Grants

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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.

Explore Our Discretionary Grants

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Showing 4301–4308 of 3857 results

  • Grant Recipient

    DEVCORP NORTH

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $50,000

    DevCorp North dba Rogers Park Business Alliance (RPBA) continues to experience delayed State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity grant awards, contracts and payments. We have leveraged our organizational operating capital reserves to continue to provide services as planned. At risk of needing to make painful programming adjustments again in 2024, we respectfully request a renewal of the $50,000 in a bridge grant of working capital from Chicago Community Trust to fund our Business Accessibility Toolkit Program (BAT). Thanks to funding in 2023, BAT successfully served its target clients who are low-median income historically underserved people of color, especially Black, Latinx and other diverse business owners and entrepreneurs who own and operate existing businesses in our service area. Ongoing challenges with State of Illinois’ unreliable timelines, static funding levels, lack of clarity and minimal responsiveness to requests for guidance are resulting in our hesitation to apply for other government grants. For example, we received an intent to fund notification on 1/18/24 for the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) we host at RPBA for the same amount as we were granted in 2023. When we were awarded the designation in 2020, we were told that annual increases were the norm. Unfortunately, with COVID, things changed and last year was the first time that we were allowed to increase our funding request. Now, in 2024, we have again been informed that 2024 will be funded at the same level as 2023. In addition, we have an intent to fund but as of 4/1/24, we have not yet received a contract for 2024. This means that although our Q1 deliverables are complete, we cannot request reimbursement since we do not have a contract.

  • Grant Recipient

    CITY COLLEGES OF CHICAGO FOUNDATION

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $150,000

    City Colleges of Chicago is requesting support for the third year of its math redesign project in the total amount of $150,000. This funding will support advancing CCC’s developmental education strategies intended to improve student momentum into and through college-level mathematics. CCC seeks to maintain project management support to continue progress made during Year 1 of the project , all of which builds upon the recommendations of the Developmental Education Planning Committees, the math discipline, and the pilot instructors of the program. Continued progress will require project management support and funding for program design, delivery, and improvement. The project manager convenes faculty, develops project plans, monitors deliverables, and ensures progress toward full implementation of the math redesign. Additionally, the project manager serves as the knowledge manager of all efforts focused on improving early momentum into and through math gateway coursework. The improvement of outcomes through curriculum and course redesign sits at the intersection of the work initially undertaken by the Developmental Education Planning Committee and the Equity Champions initiative. Our curriculum redesign will add co-requisite opportunities, create a single developmental level course that can prepare students for either STEM or non-STEM math pathways, and create short continuation courses to prevent students from needing to take a step backward in their progression. CCC will develop and deliver robust faculty development for the new curriculum to ensure improved student outcomes and continue to provide non-credit Level Up workshops so that students can maximize their initial placement. The result of this work will be a pilot of a sequence of math courses and supports designed with student success and progression in mind, leading to more students taking and passing college-level math in their first year.

  • Grant Recipient

    Ladies of Virtue NFP

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $50,000

    Ladies of Virtue (LOV) is a nationally recognized, award-winning, mentoring and leadership development program serving over 2,000 young women and girls in Chicago annually (600 girls enrolled in leadership programming and 1500+ served via community outreach). Additionally, LOV is founded and led by a Black woman, rooted in Black communities, and serves historically disinvested neighborhoods including those disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Unfortunately, LOV is at a disadvantage when it comes to applying for - and stewarding - essential federal and other government funding. This funding is needed to support the vital workforce and community development services LOV provides. Requested funds would build LOV's capacity to apply for and manage government funding by increasing our financial management capacity, further developing our Salesforce data management CRM and data integration tools, easing the process of data collection, storage, analysis, and reporting.

  • Grant Recipient

    P33

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $400,000

    P33 is requesting funds for General Operations to support our efforts to increase the representation of Black and Latinx individuals in the tech sector and to fulfill our mission of making Chicago a top-tier tech hub driving inclusive economic growth.

  • Grant Recipient

    ILLINOIS HISPANIC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $100,000

    The Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation, serving as a fiscal agent for the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, seeks support to strengthen the organizations' internal capacity to identify and apply for grant opportunities generated by the availability of American Recovery Act Plan (ARPA) funding at the federal, state and local level. Support from this grant will also enable the organizations' to hire a dedicated staff person to support the management, coordination and reporting responsibilities for the organizations' existing grant-funded programs. Building this capacity internally will enable the organizations to allocate resources and remain focused on the broader goal of ensuring that a bilingual, culturally-sensitive business technical assistance ecosystem is available and accessible to the growing number of Latino small businesses and entrepreneurs in Northeast Illinois.

  • Grant Recipient

    LiftUp Communities

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $180,000

    LiftUp Communities, LUC, the c3 arm of an employment social enterprise, accelerates the stability and mobility of low-wage workers, their family and friends, by addressing generational poverty head-on, expediting trusted social services referral, and concurrently finding and swiftly addressing gaps in resource access and delivery. LiftUp Communities’ works symbiotically with a growing portfolio of employment social enterprises and MBEs where our primary client pipeline works, as well as their social fabric: household, extended family, and self-identified support networks. In this grant period, LUC’s gap-filling priorities include incorporating human-centered program design to scale pilots; Concierge Services, potentially adding Health-Medical billing and Education-FAFSA to current Financial Wellness and Immigration and Legal Services tracks; Confidence Program, language and digital literacy; Barrier Reduction Fund and Program; Baby Bonds-529 Savings Program; Stability Skills Workshops; Youth Internship, and; our initiatives to formalize the Side Hustle. Clients are supported with 1:1 family-centered case management combined with stability coaching to navigate and access wraparound services addressing their specific needs. Additional goals this grant period include implementing use of Apricot case management software, fortifying program evaluation and analysis for faster iteration and innovation, and a keen focus on guiding clients in their progressively increasing use of services, as well as expanding our reach within our clients’ social fabric. We plan to socialize our insights and learning, both progress and failures, within the nonprofit and social impact sectors.

  • Grant Recipient

    E. G. Woode, L3C

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $200,000

    E.G. Woode L3C, with guidance from Upside Collaboration Company (UPSIDE) and numerous community partners, is looking for better ways to leverage our real estate development to support the Englewood community. We are doing that through the establishment of a community benefit trust (CBT) that will take the profits from our developments and put it directly into use by the community. This grant application is to provide funds to seed and administer the CBT while the underlying properties are completed and become profitable.

  • Grant Recipient

    CENTER FOR DISABILITY AND ELDER LAW INC

    Awarded: Awarded Amount: $65,000

    Over the past three years, CDEL’s funding has grown, thanks to additional government funds from the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan funds from the state, county, and city. In 2022, CDEL received more than $500,000 from various government funders. Each new grant brought additional compliance issues and more intensive reporting, stretching the time and capabilities of the executive director and legal director. Meanwhile, CDEL's staff has doubled in size, and the additional human resource needs have also strained organization leadership. CDEL hired an operations manager in December 2022 to provide more support to the leadership team, but this role requires additional funding. A capacity building grant from CCT will enable CDEL to 1. configure its case management system (LegalServer) to better support compliance with government grants; 2. stay on top of changes in human resources with a membership to the Society for Human Resource Management; 3. train leadership staff on human resources and federal grant compliance; 4. cover grant writing costs associated with preparation and submission of large grant applications; 5. enable CDEL's outside bookkeeper to keep up with the number of vouchers CDEL must submit monthly or quarterly; and 6. cover a portion of the salary of the new operations manager.