3C Community Profile: Humboldt Park
Take a stroll down the Paseo Boricua corridor on Division Street and it’s easy to see why Humboldt Park is one of Chicago’s most vibrant…
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. Today, that means confronting the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
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Grant Recipient
Bottom Line Inc
Bottom Line’s mission is to support first-generation, degree aspiring students from low-income backgrounds get into college, graduate, and go far in life. Our vision is to create a far-reaching ripple effect, launched by the transformative power of a college degree and a mobilizing first career that will uplift individuals, families, and entire communities. It is a pillar of our common social ethics that all people – regardless of their background or identities – deserve equal access to the basic goods of life. Equally evident is the fact that a college degree is a necessary precondition for accessing many of these goods. Unfortunately, an interlocking set of factors – chief among which are racism, poverty, and under-resourced educational systems – raise deeply entrenched barriers to college graduation and strong first jobs for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Americans. This, in turn, leads our society to fall dramatically short of the promise made by our commonly held values. By failing to provide sufficient access to educational opportunity to BIPOC communities, our higher education system deepens and perpetuates the damaging inequalities under which these communities already labor. On average, college graduates earn about $600,000 more over their lifetimes than high school graduates, a fact which implies disproportionally negative effects for people of color with regards to their overall quality of life as well as the capacity to pass on benefits to others. Further, students of color continue to feel the impacts of having been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, a fact which will certainly exacerbate these inequalities long-term in the absence of concerted remedial measures. A Department of Education report from June 2021, for example, affirms that students of color are enrolling and persisting in college at disproportionally lower rates overall than white students. Bottom Line’s programs continue to represent an essential intervention promoting college and career success. By pairing our students with advisors who serve as expert allies in relentless pursuit of their ambitions and connect them with a best-in-class set of resources tailor-made to fill the gaps in our education system, we help clear a path for accessing the educational opportunity these students deserve. Our work thus represents a significant investment of hope in our students, their communities, and the vision of a more equitable Chicago. Today, Bottom Line has served more than 2,500 Chicago students and seen more than 500 graduate with their bachelor’s degree.
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Grant Recipient
The Monroe Foundation
The Partnership Assisting Community Transformation project is a capacity-building program for past, current, and new Chicago Fund for Safe and Peaceful Communities grantees. The project aims to help community-based organizations develop infrastructure, build effective programs, and secure funding to support both the program and operations.
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Grant Recipient
Inner-City Computer Stars Foundation
Within the next 5 years, i.c.stars is looking to expand and deepen its impact by piloting an extension of the four-month boot camp with various partners and constituency. By creating variations of the boot camp, such as shorter days and extended duration, more candidates will be successful in their pursuit of launching their tech careers. I.c.stars is in discussion with New Moms (Chicago-based 501c3) to establish a cohort of eight participants in 2024. Therefore, i.c.stars requests funding to lay the groundwork for this pilot.
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Grant Recipient
ILLINOIS COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE RIGHTS
Living in poverty is expensive and life-threatening. Low-income families have less access to healthcare, are statistically more likely to live in unhealthy environments, and generally have lower life expectancy rates than their affluent counterparts. Low-income families are often one medical emergency away from falling into financial ruin. The daily expenses of raising a family place working families on vulnerable financial footing that is often impossible to break out of. Poverty is racialized, thus, these burdens are more prominent across communities of color. Undocumented residents face further obstacles as they are more susceptible to exploitative labor practices and have less access to employment opportunities that provide opportunities for upward mobility. Additionally, despite their tax contributions, millions of immigrants are ineligible for government safety net programs solely due to their immigration status. In order to mitigate these burdens on working families across Illinois, ICIRR aims to educate legislators and other stakeholders about the importance of state investments designed to transition all people, regardless of immigration status, out of the cycle of poverty. With support from the Trust, ICIRR will organize its base to build support for state-level investments that fund the creation of a state Child Tax Credit (CTC), an expansion of healthcare coverage to all who currently do not qualify for it, direct cash assistance through guaranteed income programs to low-income Illinois residents, and more. In addition, ICIRR aims to partner with organizations across movements to strategize and advance the generation of new sources of revenue in the state budget. With both the state’s untapped revenue sources and federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars cycling out of state coffers, there is an unprecedented opportunity to expand an inclusive state-level safety net that reduces poverty and creates a Caring Economy for All in Illinois.
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Grant Recipient
Greater Chatham Initiative Inc
The Greater Chatham Initiative, a community-based economic development organization has offered FoodLab Chicago for four years from 2019 through 2023. The Greater Chatham Initiative will partner with the Southeast Commission, and the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce to bring FoodLab Chicago 5.0 for 2023 to 2024 to Chicago’s Southside’s rich and diverse Black restaurant ecosystem. The planned FoodLab 5.0, with be our largest cohort to date with 81 food-based businesses- 25 of the 81 or 31 percent would be new participants, 18 of the 81 or 22 percent would be earlier FoodLab Chicago participants, and 38 or the 81 or 47 percent will complete Menu Engineering and Plate Costing. The Greater Chatham Initiative expects 12 of the 25 FoodLab 5.0 new participants to be vetted and referred by the Southeast Commission, and the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce. Greater Chatham Initiative will identify the remaining 13 of the 25 new participants.
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Grant Recipient
Local Initiatives Support Corp.
One Chicago for All (1Chi4All) is an alliance of 28 community-driven, social impact organizations working together toward a Chicago that is equitable, anti-racist and builds wealth for communities of color. Building on successful efforts to position community-led plans and voice since 2017, 1Chi4All seeks to work with Mayor Brandon Johnson's new administration to achieve greater alignment between City of Chicago resources and the plans more than 20 primarily Black and Latinx communities have articulated. As a result of this project, One Chicago for All will build its power as a coalition to further community-led approaches to increase individual economic security and inclusive hiring at the City and the private sector, provide greater access to capital for small businesses of color and community-led catalytic projects, and increase homeownership rates in Black and Latinx communities.
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Grant Recipient
Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights
Heartland Alliance seeks a $150,000 grant from the Chicago Community Trust (CCT) to support the work of our Impact Division in managing Financial Inclusion for All Illinois (FIAI), formerly titled the Illinois Asset Building Group, a statewide coalition committed to expanding access to the tools families need to build financially secure futures. Through FIAI, a coalition comprised of nearly 50 organizations statewide, we advocate for policy and program solutions that address the growing racial wealth divide through initiatives focused on individual economic security. Our priorities are developed in coalition with an equity lens, using data to understand racial disparities, and centering the voices, experiences, and engagement of directly impacted people. FIAI’s primary initiatives currently include strengthening consumer protections, reforming burdensome debt collection practices, and increasing cash to families. Past grant awards from CCT have been instrumental in funding the coalition management of FIAI, which includes financial management, scheduling, and facilitation of planning related to how the coalition shares power, makes decisions, shares work, and drives necessary communications. We hope to count CCT again this year among our partners in advancing equitable wealth for Illinoisans.
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Action for Children
Illinois Action for Children (IAFC) seeks support for We, The Village Coalition and its ongoing efforts to drive implementation of the recommendations made by Governor Pritzker’s Commission on Equitable Funding for Early Childhood Education and Care (Funding Commission) in March 2021. IAFC is the backbone agency of We, The Village (WTV) Coalition, a statewide, broad-based, formal group comprising over 1,200 organizational and individual members (parents, families, care providers, community partners) that exists to drive implementation of Funding Commission recommendations. WTV Coalition is advancing and revising a racially and economically equitable agenda that centers the experiences and perspectives of African, Latine, Asian, Arab, Native American (ALAANA) women who comprise the incumbent early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce and delivers care and education that children need to thrive. WTV Coalition is both a vehicle and an outcome for building the leadership of parents, families, and ECEC providers in advancing a bold agenda for the ECEC field in Illinois.