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.
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Grant Recipient
B U I L D INCORPORATED
BUILD THE FUTURE is a bold $24 million strategy to invest in Chicago’s West Side youth by dramatically expanding BUILD’s facilities, capacity, programming, and community engagement. On September 1, 2021, BUILD broke ground on Phase I of the project: the renovation of our existing 10,000-square-foot building in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and the construction of an additional 41,000-square-foot facility, while remaking the surrounding greenspace on our full city-block site. This phase completes all critical infrastructure and youth spaces, including the specialized STEAM workshops, gym and fitness center, café and kitchen, youth lounges, technology labs, restorative justice space and mental health center. With a budget of $20M, fundraising goals have been met, and construction is on schedule, expected to be completed before Thanksgiving, 2022. Phase II is smaller but plays an outsized role in the community: 7,780-square-feet of reservable office and workspace for community partners. On the disinvested West Side, there is a profound need for safe, professional spaces where smaller neighborhood groups can work and meet; or host events, trainings, and open houses. Extending the third floor all the way to the West wall will help meet this need, while also expanding the positive community around our young people. BUILD has a current budget gap of nearly $5M for Phase II. The resulting transformed campus will be a hub for the South Austin community, and for BUILD’s own wraparound programs of Violence Intervention and Prevention, Education, Creative Enrichment, Mental Health Care, and Community Outreach. The increased capacity, longer hours, and expanded offerings available in our new facility will dramatically increase the number of youth, families and residents BUILD serves - from 100 to over 2,000 daily, providing facilities and a base of operations for staff to support hundreds more young people at sites and schools across the region. It will also provide badly needed space for our community partners to do the critical work of expanding the resources available to Austin residents – and reimagining its future.
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Grant Recipient
The Neighborhood Network Alliance
This grant continues the capacity-building in conjunction with the Community Accelerator Program of the University of Chicago, including: Leadership Development Strategic Planning Board Development Fundraiser Staffing Plan
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Grant Recipient
Latin United Community Housing Association (LUCHA)
The LUCHA New Office project will revitalize a vacant commercial building as a community facility on the North Avenue corridor in Humboldt Park. The building is a 2-story masonry building totaling 11,232 square feet, and the first phase of the project is a substantial rehabilitation focusing on the site, the building envelope and the first floor and basement. The proposed use is commercial/office as LUCHA's flagship headquarters for the long term, plus shared community meeting space. The project will serve as an anchor institution supporting community resilience and self-determination through the critical housing services LUCHA provides. On a high-profile corner in the middle of a busy commercial corridor with few public- and pedestrian-oriented spaces, the site will be activated with installations, furniture and art, focusing on the Karlov streetscape to create gathering spaces for neighbor-focused programming and spontaneous social activity.
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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.