Working Together to Care for Our Neighbors

The Chicago region has a long and valued tradition of community organizations working alongside government to deliver essential services and enhance residents’ lives. This model is now rapidly shifting, putting additional pressure on the region’s already-fragile social safety net.

While philanthropy cannot replace federal funding reductions, this moment calls for a strategic, collaborative response. We have an opportunity to come together to support vulnerable Chicagoans, while creating a different way forward for the community of care that helps our neighbors in tough times.

“Our region’s social safety net is undergoing a profound shift, and our nonprofit and philanthropic community is coming together to adapt. We are working to support these efforts with empathy and urgency,” says Trust President and CEO Andrea Sáenz.

The Challenge

The majority of nonprofits already operate on lean margins. While a healthy reserve for an organization is three to six months of operating expenses, an analysis of publicly available data from nearly 2,000 Chicago nonprofits found that more than a third of organizations had less than three months of cash on hand. Some also rely heavily on reimbursable government funding sources.

Nonprofits in the Human Services, Education, Arts & Culture, Healthcare, and Housing sectors are most likely to be affected by government funding cuts. These same organizations are responding to rising numbers of people in need of housing, food, and other critical services, even before cuts to social service programs go into effect. Approximately 360,000 Illinoisans will lose food assistance benefits under recent legislation, according to estimates from the State of Illinois.

Addressing Immediate Needs

The Chicago Community Trust’s Unity Fund serves as a way for our region’s residents to care for one another, with contributions from many joining forces for greater impact. Our donors’ generosity is strategically directed by community and grantmaking experts at the Trust who deeply understand the issues and the organizations working on the frontline to deliver critical services.

Since its founding in 2008 in response to the Great Recession, Unity Fund has made grants to hundreds of nonprofits that provide Chicagoans with emergency food, clothing, housing, legal aid, and more. Unity Fund is designed for agility, to meet the greatest needs as they arise.

While philanthropy cannot cover the full costs of vital programs set up to help people when times get tough, support for Unity Fund will help organizations deliver essential services.

“As we navigate this major upheaval, the support provided by Unity Fund is a lifesaver. It will allow Experimental Station to continue staffing and operating the 61^st Street Farmers Market, which serves an average of 2,300 customers each week with affordable access to healthy food, as well as support our broader food access programming.”

Connie Spreen
Co-Founder and Executive Director of Experimental Station
Experimental Station received a grant from Unity Fund in 2025 to address rising food insecurity.

Contributions to Unity Fund can be made through check, credit card, appreciated securities, your donor advised fund, or an IRA Qualified Charitable Distribution. For more information on Unity Fund, please contact Jerome’ Holston at jholston@cct.org.

To give now, visit www.cct.org/give.

Opportunities for Innovation

A partnership of leading philanthropic organizations in Chicago, co-chaired by the Trust and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is launching a new initiative, The Resilient Chicago Fund, that aims to reimagine the delivery of basic human services in the Chicago region.

While we continue to address immediate needs, we also have an opportunity to re-examine approaches to delivering critical services and bring new thinking to achieve the best possible results in a shifting landscape. The new fund will enable community and philanthropic leaders to work together to pivot from existing models to create new ways to provide essential resources.

We look forward to sharing more information about the fund in the coming weeks. We hope that individuals, business and civic leaders will join us in this effort to build something better that benefits us all. On September 22, we will host a discussion about how our community can come together to chart a new way forward to support our neighbors in need.

Please contact your Philanthropic Advisor to learn more about joining this effort.

Together, We Achieve More

In times of crisis, the Trust has led successful collaborative efforts for our region. Individuals, foundations and corporations contributed more than $35 million to the Chicago Community Covid-19 Response Fund to support neighbors at the height of the pandemic. The Trust-led funder collaborative We Rise Together: For an Equitable & Just Recovery partnered with community members to strategically invest nearly $50 million in Chicago’s South and West Side communities since 2021. That included support for more than 40 neighborhood anchor real estate projects that are now providing vital services and catalyzing economic activity in these neighborhoods.

“When new challenges arise, Chicagoans step up,” Sáenz notes.