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
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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.
Explore Our Discretionary Grants
Showing 5411–5418 of 4630 results
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Grant Recipient
Inspiration Corporation
Each year, Inspiration Corporation provides resources and opportunity to hundreds of resilient Chicagoans who face systemic disparities rooted in social, racial, and economic inequities that result in homelessness, hunger, poverty and social isolation. In order to help individuals and families overcome these barriers, we work to connect those experiencing homelessness and poverty to the critical services and resources they need through our homeless engagement and housing programs. With a proven track record and multi-pronged approach, Inspiration Corporation seeks to create a supportive community that recognizes the humanity of each person with whom we work. Honoring each person’s lived experience, we employ best practices and provide services aimed at offsetting our city’s long history of disinvestment in communities of color. We provide a range of programming that responds to critical basic needs and supports greater opportunity so that individuals and families can lead dignified, fulfilling lives. For 35 years, Inspiration Corporation has connected to individuals in need in the Uptown community and been an integral part of the city’s “system front door.” Our Homeless Engagement program provides made-to-order breakfasts served with dignity and respect in a restaurant style setting through our flagship program, Inspiration Cafe with the goal of connecting participants to additional resources and a deeper level of service. Over time, people experiencing or at risk of homelessness feel comfortable sharing their basic needs and short- and long-term goals. In turn, our staff work tirelessly to connect program participants to referrals for housing and other essential resources and services. Since we are the only drop-in provider within eight miles that serves breakfast, opening hours before warming/cooling centers or other daytime support services, we serve many persons from encampments, shelters, and those who have been riding the train all night and traveling from distances. Providing breakfast and a welcoming environment, along with crucial needs, offers a basis for supporting participants in improving economic security and increasing housing stability. Likewise, our Housing Program provides individuals and families experiencing homelessness with access to housing and ongoing rental support. Access to programming is open to all who qualify and participants are referred based on eligibility and vulnerability, most often by Chicago’s Coordinated Entry System. We employ a housing first approach and work diligently to find appropriate housing, maintain good relationships with landlords and provide wrap-around supportive services to ensure that participants are able to remain housed and pursue their own goals around greater stability for themselves and their families. Our on-going strategies to expand services, enhance approaches and deepen engagement are rooted in best practices, what we have learned from our participants over several decades, and recent trends that have emerged in our work. Aligning with reported data, Inspiration Cafe has seen a steady uptick in new participants every month, with meals at or over capacity, and a record number of drop-in sessions. To date, a few new participants have been recent arrivals or asylum seekers, but we anticipate we will continue to welcome increasing numbers of migrants. Like so many of our peer organizations, our housing team has been stretched to their limits with high rates of turnover and staff vacancies. An investment in a dedicated housing navigator will streamline and expedite the process of securing units and facilitating relationship between participants and landlords. Removing many of these complex administrative tasks from existing Case Managers duties will free them up to deliver a higher level of individualized engagement and support. In the past couple of years Inspiration Corporation has piloted an innovative Aftercare Program to support individuals in maintaining housing stability as they exit our program models. Through the Aftercare Initiative, we have added up to a year of additional supportive services for households that have recently exited our Housing Program or Homeless Engagement Services (HES) Program. This extended support has helped prepare participants for unforeseen challenges or barriers and increase future housing retention. Early data has proven that this level of engagement, investment and collaboration with participants yields impressive results with 100% maintaining their housing. Further investment in these key areas of our work will enable Inspiration Corporation to deliver a higher level of service to a greater number of individuals and families. The proposed enhancements to our service delivery model will better meet the needs of our participants and foster sustainable solutions to promote housing stability. We recognize that our participants are our best resource, both in understanding the root causes of homelessness and in creating lasting solutions.
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Grant Recipient
Reform for Illinois
General operating funds request for Reform for Illinois, with an emphasis on Fair Elections public campaign financing for Chicago, June 2024 grant cycle.
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Grant Recipient
Urban Gateways
Urban Gateways’ 63-year commitment continues, as we connect the next generation of artists and change makers with opportunities to amplify their voice and expand their imaginations. As Chicago’s premier access point for youth arts experiences city-wide, Urban Gateways is proud to be an innovator of arts integration in the classroom, to foster and facilitate future arts patrons, and to provide tools, training, and access for developing artists and multimedia specialists. Urban Gateways generates multiple access points for engaging, relevant arts experiences through collaborative community partnerships and by empowering young creatives to claim their narratives as the critical change agents our world needs. Mission Urban Gateways engages young people in arts experiences to inspire creativity and impact social change. Organizational Values We support artists. Artists are the soul of our work and without them we would not be able to fulfill our mission: we hold ourselves accountable to their voices. We honor artists and their creative practice by centering the impact of the arts on local communities. We nurture wonder. The power of the arts lives in the exploration of possibility. We believe that the most provocative art and experiences begin with questions, and we honor the vulnerability and courage it takes to create and share. We encourage learning through curiosity to imagine new ways of expressing and being. We cultivate inclusion. All people are full of creative promise. The arts are essential for cultural exchange, expanding our worldview, protesting inequity, and advancing social justice. We foster a sense of belonging by intentionally listening, and by supporting diverse voices, experiences, and stories to value every person and honor their contributions. We are collaborators. We connect young people, artists, and arts experiences; these links lay the foundation for inspired artmaking and for actionable social change through the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and resources. We aim to forge lasting partnerships built on integrity and reciprocity. Urban Gateways has created several pathways for youth to interact with the arts in accordance with their age and interests. The aim of all Urban Gateways learning goals is to increase artistic literacy, develop four key areas of the artistic process (creating, producing, responding, and connecting), generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work, and organize and develop artistic ideas and work using arts learning metrics as proposed by the National Core Arts Standards and the Illinois Arts Learning Standards. Urban Gateways supports Chicago’s young people through the following core programs: Instruction Programs: Multi-disciplinary artist residencies, workshops, and teacher professional development programs connect K-12 students and their teachers with many of Chicago’s most experienced Teaching Artists specializing in music, dance, theater, visual arts, literary arts, and media arts. Touring Performances: Urban Gateways features a roster of 30 performance groups that support broader cultural and social awareness by bringing artistic expressions from world cultures directly to young people as a celebration of our shared humanity. Performances also build an essential pipeline for Chicago’s future artists and audiences that sustains Chicago’s reputation as a world-class arts and culture destination. Street Level: Recognizing that few media spaces exist that are youth-led and youth-centered, Street Level provides free access for young people to nurture their unique creative voice utilizing technology and media through journalism, music production, and youth clubs. Street Level activities, including podcasting, filmmaking, anime, and other forms of media revolve around topics that young participants identify as relevant to their interests and experiences, such as code-switching and the impact of systemic racism. Teen Arts Pass (TAP): Teen Arts Pass (TAP) enables teens to purchase day-of-show tickets to 26 cultural venues for the extremely reduced cost of $5 or for free to enable young people to attend live performances under a model of unprecedented access and inclusion. TAP includes arts partners that represent all performing arts disciplines, institutional sizes, and diverse geographic locations to foster broad program access and inclusion.
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Grant Recipient
Law Center for Better Housing
The Law Center for Better Housing or LCBH meets the needs defined in the Sustainable Solutions for Housing Stability RFP by providing free legal and supportive services to renters facing eviction. LCBH is Chicago’s only legal aid organization that focuses its work exclusively on protecting renters’ rights. In 2023, LCBH served nearly 20,000 households at risk of eviction. Our programs reached renters in all 77 Chicago community areas and throughout suburban Cook County. LCBH requests a $150,000 grant to strengthen its organizational capacity to manage innovative programs that empower tenants to use chatbot technology to solve landlord disputes before an eviction is filed; protect renters in eviction court by providing them access to attorneys and emergency rental assistance; and advance housing justice by collaborating with the courts, government agencies, and community organizations to make Chicago’s eviction courtrooms more equitable.
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Grant Recipient
National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities
Building on the successful partnership of the Contextualizing the Migrant Narrative webinar series, Alianza Americas, along with the Latino Policy Forum, the Resurrection Project, and the Center for Immigrant Progress are planning to lead an educational delegation of decision-makers and stakeholders from the Chicago area to Mexico City, Mexico, and Bogota, Colombia, to understand firsthand the complexities of migration in these two countries and to define further how stakeholders in the U.S. can more sustainably and empathetically respond to the needs of all migrants with a transnational lens. Alianza Americas has been leading delegations to the region for 20 years and is well-known for its transnational approach to policies that impact Latin American and Caribbean immigrants. Participants will engage with civil society leaders in Mexico and Colombia to deepen their understanding of the various factors that force many to leave their homes, with an emphasis on Venezuela and Venezuelan migration; understand firsthand how sending, transit, and receiving countries like Mexico and Colombia can improve their policies and practices, and finally strengthen existing collaborations with allied organizations and build on new relationships with civil society actors to strengthen advocacy efforts across borders.
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Grant Recipient
The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
The University of Chicago Center for Effective Government (CEG) requests funds to support the Civic Leadership Academy (CLA) for the 2025 cohort year. The funding from CCT will be used to support fellows whose organization are working towards addressing the racial and ethnic wealth gap in Chicago.
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Grant Recipient
FAMILY RESCUE
Family Rescue requests a one-year grant of general operating support of $150,000 for its programming dedicated to supporting homeless women and children recovering from domestic violence to build a solid foundation for a safe and secure future. With a primary focus on providing temporary and then locating permanent housing with a housing first approach, Family Rescue serves a highly underserved population through the crisis of fleeing violence and becoming homeless into a future of housing stability and a permanent end to the cycle of violence and homelessness. An operating grant from the Chicago Community Trust would allow Family Rescue to continue to serve mostly marginalized women and children on the south and west sides of Chicago with its highly impactful programming, thereby helping to meet the Trust’s 10-year goal of increasing the number of households meeting their basic human needs. Family Rescue’s consistent outcomes over the last five years prove that its programming truly ends the cycle of homelessness and domestic violence: • 85% of families served find and maintain permanent housing • 75% of children who received counseling exhibit fewer behavioral and emotional problems • 85% of households served maintain or increase their financial stability • 80% of families housed maintain violence-free households Family Rescue’s clients are mostly women of color--who are disproportionately impacted by intimate partner violence--and a large portion of our services are located in the most underserved communities for survivors of domestic violence, the south and west sides of Chicago. Family Rescue provides a multitude of housing options: emergency shelter, two-year transitional housing, and rapid rehousing/permanent housing. Family Rescue also excels at housing locating for permanent housing, bolstered by the fact that a majority of Family Rescue’s staff and senior management mirror the client population in terms of race and gender, with a significant portion of staff being from the south and west sides of Chicago, so the agency, with its 41 year history in these communities, has both community relationships and linguistic and cultural expertise that are assets in finding permanent housing. Led by the same African American executive director for over 25 years, a leadership team and staff that is majority people of color, and a board that is 50% people of color and 50% white, (with two African American candidates currently going through the on-boarding process) and a multitude of staff who are from the south and west sides of Chicago, a portion of whom are intimate partner abuse survivors, Family Rescue is an example of the community crafting and implementing solutions for itself. The agency’s success has resulted in the reclamation of numerous lives from the nightmare of violence and into a stable and solid future.
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Grant Recipient
Center for Changing Lives
Center for Changing Lives (CCL) serves as a HUD-approved Housing Counseling organization and Financial Opportunity Center, addressing the dramatic increase in homelessness and barriers faced by newly arrived migrant and refugee populations. With a longstanding commitment to assisting the community with housing searches and application process, CCL ensures all services are delivered in a linguistically and relevant manner, inherently addressing barriers to secure housing. As data indicates a higher likelihood of doubled-up living situations and growing homelessness among the Latiné community in the City of Chicago, CCL utilizes a coaching model to eliminate barriers, facilitating migrant and immigrant families in securing and preserving their own safe housing. Furthermore, CCL provides continuous Resource Development Coaching, ensuring access to public benefits pertinent to housing, utility expenses and other income supports that are accessible to the Latiné immigrant community, and when possible to undocumented immigrants.