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
Just Roots
Just Roots is seeking to enhance our capacity to provide technical support to neighboring, community based organizations who are pursuing long term urban agriculture initiatives on Chicago’s near south side. We are currently supporting six different organizations within a 3 mile radius of our Saint James Community Farm, located at 2936 South Wabash Avenue. Increased capacity will enable us to more effectively provide long term technical support to these six organizations. It will also enable us to build a sustainable program model, allowing us to meaningfully respond to new requests from organizations who are mission aligned, in our geographic focus area, and eager to contribute to the development of a more collaborative, regenerative, and equitable food system at the hyperlocal level.
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Grant Recipient
Greater Chatham Initiative Inc
The program will: 1) support Black-owned food-based businesses with access to capital via coaching and connections to service providers, and 2) support local South Side business incubators and entrepreneurial hubs and the businesses they serve by providing technical assistance to connect them to capital resources and to their surrounding ecosystem. Greater Chatham Initiative will also implement a technology platform to help local entrepreneurs access capital by creating a South Side small business resource online hub that improves upon and expands our existing funding webpage.
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Grant Recipient
Green City Market
Green City Market (GCM) requests a grant of $125,000 to build upon our previous work deepening support for local, sustainable farmers through media relations, marketing, and merchandising strategies. In addition, this funding will enable Green City Market to serve as a local food leader through an impactful resource-sharing project – the facilitation of the Chicago Farmers Market Collective. As a result, Green City Market will increase the visibility of the local food sector in Chicago with the result of attracting capital to the food system.
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Grant Recipient
HR&A Advisors, Inc.
Chicago, as a sanctuary city, is facing unprecedented challenges due to the recent influx of migrants following the lifting of Title 42. With over 42,000 New Arrivals, primarily from Venezuela, having arrived in Chicago as of May 29, 2024, the city is grappling with the logistical and humanitarian aspects of accommodating and supporting these individuals. The sudden and continuous arrival of migrants, often without advance notice, has overwhelmed city officials, forcing the rapid expansion of as many as 28 temporary emergency shelters over eight months without certainty of volume and frequency of incoming buses in the coming months. This influx, coupled with the lack of federal and limited state funding, has strained city resources, leading to tension among residents, particularly in historically underfunded low income Black and Latine communities. City Hall and the Mayor's Office of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights are in urgent need of capacity for strategic planning and facilitation support to figure out how to sustain and grow emergency response infrastructure to meet the profound needs on the ground today while leveraging the power of this moment as a vehicle to build better and lasting systems for the future. This represents a crucial opportunity for Chicago, the third-largest city in the United States, to lead on immigration reform, build pathways for resettlement, and operationalize the necessary infrastructure to fulfill the promise of a Sanctuary City.
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Grant Recipient
Land Connection Foundation
The Land Connection is requesting funding to support the ongoing development and activities of Illinois FarmLink over the next two years. With that support, our Illinois FarmLink team will grow the scale, capacity, and effectiveness of its work empowering and connecting farmers and farmland owners around land access through advising, linking, and education. We will also launch a collaborative statewide network to understand and address statewide land access challenges.
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Grant Recipient
The Experimental Station: 6100 Blackstone
Experimental Station is requesting $50,000 in general operating funds to support increased fundraising and administrative costs associated with the expansion of our 61st Street Farmers Market food education programming and increased government funding for our Link Up Illinois program.
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Grant Recipient
Northern Illinois Food Bank
Northern Illinois Food Bank is requesting funding to support their programs providing access to nutritious food for our neighbors facing food-insecurity in the collar counties of DuPage, Kane, Lake, Will and McHenry.
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Grant Recipient
Ecosystems of Care
Ecosystems of Care works to build stronger and more just systems of food, information, and resources, forge connections across neighbors, and generate community power. Our core project, Market Box, began as an emergency pandemic response in 2020, and takes a full-system approach to food insecurity. Our volunteer-led mutual aid project bulk-buys food from local farms and distributes it for free to Black, low-income neighbors across the South Side of Chicago. We seek to fill gaps left by existing food aid: because state benefits structures are often insufficient, we take a trust-based approach and do not require income verification. Because many in our network struggle with mobility, we deliver food directly. And because many existing pantries are best equipped to offer shelf-stable goods, we deliver fresh produce and protein. With every bag of food, we work toward three goals: to get fresh produce to our neighbors, to support small midwest farms, and to build a proven, replicable model of community-driven, locally sourced food-support.