3C Community Profile: Humboldt Park
Take a stroll down the Paseo Boricua corridor on Division Street and it’s easy to see why Humboldt Park is one of Chicago’s most vibrant…
Grants
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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 5241–5248 of 4239 results
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Trust/Flexible Housing Fund
This request of $200,000 for FY25 will contribute to the sustainability of the Chicago Cook County Flexible Housing Pool (FHP) intervention and with it the ongoing data collection, data linking, record retention, and outcomes tracking for the program. The FHP represents a dynamic community of high-need individuals and families that are of great interest to policy makers, practitioners, and public and private funders. The groups at the center of the FHP include youth at-risk for community violence, individuals with high rates of public system involvement, and individuals discharged from state correctional facilities. This grant, aligned with previous contributions from the Trust, provides a vital foundation for groundbreaking and ongoing research analyses including of return on investment, changes in healthcare utilization, population-specific housing outcomes, and qualitative factors. It is only through research and evaluation that the FHP has had the ability to sustain and be positioned for future growth. The Chicago Community Trust created the Flexible Housing Fund in 2021 and has entered into an agreement with the City of Chicago, to become a formal partner to the Chicago Cook County Flexible Housing Pool (FHP). The Flexible Housing Fund at the Trust is a conduit for funds to go to the City-held escrow account that funds the FHP. The FHP pays for direct client-level interventions for supportive housing and services to break the cycle of homelessness and housing instability, exacerbated by incarceration, community violence, poorly managed behavioral health, and emergency healthcare in the City of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. The FHP, managed by the Center for Housing and Health, underwrites the administrative costs such as data management, reporting, and facilitation of records and documents for research participation. Since the launch of the FHP in 2019, it has raised $64 million to support the services, rental assistance, outreach and engagement, pre-tenancy supports, tenancy supports, and administration. Of this amount, the Trust facilitated $17,875,000 in contributions via its Flexible Housing Fund mechanism to the City-held escrow account. If it were not for the Trust and its Fund, these contributions would not have been made to support and expand the FHP over the past years or support critical research and evaluation reports used to inform future services. Programmatic Achievements include: -Increased housing placements to a total of 1,504 participants in 866 households. FHP enrollment increased by 96 households between January-June 2024. -Sustained a 90% housing retention rate for all participants since January 2019-June 2024. -Expanded the FHP model to the Reentry population resulted in all 50 individuals referred by the Illinois Department of Corrections being placed into permanent housing directly from state correctional facilities. -Improved program workflows, data monitoring and Quality Improvement measures. -Assisted over 600 FHP clients apply to alternative housing subsidies. -Reengaged previous funders with the Chicago Housing Authority returnings as a funder investing $500,000 in 2024. This past year, FHP reached a critical juncture. There were a number of factors that pushed the average cost of the intervention from $25,000 to $32,000 per household per year, causing spending at a faster pace than contributions were covering. Late 2023-early 2024 was the first review of the true cost of the intervention since the implementation began. The factors below were not built into the original cost model and as a result spending began to outpace flat-rate contributions: -Adjustments for rental inflation, which pushed up by 20% since 2019 -Larger sized households in the Youth cohort – over half of youth households have dependent children requiring larger, more expensive apartments -Commitment to higher base salary for all FHP staff of $50,000 -New cost model accounts for annual inflation moving forward As a result of the financial pressures, the FHP Governance Council approved an increase to the cost model from $25,000 to $32,000 per household. All new funders will be asked to contribute at the new rate, and existing funders are being asked to renew funds at the new rate to ensure that people are not discharged back into homelessness in the coming years. The current projection is that the FHP will exhaust its funding in March 2027. Ambitious yet achievable fundraising goals have been set for each sector involved in the FHP - Public, Healthcare, and Philanthropy. In total, the FHP hopes to sustain current levels of contribution and increase revenue by $45 million between 2024-2028. Of this amount, the goal for philanthropic contributions is $2 million. The Trust's FY2025 grant will help make progress toward that goal. The FHP has a Sustainability Work Group that meets monthly to benchmark progress in meeting funding goals. Representatives of the Governance Council comprise the Sustainability Work Group and include City of Chicago, Cook County Health, CountyCare, and the consultant to the Trust (on behalf of the Flexible Housing Fund). In addition to the Sustainability Work Group, there are four additional Work Groups: -Racial Equity: Ensures the FHP operates equitability meaning there are no differences in project outcomes or performance based on race or ethnicity. --Current priorities are employment (culturally specific opportunities) and housing stability (legal aid, unit location, tenant education); making recommendations to Governance Council on the Dashboard -Evaluation: Identifies priorities and additional research questions. Current priorities are sharing the current evaluation/data collection underway across various partners, planning formal research evaluation updates, and identifying/prioritizing additional research questions to position for funding -Healthcare Engagement: Engages and educates healthcare funding partners. -Lived Experience Advisory Council: Provides feedback and guidance on FHP operations and utilizes first hand expertise to inform recommendations. Current priorities are informing tenant-facing documents, advocacy, creating a tenant satisfaction survey.
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Grant Recipient
LATINOS PROGRESANDO
Latinos Progresando (LP) is requesting renewed support from the Chicago Community Trust to further equitable community development in the Marshall Square community, home to a largely Mexican, immigrant population located on the southwest side of Chicago. LP’s approach centers on developing Marshall Square’ commercial corridors, the intersecting Cermak and California Avenues that form the neighborhood’s commercial core, with development activities organized around a cluster of community assets: the locally owned small businesses that make up the heart of neighborhood commerce; the Latinos Progresando Community Center, a redevelopment of a long-vacant Chicago public library branch; and the CTA Pink Line California station. LP uses a number of tools to activate this work: equitable transit oriented development, public green space/green infrastructure design, placemaking, and robust community engagement. By driving economic development through investments in commercial corridor improvements, and facilitating opportunities for the small, immigrant-owned, entrepreneurial businesses that are the economic engine of Marshall Square to sustain and grow, LP envisions increasing community wealth in a neighborhood with historic disinvestment. Our broader vision also includes collaboration with the neighboring community of North Lawndale under the One Lawndale umbrella, leveraging investments across neighborhoods.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance
This is the funding request for the collaborative Fund: The Human Service Workforce Initiative
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Grant Recipient
QUAD COMMUNITIES DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION NFP
Quad Community Development Corporation, NFP is respectfully submitting this grant funding application for consideration under the CCT Community Wealth – Neighborhood Development Champions program. QCDC has been operating in its community area as a community and economic development not-for-project agency since 2023. It is without question, that QCDC is a Champion. Our leadership, commitment, strategic planning, program execution, and advocacy for economic mobility, housing development, small businesses, and the overall quality of life speak for itself. QCDC is requesting continued support from the Trust as we build to expand our work into real estate development, explore new collaboration opportunities, and most importantly continue to support and strengthen our current and prior work. In this application, we are proposing new three Measures of Progress that relate to real estate development, program expansion, and continued agency capacity building. Past financial support from the Trust has been critical to our successes and we humbly seek approval so we may continue the partnership as good stewards of your financial resources.
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Grant Recipient
Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council
For 85 years, the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) has been committed to community-driven economic development by the people and for the people. We represent a neighborhood of 44,000 people on Chicago’s Southwest side, 61% of whom identify as Hispanic or Latine. The stockyards used to be a huge economic driving force in the neighborhood, but now after decades of business closures and systematic disinvestment, our community is once again on the rise with new developments and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. BYNC is excited to be leading this community-driven economic development, but we need support to do so. The Neighborhood Development Champions grant will allow BYNC to focus on these five high-priority initiatives that move economic development plans forward, increase public participation, and ensure inclusive economic growth: 1. Make significant progress on large-scale economic development projects (4630 S. Ashland and United Yards) 2. Develop and maintain partnerships with neighborhood small businesses that drive economic opportunity and wealth creation 3. Implement priorities of the Economic Inclusion Agenda, including Quality of Life improvements 4. Invest in staff capacity to deliver on economic development priorities 5. Manage community engagement efforts to ensure equitable and sustainable economic development BYNC looks forward to partnering with the Chicago Community Trust to foster economic opportunity, build community wealth, and continue to transform the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability
The Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) submits this proposal for continued funding to provide support to the elected District Councils, engage the public in the police accountability space, and take on related work needed to successfully implement the recently enacted Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance. The coalition will additionally undertake work alongside the ECPS coalition, philanthropy, and accountability partners within the City to increase the salary and expand the budget for district councilors to accurately reflect the workload necessary to execute the expectations of the office successfully.
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Grant Recipient
AUSTIN COMING TOGETHER
Since Austin Coming Together (ACT) was established in 2010, our mission has been to improve education and economic development outcomes in Chicago’s Austin community by working alongside a network of 50+ social service providers on improving conditions in the area. Austin has a majority Black population with rising numbers of Latine residents and has been historically overlooked and underresourced. This grant will allow ACT to amplify our work specifically in economic development during a time of organizational growth. ACT is a co-developer of The Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation, a project that is transforming the former Emmet Elementary School into a central location for resources and on-site training in living-wage careers like advanced manufacturing. To deliver on these objectives, we have established a holistic model to approach serving residents along a spectrum of outcomes from economic stability through wealth creation and this funding will help us implement it. The guiding principles of the holistic model are to: focus on the individual; infuse humanity in all we do; commit to meet a person where they are and inspire; address all related barriers; help a person imagine goals they never thought possible; help residents remain in Austin and thrive; use our collective experience with who we serve as our primary source of research at the outset; design for possibility, not necessarily services that exist. In preparation for moving our team into the Aspire Center, which is anticipated to happen in Spring of 2025, we have been creating an operations plan for scaling our services. Being present in the Center will require us to expand our team, which in turn will allow us to impact more Austin residents than ever before. Activation of the 3-acre site at Madison and Central, a main commercial intersection in Austin, will convert the corner that sat vacant for a decade into a state-of-the-art Center with tenants who will provide employment resources and other valuable services. For our entire existence, ACT has always been purposeful about innovative, thoughtful responses to the needs of the Austin community – and our approach to operating at the Aspire Center is no different!
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Safe Chicago Network
Metropolitan Peace Initiatives (MPI), a division of Metropolitan Family Services, leads efforts to reduce community violence by convening local and citywide organizations through its Communities Partnering for Peace (CP4P) and READI Chicago. MPI serves individuals at the highest risk of violence by providing community-centered, trauma-informed interventions. Communities Partnering for Peace (CP4P) Founded in 2017, CP4P is an innovative coalition model for violence prevention that brings together 15 hyperlocal community-based organizations (CBOs) across 28 of Chicago’s most violence-impacted neighborhoods. CP4P’s team of credible messengers—street outreach workers with deep local knowledge and trust—provides essential services, including street outreach, case management, hospital response, and community engagement events. CP4P reaches those most at risk of gun violence with a restorative, trauma-informed approach to violence prevention and intervention. READI Chicago READI Chicago focuses on individuals at the highest risk of involvement in gun violence, providing transitional jobs and comprehensive community violence intervention services. The program aims to reduce participants' likelihood of being victims or perpetrators of gun violence, support pathways to positive opportunities, decrease criminal justice system involvement, and build community infrastructure for safety and opportunity. Together, CP4P and READI Chicago create a coordinated ecosystem of support and opportunities, addressing violence through prevention, intervention, and community empowerment. MPI’s work is essential to transforming Chicago’s communities and advancing public safety for all residents.