Unity Fund: A Look at Impact in 2025
The Chicago Community Trust’s Unity Fund is a testament to the power of collective giving. Since its founding in 2008 at the height…
Community Wealth
Spotlights on community issues, the people, and the organizations who contribute to effective philanthropy as well as a stronger Chicago region and world.
Recent
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Financial Health in Cook County: Why it Matters and How Policy Impacts Financial Well-Being
In 2025, The Chicago Community Trust, with support from JPMorganChase, commissioned the Financial Health Network to update the findings of its Financial Health…
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Responding to Chicago’s Urgent Needs in 2025
As the region’s community foundation, The Chicago Community Trust exists to respond to the needs of our region and the people who call…
“Community Wealth” Community Wealth
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Pre-Development Fund: Allies for Community Business and Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago
Allies for Community Business (A4CB, formerly Accion Chicago) is the region’s largest nonprofit microlender. It is also, along with the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago…
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2021: Coalitions for Equity in Wealth Policy Leverages Efforts to Address Inequity
The Chicago Community Trust launched the Coalitions for Equity in Wealth Policy funding strategy in 2020 just prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.…
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2021 Q2 Grants Support Policy and Systems Change, Community Engagement
As the Trust pursues its moonshot goal of closing the region’s racial and ethnic wealth gap, it is clear that discriminatory policies and systems helped…
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Flexible Funding Catalyzes Neighborhood Investment, Even in Uncertain Times
Community-based organizations are integral to closing the region’s racial and ethnic wealth gap: They work with residents and businesses on community plans, provide supports to…
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Community Desk Chicago: Unlocking Access to Capital
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. It was and still is a predominately Black community. I remember…
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Our Great Rivers Reimagines Chicago River System as Vital Lifeforce
What if Chicago’s rivers were seen not just as waterways, but as treasured cultural and economic assets, similar to Lake Michigan? In 2016, the Metropolitan…
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Fast-Growing Food Enterprise Run by Entrepreneurs of Color Secures New Home
The founders of ChiFresh Kitchen never expected their worker-owned, commercial kitchen cooperative would launch early due to a pandemic-fueled demand for quality meals for people…
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Trust Talks, The Podcast - Episode 3: Catalyzing Neighborhood Investment
In this episode of the Trust Talks podcast, Michael Davidson, senior director of community impact leading the Trust’s Catalyzing Neighborhood Investment portfolio, sits down with Lennox Jackson;…
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2021 Q1 Grants Support Resilience, Equity, Recovery
In year two of its 10-year strategy to close metropolitan Chicago’s racial and ethnic wealth gap, the Trust is starting to see the fruits of…
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We Will Chicago: An Instrument for Equity
Can a city plan be an instrument for equity? We think it can. That is why we believe that the Lightfoot administration’s We Will Chicago…
