LGBTQ Community Fund Grants Support Community Safety and Employment

The LGBTQ Community Fund (the Fund), an affinity Fund of the Trust, unites donors to support Chicago’s LGBTQ community. Since its founding in 2010, the Fund has provided $2.5 million in grant support to 45 organizations.

With its second decade of grant making underway, the Fund is shifting to a new annual grant cycle to address specific focus areas from 2022 to 2024, intending to distribute between $300,000 to $400,000 in grants annually. The LGBTQ community determined the focus areas based on results from a needs assessment commissioned by the Fund.

In the needs assessment, survey respondents identified the need for community safety, violence prevention, and safe spaces as significant issues in the LGBTQ community. Additionally, the assessment found a high-priority need to focus on employment, earning a livable wage, and intersectionality-competent workforce development specific to the needs of LGBTQ+ community members.

In 2022, the Fund awarded $365,000 to 11 nonprofit organizations focused on community safety and employment.

The LGBTQ Community Fund awarded its 2022 grants in January 2023 to the following organizations:

• About Face Theatre: In support of general operations to advance LGBTQ+ equity and maintain and build upon employment and accessibility initiatives.
• Affinity Community Services: In support of the capacity building, strategic planning, and general operations, including maintaining and expanding monthly peer-led support groups for Black lesbian, bisexual, transgender women, and Black trans/nonbinary people assigned female at birth.
• AIDS Foundation of Chicago: In support of programming that advances access to high-quality employment and education opportunities for transgender women, particularly Black and Latinx women in Chicago.
• Brave Space Alliance: In support of The Dignity Project, an upstream community safety program addressing social, economic, and structural violence against BIPOC transgender people in Chicago by facilitating resource redistribution and access to services.
• Center on Halsted: In support of The LGBTQ+ Older Adult Employment Program, which addresses the unique challenges and barriers faced by LGBTQ+ older adults in securing employment and obtaining financial security.
• Chicago House and Social Service Agency: In support of general operations, including the Community Health Apprenticeship Program (CHAP), an opportunity for LGBTQ+ Black and Latinx young people to be exposed to various community health careers and become certified as HIV testers and counselors.
• Equality Illinois Institute: In support of general operations for capacity building of the Safe Work coalition pursuing criminal justice reform in and around sex work and power-building efforts in the Chicagoland area.
• Life is Work: In support of general operations to support and uplift trans-People of Color through direct services, activism, and advocacy.
• Chicago Therapy Collective: In support of GetTrained, which provides educational offerings to trans-affirming employers in Chicago to successfully recruit, interview, and hire transgender and non-binary job candidates.
• Women in Need Recovery: In support of general operations for wraparound, holistic reentry services at sites in Chicago and Berwyn to members of the LGBTQ2S+ community after a period of incarceration.
• Youth Services of Glenview-Northbrook: In support of the Pride Youth Program serving LGBTQ+ youth and their families, focusing on expanding services to Spanish-speaking youth and families, increasing community events, and providing meaningful employment opportunities.

In the coming years, the Fund’s grant cycle will focus on housing, health, and mental health in 2023, and in 2024 will fund organizations with budgets of less than $2 million, emphasizing youth, seniors, and art programs. Organizations whose work aligns with the 2023 grant cycle can check for opportunities in the fall of 2023.