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
Entrepreneurs Academy
Entrepreneurs Academy is seeking a capacity-building grant from the Chicago Community Trust to increase our ability to manage local, state and federal funding sources in an effort to serve socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in Chicago, including low-income Communities of Color, veterans, LGBTQ+ individuals, and those reintegrating into society after incarceration. This grant will enable us to significantly increase our ability to collect and report impact data, accurately collect and analyze financial data, manage expenditures and allocations to appropriate line items and funding sources. This grant will help us be audit ready and position our administrative house to be attractive to other funders and program advocates. Our request focuses on four key initiatives: strengthening our operational processes, enhancing data management, upskill grant management staff, and increase full time administrative staff. Enhanced Grant Management: The addition of a dedicated part-time grant coordinator will meticulously track complex grant income, and its associated bookkeeping, and reporting. This ensures compliance and frees up valuable time for our staff to focus on serving socially and economically disadvantaged participants. Streamlined Operations: Transitioning our part-time executive administrator to a full-time role will create a central hub for administrative support. This streamlines the tracking of program and accounting records, fostering better communication and data collection and communication between grant monitors, stakeholders and auditors.. Dedicated Development Expertise: Entrepreneurs Academy aims to expand the capacity of the organization by extending our current contract for a professional development consultant/grant writer to help us manage current funding sources and secure additional funding, especially through state, federal, and private grants. Increased Professional Development: A key aspect of building organizational capacity is investing in the continuous professional growth of our staff. This grant will allow us to allocate resources towards comprehensive training programs to enhance skills relevant to our work such as grant management best practices, fundraising strategies, project/budget development, database training, bookkeeping, and compliance, executive education and training on public-private partnership development. All of these initiatives will enable the CEO to focus more on strategic business growth and partnership development, while accelerating our ability to mange the grant facilitation process more accurately and timely. By strengthening our operational foundation, acquiring dedicated grant expertise, establishing efficient grant management processes, and providing professional development funds, this grant will position Entrepreneurs Academy for sustained compliance and impact . It also provides an important bridge needed to build alternate sources of income so that we will be better equipped to attain sustainability to serve low-income Communities of Color and the re-entry population, ultimately fulfilling our mission of empowering individuals and fostering economic mobility.
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Grant Recipient
Center for Neighborhood Technology
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Grant Recipient
Fresh Taste
North Lawndale Fresh (NLF) is a collaborative grantmaking program to increase access to healthy affordable food; support community gardens and local food production; grow food enterprises; and protect and strengthen food assistance programs in the North Lawndale neighborhood. The vision is an equitable Chicagoland region where all people have knowledge of and access to healthy food. The funders involved with North Lawndale Fresh have committed to a minimum $1M for each of five years to support the neighborhood. 2024 is the third year of the five-year commitment to North Lawndale Fresh. This project aligns with the building supply-side skills and attracting capital strategies of Food:Land:Opportunity while also reducing fragmentation.
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Grant Recipient
Lawndale Christian Legal Center
LCLC is requesting support to maintain its full-time Grant Manager. This position was added as a new position to LCLC in 2023 and has proven to be an invaluable addition. The Grant Manager helps administer the grant process including contract implementation, compliance and reporting, and managing funder relationships. In order to sustain the advances we have made in grant administration and to maintain this same level of resourcing, we are fully committed to retaining this staff position and your grant will help make that a possibility. The addition of the Grant Manager role has better positioned LCLC to access and manage funds, particularly government funds, by having a dedicated person to assist in accessing the award and complying with all grant requirements. This continues to be a priority as ARPA funding sunsets and LCLC must find additional revenue sources to sustain its current level of services.
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Grant Recipient
Fresh Taste
Austin Fresh is a collaborative grantmaking five-year program started in 2020, to increase access to healthy affordable food, support community gardens and local food production, grow food enterprises, and protect and strengthen food assistance programs in the Austin neighborhood. The vision is an equitable Chicagoland region where all people have knowledge of and access to healthy food. The funders involved with Austin Fresh have committed to a minimum $1M for each of five years to support the neighborhood. This renewal request is for the fifth year of this neighborhood focused funder collaborative. This project aligns with the building supply-side skills and attracting capital strategies of Food:Land:Opportunity while also reducing fragmentation.
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Grant Recipient
PLANT CHICAGO NFP
Plant Chicago is requesting support for our food access, markets, and indoor victory garden project. Collectively these activities support small food producers while at the same time ensure that low income residents have access to locally and sustainably produced food.
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Grant Recipient
Resurrection Project
The Resurrection Project (TRP) requests support from The Chicago Community Trust to support its capacity managing government grants. Specifically, with the continued support of The Chicago Community Trust, TRP will assess and improve its subgrantee invoice processing and payout systems. As a result, TRP will be able to deploy funds faster and more efficiently, helping subgrantees meet the urgent needs of the vulnerable individuals and families they serve.
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Grant Recipient
Partnership for College Completion
The Partnership for College Completion (PCC) is an organization that advocates for policies, practices, and systems that increase college completion rates and eliminate degree completion disparities for low-income, first-generation, and students of color in Illinois. PCC's goal is to improve college graduation outcomes and eliminate inequities in college access, persistence, and completion for these target student populations in Illinois. The organization uses a unique, three-part approach to achieve its mission. The proposed grant would support PCC's Data & Research and College & University Partnership teams. The Data & Research team will conduct original research and a literature review to develop a report on issues and opportunities with college transfer to highlight areas where practice and policy can affect position change for students in Illinois. Additionally, this grant will provide support to PCC’s College & University Partnerships team in developing and executing programming and coaching support to via the Illinois Equity in Attainment Initiative (ILEA), providing support for colleges and universities across the state in their efforts to advance racial and socioeconomic equity in student outcomes on their campuses.