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
Chicago State University Foundation
Approximately two-thirds of all jobs require postsecondary education. However, Illinois public universities and colleges have experienced a significant decline in college enrollment of African American students by 37% in recent years. Designated by the U.S. Department of Education as Illinois’ only four-year Predominantly Black Institution (PBI), CSU is actively working to reverse this trend and increase college enrollment and graduation rates of traditionally underrepresented black students in the Chicago area through its Rise Academy initiative. Well aligned with the Chicago Community Trust’s commitment to programs demonstrating connections to post secondary success with limited debt burden, CSU’s Rise Academy is a first-year, tuition free student success program. Designed to provide students new to CSU with an early and supportive introduction to college, Rise begins with a five-week summer orientation. During the academic year, students receive ongoing academic, cognitive, and social-emotional support in the form of one-on-one check-ins, embedded tutoring, and cohort-based monthly workshops and social events. The scholarship covers tuition, fees, and textbook costs after accounting for grants and scholarships; students also receive a laptop and internet access. With the support of leaders across the city and the state, CSU is taking swift action to dismantle barriers to education equity for Black and Latinx communities. Rise Academy is a part of a suite of data-driven strategies for increasing CSU’s student enrollment, retention, and graduation rates; it is an initiative that will drive measurable - and sustainable - results to close the Black and Latinx education and wealth gap in Chicago and the State of Illinois.
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Grant Recipient
PRIMO CENTER
The mission of the Primo Center for Women and Children is to empower families to become productive, responsible, and independent members of their community. Established in 1977 on the West Side of Chicago, the Primo Center has been serving families in need for over 45 years and has been providing housing and supportive services to homeless families since 1996. The agency is the largest provider of shelter to families in Chicago, serving more than 900 individuals annually (more than 1,200 individuals a year across all agency programs) and provides supportive services to 100 households/units of permanent supportive housing, both in housing owned/operated by the Primo Center in the Hermosa neighborhood and in scattered site housing throughout the South and West Sides of Chicago.
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Grant Recipient
Heritage Museum of Asian Art
Driven by the mission of preserving, presenting, and promoting pan-Asian culture, the Heritage Museum of Asian Art aims to re-explore and convey the stories and cultural significance embedded in Asian heritage through collaboration with artists from diverse fields, emphasizing interpretation aligned with presentation.
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Grant Recipient
South Asian American Policy & Research Institute (SAAPRI)
Celebrating its 23rd year of serving Chicago’s ever-growing South Asian American (SAA) population, SAAPRI is requesting General Operating funds from the Asian Giving Circle to continue using community-based research to formulate equitable, just, and socially responsible policy recommendations that affirm the rights of and improve the lives of the under-served South Asian American community in Illinois. According to SAAPRI's analysis of the 2020 census data and recently released report "Making Data Count: South Asian Americans in the 2020 Census," since 2010, the South Asian American population in Illinois has grown by 39% and is the largest and fastest growing group of Asian Americans in Illinois, accounting for 39% of the state’s Asian American population. SAAPRI’s high quality equity research is the necessary foundation on which direct-service organizations, lawmakers, activists, and those directly involved with and impacted by policy change can act and respond to the most pressing issues in the diverse South Asian American community. Support from Asian Giving Circle would be crucial to maintain current programs that bring South Asian American voices to the table, scale up initiatives developed in response to today’s evolving crises, and bolster SAAPRI’s organizational structure to continue building the socio-economic and political capital of Illinois’s South Asian American population for the next 20 plus years.
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Grant Recipient
Japanese American Citizens League
Intergenerational Conversations: Ripples of the Past is a JACL Chicago program that brings Chicago-area Nikkei (people of Japanese ancestry) together to connect and process the trauma of WWII forced displacement and incarceration through personal story sharing. It was created to bridge the gap in programming for the community’s need for containers to reflect on and heal from the generational impact of incarceration.
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Grant Recipient
Mongolian Heritage Center
Funding for program-related expenses
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Grant Recipient
South Asian American Coalition to Renew Democracy
Legal aid for South Asian American communities experiencing caste discrimination South Asian American community members experiencing caste discrimination have expressed a need for localized legal referral services to report caste discrimination. There is currently no such service in place to assist community members experiencing caste discrimination in the Chicagoland area. Based in Illinois, SACRED, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent organization works to overcome hate in the South Asian American community. SACRED proposes a pilot project to: 1. Map out existing mechanisms and legal aid partners in the Chicagoland area to report caste discrimination; 2. Engage leaders in communities experiencing caste discrimination to develop the project as well as legal referral service tools meeting community needs; 3. Develop a public education curriculum designed specifically to educate leaders in the Chicagoland area on caste discrimination in the U.S.
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Grant Recipient
People Matter
People Matter is applying for general operating support for our work to end white supremacy in 3 to 5 generations. We do this by focusing on Black and Asian solidarity through grassroots organizing, racial literacy education, and direct services. We have an operating budget under $500,000. We are meeting multiple needs unaddressed by other organizations such as anti-blackness, language preservation, and supporting LGBTQ, neurodivergent, housing insecure, and otherwise at-risk API youth. We center API folks in our board, staff, and programming. We serve marginalized groups within the API community. An innovative program we are piloting is our tea business to help diversify our revenue and support work that would otherwise be unfunded-- LIFEisTEA-- a worker's co-operative to combat displacement in Chinatown, as well as a cultural event space to build solidarity between people of color on Chicago's South Side.