been exacerbated by COVID for Latinos and immigrants in the areas of housing, social services, and economic redevelopment.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Arts Work Fund
AWF provides capacity-building grants and peer knowledge sharing opportunities to small arts and cultural organizations. In September, we launched Think • Explore • Share. These grants enable arts organizations to develop and test solutions to challenges posed by COVID-19 or challenges that hampered arts nonprofits before the pandemic. Challenges can relate to management, production, technology, fiscal planning, or artistic mission. The AWF Connect a listserv has grown in vitality as grantees are now asked to post lessons learned from their grants on the listserv so that the field can benefit from the knowledge gained and lessons learned.