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.
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Grant Recipient
True Star Foundation Inc
True Star respectfully requests $100,000 of renewed funding from the Chicago Community Trust to invest in its staffing and infrastructure and build capacity to take on its growth and invest in its long-term strategies, which include: 1) youth media; 2) Saturday workshop series; 3) True Star's social enterprise in which advanced youth creators and marketers provide services to small business and other non-profits; and 4) our new efforts to expand programming on Chicago's West Side
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Grant Recipient
MIXR LLC
MIXR is a cafe & event space that celebrates the Southeast Side's unique blend of cultural richness, ecological significance, and industrial history. MIXR is applying for financial support to cover pre-development costs for further architectural and engineering consultation, a comprehensive market study, fiscal sponsorship, and consultant engagement.
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Grant Recipient
AMPT ADVANCING NONPROFITS
AMPT: Advancing Nonprofits is an organization committed to transforming Chicago's nonprofit sector by providing targeted capacity-building support to Black and Latine-led organizations on the city's West and South sides. Our mission is to foster healthy, thriving, and sustainable organizations capable of serving their communities and advancing equity. AMPT offers a range of programs, coaching, and consulting support tailored to the specific needs of under-resourced BIPOC-led nonprofits, aiming to challenge disinvestment in these communities. Our approach centers on supporting grassroots organizations through holistic support, combining skill-building workshops with financial resources and fostering community collaboration. The proposal outlines their significant impact, robust partnerships, commitment to diversity and equity, and rigorous evaluation strategies.
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Collaboration On Youth
The Illinois Collaboration on Youth champions the safety, wellbeing, and success of all Illinois' children, youth, and families by connecting and strengthening the community organizations that serve them and by being a collective voice for policy and practice. Over the next 12 months, we will work to respond to the ongoing crisis in the Illinois human service workforce, support community organizations to identify and respond to racial disparities in their own work, and advocate for Illinois to adopt a Juvenile Fitness to Stand Trial standard that acknowledges the unique developmental stages and needs that children and adolescents bring when they become involved with the justice system.
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Grant Recipient
Borealis Philanthropy
Disability Inclusion Fund: DIF was launched in 2019 by a group of philanthropic leaders seeking to advance inclusion of people with disabilities both internally at their institutions and in their grantmaking. For the Fund's first 3-5 years, its priorities are: 1. Strengthen the disability movement by building the power of representative organizations and elevating the voices of people with disabilities within public life 2. Boost the capacity of disability justice groups to fundraise, communicate a more unified narrative, and other priorities as determined by the grantmaking committee and grantee partners 3. Build bridges between disability justice groups to learn from one another, complement and strengthen advocacy and mobilization approaches We meet these objectives through a disability-led strategy including grantmaking, relationship building, peer engagement and support, capacity building, and collaborative learning. The DIF is aligned with the legacy of disability rights and justice movement principles that understands the liberation of disabled people is interconnected with all social justice movement struggles. Disability justice is about justice for all people—it offers a better way forward; one which centers collective care and mutual aid, ensuring equitable access to all we need to experience and live into our joy, freedom, and humanity. To that end, we are continuing to expand grassroots infrastructure, and to strengthen relationships between disability communities and funders to achieve this.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Connecting Capital & Community
Through 3C, the Trust is convening and collaborating with a diverse network of partners to fund and test scalable models and strategies that challenge the deep, structural barriers Black and Latinx communities face in accessing homeownership and building wealth. 3C aims to support interventions that look beyond individual projects to systems-level change that will impact the structure of opportunity for Black and Latinx communities citywide. This grant will support the creation of a new, flexible lending product targeted to LMI homebuyers to increase their purchasing power. To make this work possible, we are collaborating with Transform Capital, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, Northern Trust, and Krambo. Early in the 3C process, we conducted a scan of lending products targeted to LMI communities to better understand what products and services were being offered. This unearthed a long list of products, but it also illuminated how few were being intentionally targeted to the Black and Latinx families and the unique barriers they face across income tiers. The 3C partners began to develop a concept for a loan product that would be intentionally aimed at a segment of the population not being served by products available in the market- specifically families making at or near 80% AMI. We analyzed the affordability gap, identified the most impactful levers to increase purchasing power, and confirmed that the proposed lending solution will help address this gap most powerfully. Given that 3C is already funding a cohort of housing counseling partners to prepare a pipeline of 200 homebuyers and is supporting a cohort of mission-driven developers to develop affordable homes on 100 vacant lots in these 2 neighborhoods, the lending product will serve as a critical cornerstone to ensure that families who rent here, have the opportunities to become homeowners. We intend to pilot the product in East Garfield and Humboldt Park, for 25 families. This grant will support the funding needed to originate the loans and will be stewarded by NHS Chicago who will serve as the originator. We are in the process of finalizing our partnership structure with Krambo and Northern Trust who will securitize the loans and purchase them, respectively, allowing us to recycle the dollars into additional mortgages down the line.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Elevated Chicago
This application is for funding to advance public knowledge and will for the use of equitable transit-oriented development, or ETOD, as a practice (or tool) for improving the walkability, affordability and livability of Chicago communities, particularly Black and Brown neighborhoods via an 18-month campaign of education, documentation and symposia. With tactics that include journalistic storytelling, the development of digital and printed materials, and the production of in-person gatherings, we will deepen knowledge of and planning by four key stakeholder groups: community members; appointed and elected leaders; for-profit developers; and community-based nonprofit developers. This project will be led by Rudd Resources and Elevated Chicago.
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Grant Recipient
Instituto del Progreso Latino
This proposal seeks funding to support Instituto College’s (IC) mission “to provide an enriched learning environment where students have the opportunity to earn practical credentials and degrees based on industry standards…IC values the training of bilingual and bi-culturally sensitive nursing professionals…” Additionally, the CCT ACN initiative grant would contribute to fulfilling the IC’s final nursing program accreditation goals and meeting its final phase of fulfilling sustainability goals in becoming a Title IV school offering Federal Student Financial Assistance Programs. Starting in 2019, IC matriculated 5 cohorts and graduated 4 cohorts. Among critical milestones achieved, we graduated the pilot, second, third, and fourth cohorts in Dec., 2021, March, 2022, Dec., 2022, and Dec., 2023 respectively. In summary, we are submitting this application to support nursing training for both our Basic Nursing Assistant (BNA) and Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) programs, nursing program accreditation for our ADN Program, and to attain Title IV eligibility through the Dept. of Education. The College finds itself at a critical juncture. While we have achieved significant completion and graduation outcomes, demonstrating that our ADN Program exceeds national norms and our BNA Program ranks in the top 20% of IL programs, we need this funding to support the ADN Program’s “bridge” expenses until the College becomes a Title IV school, becoming an institution that processes federal student aid. Our students then, if they demonstrate financial need, will be eligible to receive Federal grants (Pell), student loans, and enter work-study programs. Reaching Title IV status will fully remove barriers for continuing and future students to access our nursing degree program. While thus far, almost all of our students have been awarded a full-tuition scholarship, without Title IV, we cannot increase enrollments or enter financial sustainability. Finally, this funding will help in attaining nursing program accreditation which is a requirement for all nursing schools in the State, as mandated by the IL Board of Nursing (IDFPR). While IC was admitted as a “Candidate” for nursing by ACEN, the College must attain full accreditation by 2025.