Grants

Grant Recipient

Urban Juncture Foundation

Awarded: June 2022 Awarded Amount: $175,000

The lack of locally-owned restaurants in Black communities is a key barrier to the revitalization in Black Chicago. Good food builds good community: the absence of quality restaurants results in an absence of jobs and social and financial capital creation opportunities. By bringing together key industry, community, and resource partners in a proven model to facilitate the launch and growth of Black culinary businesses in Chicago, our project is addressing this problem head on. We are creating an enterprise - the Bronzeville Culinary Connection - that identifies and nurtures Black culinary professionals and entrepreneurs and, by delivering targeted and coordinated support to them, helps them create lasting culinary enterprises. We’ve made great progress in our first FEBG project year, establishing the BCC, engaging key BSO partners, and advancing a substantial number of Black culinary enterprises. If we are chosen to proceed in this second year, we will double down on building relationships with a small set of key partners and on focusing our collective effort on establishing a powerful culinary hub at 51st Street and the El. By substantially expanding culinary spaces at Boxville and creating a restaurant incubator in our building next door, while continuing to invest in deepening the pipeline of Black culinary entrepreneurs, we will create the foundation necessary to catalyze the creation of Black culinary enterprises in Bronzeville and beyond.

Grant Recipient

Chicagos Sunshine Enterprises Inc

Awarded: June 2022 Awarded Amount: $225,000

Sunshine Enterprises (SE) and the South Shore Chamber of Commerce (SSCC) will offer two cohorts of SE’s "Community Business Academy" (CBA), a 12-week cohort based model of technical assistance for local entrepreneurs. These two cohorts for artists and artisans industries will serve 20-25 entrepreneurs each. SE will then offer Business Acceleration services including coaching, credit improvement, access to capital, and workshops. Concurrently SSCC will conduct “The Artisans Collective” (TAC) training program twice. TAC is a 5-week, cohort based model of technical assistance geared towards helping artisans become retail ready. It is then paired with low-rent access to space in TAC’s shared retail space in South Shore for qualified businesses with the long term goal of the clients being ready for retail space in South Shore’s retail corridors. Further, SSCC will offer supplemental workshops for continuing education. Together SSCC will serve 40 unduplicated clients in addition to those served in the SE CBA, totalling 80-90 entrepreneurs overall. Finally, the partnership will introduce several new interventions to improve the success of the entrepreneurs. Those include: supporting entrepreneurs at over a dozen pop ups (and sponsoring entrepreneurs to attend); developing an even clearer bridge from CBA to TAC curriculum; finding ways for artisans to improve their capital stacks, scale, and create pathways to brick and mortars; partnering with South Shore Works for recruitment, programming in TAC, and identifying grants for artisans; and growing South Shore Connect in its fifth year, including new reporting on increased foot traffic and revenue of businesses.

Grant Recipient

Scholarship America, Inc.

Awarded: July 2022 Awarded Amount: $1,455

Grant Recipient

Chicago Community Foundation

Awarded: July 2022 Awarded Amount: $328,767

Grant Recipient

Indo American Center Inc

Awarded: July 2022 Awarded Amount: $15,500

Grant Recipient

Midwest Immigration Bond Fund

Awarded: July 2022 Awarded Amount: $15,500

Grant Recipient

Valley Immigrant Advocates

Awarded: July 2022 Awarded Amount: $15,500