Paving the Path to Homeownership for Housing Choice Voucher Holders
Since the mid-20th century, homeownership has been one of the most important vehicles for building wealth in the United States. According to research from the…
Grants
Featured
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. Today, that means confronting the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
Explore Our Discretionary Grants
Showing 2111–2118 of 4466 results
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Grant Recipient
Bottom Line Inc
Bottom Line’s mission is to support first-generation, degree aspiring students from low-income backgrounds get into college, graduate, and go far in life. Our vision is to create a far-reaching ripple effect, launched by the transformative power of a college degree and a mobilizing first career that will uplift individuals, families, and entire communities. Bottom Line was founded in 1997 as a small nonprofit organization supporting 25 high school seniors in Boston and has grown into a nationally recognized organization serving more than 8,000 first-generation students from Boston, New York City, and Chicago. Bottom Line launched its Chicago office in July 2014 serving an initial cohort of 156 first generation students from low-income backgrounds residing in over 50 neighborhoods. Currently in our eighth year in Chicago, we are serving more than 1,500 students to and through college, and the Success program has produced 453 college graduates. It is a pillar of our common social ethics that all people – regardless of their background or identities – deserve equal access to the basic goods of life. Equally evident is the fact that a college degree is a necessary precondition for accessing many of these goods. Unfortunately, an interlocking set of factors – chief among which are racism, poverty, and under-resourced educational systems – raise deeply entrenched barriers to college graduation and strong first jobs for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Americans. This, in turn, leads our society to fall dramatically short of the promise made by our commonly held values. Of course, by failing to provide sufficient access to educational opportunity to BIPOC communities, our higher education system deepens and perpetuates the damaging inequalities under which these communities already labor. On average, college graduates earn about $600,000 more over their lifetimes than high school graduates,2 a fact which implies disproportionally negative effects for people of color with regards to their overall quality of life as well as the capacity to pass on benefits to others. Further, it is abundantly clear that students of color have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis, a fact which will certainly exacerbate these inequalities long-term in the absence of concerted remedial measures. A Department of Education report from June 2021, for example, affirms that students of color are enrolling and persisting in college at disproportionally lower rates overall than white students.3 The specific causes of the various outcomes discrepancies BIPOC students experience are many and varied, but they include the following: Poverty and financial instability, which have been deepened by the pandemic and which direct students’ energy away from their studies and towards meeting basic needs The pervasive and damaging mental and physical health effects of living as a member of an oppressed community in the United States (e.g., nearly all Bottom Line’s students come from communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19) The sub-standard public school education that many first-generation students of color from low-income families receive A lack of consistent, helpful guidance from often overworked school staff (Chicago Public School counselors frequently serve hundreds of students each), as well as from family and friends who have not attended college themselves Further, when students from low-income backgrounds graduate from college, they can struggle to find jobs in which they thrive. For example, a survey from LinkedIn found that 85% of new college graduates who find jobs land them through personal connections; but, of course, graduates from low-income backgrounds often do not have well-developed professional networks in fields that typically pay middle-class (or higher) wages. This obstacle, like the others discussed above, will only continue to be made worse by the economic effects of the pandemic. In light of this situation, Bottom Line’s programs continue to represent an absolutely essential intervention promoting college and career success. By pairing our students with advisors who serve as expert allies in relentless pursuit of their ambitions and connect them with a best-in-class set of resources tailor-made to fill the gaps in our education system, we help clear a path for accessing the educational opportunity these students deserve. Our work thus represents a significant investment of hope in our students, their communities, and the vision of a more equitable America. Bottom Line is inspired by the Trust’s commitment to evidence-based programs that support students while they’re in high school, and bridge to and through college. We share the belief that attention must be given to ensure higher education is more affordable for students, particularly those from under-resourced communities. Bottom Line closely partners with 13 Illinois colleges and universities, all of whom make affordability a priority for under-represented populations. We believe our holistic, long-term, and relationship-based program provides necessary resources that lead to college graduation, and to upwardly mobile career outcomes. Given our shared values, Bottom Line humbly seeks to partner with the Chicago Community Trust to provide resources for one caseload of college students in the Success Program (85 students) attending one of Bottom Line’s 13 priority partner colleges, for 30 students in BluPrint to receive virtual case-management support, and for the opportunity to facilitate innovations and build additional capacity for our regional career and employability work.
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Grant Recipient
South Shore Chamber Community Development Corporation
The South Shore Chamber of Commerce is seeking a grant in the amount of $50,000 to continue strengthening its organizational infrastructure and to optimally position the organization to be a stronger collaborator and steward of additional investments that will help to stabilize South Shore. CCT's direct capacity building funding support and the engagement with the University of Chicago's Community Programs Accelerator will help the SSCC to continue building organizational strength through adopting new policies, enhancing board engagement, fiscal management improvements and leadership development for staff. In addition to maintaining its core offerings, SSCC, in partnership with the South Shore Chamber Community Development Corporation, will continue development of: • Seeding South Shore Impact Fund - provides early stage capital for entrepreneurs that have made South Shore their community of choice • Community Investment Vehicle (CIV) - a community-lead real estate investment entity designed to encourage shared community ownership, and expand investment knowledge amongst residents • Place-based Development Initiatives - develop place-based neighborhood revitalization strategies that pair public and philanthropic resources to address community needs, disparities and unlock private investment The SSCC has partnered with two other South Shore based organizations to form the South Shore Compact resulting in three community-based organizations serving three different constituencies touching every aspect of life in South Shore. The support of the CNI grant will allow us to continue strengthening this model to serve as a collective voice for South Shore and advance the goal of an improved quality of life for its residents.
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Grant Recipient
Lost Boyz Inc.
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Grant Recipient
CHICAGO CARES INC
AMPT: Advancing Nonprofits supports South and Westside community organizations in building organizational health and sustainability through capacity building. Programming includes the full range of organizational development support services including: assessments to determine organizational needs, navigation to help nonprofits access consultants and other resources, grants that support capacity building priorities as well as opportunities for training, peer learning, connection and collaboration
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Grant Recipient
Push for Excellence Inc
This application for grant funds is designed to provide students ages 5-17 with exposure and training in STEAM, financial literacy, sports, performing arts, critical thinking, creative writing and story telling.
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Grant Recipient
Advocates for Illinois Children
Children's Advocates for Change seeks a grant for general operational support to fund its activities to close the racial and ethnic wealth gap in the Chicago region, as well as statewide, by instituting measures that not only provide for an equitable recovery from the pandemic but moving forward provides a more progressive tax system that provides greater economic relief for low and moderate-income households, more stable housing for renters, greater access to early education opportunities, and a more robust public health system. This also means securing state funding to promote greater collection of data illustrating the use of state services by race and ethnicity and building in further budgetary mechanism that apply a race equity lens to the state budgeting process.
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Grant Recipient
Reform for Illinois
General operating funds request for Reform for Illinois, August 2022 grant cycle.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Votes
Chicago Votes has been working for 10 years to bring young people into the political process through civic education, leadership development, voting, and advocacy efforts. We have a track record of success that points to hundreds of leaders being developed, legislative victories, increased youth voter turnout, and much more. Central to our mission is passing laws that make Illinois and Chicago a better place, and an area of focus for us has been, and continues to be, giving people who are incarcerated their civic rights. We have passed legislation that turned the Cook County Jail into a polling location and another that requires civics to be taught in prison by peer educators. Now, we are working on our working to restore the right to vote to people in prison. This application is focused on continuing to bolster the policy landscape around voting rights for people who are incarcerated. With the support of the Chicago Community Trust, we will inch closer to passing Senate Bill 828 and make Illinois the first state to restore voting rights to people while they are incarcerated.