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…
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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.
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Grant Recipient
SPANISH COALITION FOR HOUSING
The 3C Buyer Pipeline Collaborative seeks to achieve the goal of providing individuals and families (existing residents) the opportunity to become homeowners in Humboldt Park and East Garfield Park, The Collaborative comes together to do three main things: marketing and outreach to prospective homebuyers to engage, inform and connect resources and opportunities available for affordable and sustainable homeownership through 3C, pair the prospective homebuyers with a HUD-Certified housing counselor to provide full housing counseling, homebuyer education and financial coaching services to prepare the homebuyer for success and long term sustainability, and work with the client through purchase and closing on their home. These efforts will target existing residents within these two target communities with household income of 80-120% Area Median Income (AMI). At the end of this 12-month renewal grant period, the Collaborative will have created a pipeline of 160 households counseled and provided homebuyer education and counseling in the targeted zip codes within the 80-120% AMI range of the 160 households counseled 100 households will achieve mortgage ready status, and 25 3C homes or supported inventory purchased. 160 households counseled reflects the overall target AMI pipeline of which outreach partner Breakthrough Urban Ministries will provide 53 referrals within the targeted 80-120% AMI as a subset of the over 160 client pipeline. The three partner organizations consist of two HUD-Certified nonprofit housing counseling organizations, Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago (NHS) and Spanish Coalition for Housing (SCH), and local neighborhood based nonprofit Breakthrough Urban Ministries (Breakthrough). SCH will continue to serve as fiscal sponsor. 3C investment from the Chicago Community Trust (CCT) and JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) allows collaborative partners to augment service delivery to provide hyper-local outreach, HUD certified housing counseling and homebuyer education services to key community areas of Humboldt Park and East Garfield; mitigate displacement from gentrification and allow opportunities for affordable, accessible, and sustainable homeownership for existing residents while providing opportunity for generational wealth building.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Scaling Community Violence Initiative
As an essential piece of a comprehensive approach to reducing gun violence, Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago (SC2) builds on promising evidence that CVI is effective in reducing violent behavior and victimization among individuals at highest risk. Our preliminary hypothesis is: If SC2 successfully facilitates peace among groups in conflict, integrates the delivery of CVI's five core services, uses data to inform decision-making, and reaches at least 75 percent of the highest-risk individuals in a community, then there will be fewer shootings and homicides and, through spill-over effects, the overall environment will change, further reducing shootings and retaliatory shootings, the incentive to carry weapons, and other conditions that fuel gun violence. CVI organizations currently are active in 37 of the city’s 77 communities but serve only 10-15% of the estimated 20,000 of the city’s highest-risk individuals. Building on lessons from an initial effort to integrate and scale CVI in North Lawndale, SC2’s goal is to reach 50 percent in five years and 75 percent in 10 years through fully-resourced, locally-led, at-scale efforts in the communities most affected by gun violence. Our hope is that successfully scaling CVI will make a significant contribution to an ambitious goal of reducing shootings and homicides citywide by the same amount – 50 percent in five years and 75 percent in 10 years. We urge broad adoption of this goal and a “one-table” approach where government, philanthropy, the corporate community, and the social sector commit to a shared plan that includes long-term strategies and investments in local communities and more immediate interventions, including CVI.
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Grant Recipient
Carole Robertson Center for Learning
The Carole Robertson Center for Learning (the Center) seeks support for our TransformED, apprenticeship model that allows us to recruit, train, and provide educational and credentialing opportunities to individuals from the communities we serve. TransformED addresses both a need for qualified employees within the early childhood sector, and a need for employment and education opportunities for Chicago residents. By addressing the needs of both families and the workforce in tandem, the Center promotes socioeconomic mobility across multiple generations within our communities, while also providing our youngest learners with high-quality, culturally responsive teachers and support staff. Grant funding will enable us to continue offering this initiative as well as pursue expansion of the model to the youth development sector.
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Grant Recipient
LiftUp Communities
This project grant will support the employer practice innovation efforts of the LiftUp platform, comprised of LiftUp Communities NFP and LiftUp Enterprises for-profit MBE-certified social enterprise, specifically to: 1.) fortify our ability to pilot, iterate, and scale our suite of employee benefits and wrap-around services to accelerate the stability and mobility of low-wage workers and their families and social fabric, 2.) launch LiftUp Advice to formally codify insights from our management approach grounded by dignity-based operating principles, that demonstrate improved growth, profitability, and scalability of social enterprises, and 3.) aid working capital needs and directly impact our ability to unlock our Benefit Chicago $750,000 credit enhancement joining multiple sources including MacArthur and McCormick Foundation that believe in testing and scaling our dignity-based employment model.
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Grant Recipient
North Lawndale Employment Network
North Lawndale Employment Network is requesting an additional $225,000 from We Rise Together to retire its remaining debt and loan with IFF. NLEN previously received $495,000 as part of the first cohort of We Rise Together grantees, which significantly contributed to the successful completion of our new 20,000-square-foot Workforce Campus at 1111 S. Homan Ave. This state-of-the-art campus now serves as a thriving community hub, providing workforce development, financial literacy, and digital skills programs. It also hosts NLEN’s social enterprises, including Sweet Beginnings LLC and the Beelove Café, alongside a community event space, pop-up retail for local entrepreneurs, and a Wintrust Bank branch. Since moving into the campus, all programs and activities have been thriving, with the campus serving over 1,100 individuals annually. The new funds will ensure the full repayment of NLEN's construction loan with IFF, allowing us to close this final financial gap and continue our mission without debt constraints. Our goal remains aligned with reducing North Lawndale's unemployment rate by 10% by 2027 and contributing to the broader revitalization of the community through critical job training and economic development initiatives.
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Grant Recipient
Julie's Test Organization
GO renewal application summary.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Trust