Paving the Path to Homeownership for Housing Choice Voucher Holders
Since the mid-20th century, homeownership has been one of the most important vehicles for building wealth in the United States. According to research from the…
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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
Showing 5221–5228 of 4382 results
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Grant Recipient
Economic Security Project Inc.
The Economic Security Project (ESP) advocates for ideas that build economic power for all Americans. Our playbook – which we call ideas advocacy – is designed to take transformative ideas that are on the margins and bring them into the mainstream of the public debate and into the lives of people. We provoke the existing conventional wisdom to shift what’s considered possible, legitimize the ideas by supporting cutting-edge research and elevating champions, and win concrete policy victories for the communities. We create the environment for these ideas to take root by changing narratives, organizing to win, and passing public policies to guarantee economic stability. We are poised to be at the forefront of the fight to build an economy that delivers for people. In just seven years, ESP’s team of academics, organizers, practitioners and culture makers has had monumental success in moving transformative policy ideas from the margins into the mainstream. As a national organization with affiliates in California (ESCA) and Illinois (ESIL), states we see as vanguards of bold economic advancement, we’ve built networks of thousands of policymakers and advocates, led agenda-setting events convening top thought leaders, policymakers, and media influencers to lift up progress across the country; and generated coverage of our work in The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and hundreds of other news outlets and local publications. As a result, we’ve put trillions of dollars into the pockets of hard-working Americans and shifted policies across dozens of states and in the halls of Congress. In Illinois, ESIL has continued to champion bold economic policies and programs (and build the coalitions needed to support them) in Chicago, Cook County, and statewide. Specifically, our efforts have focused on putting more cash in people’s pockets through guaranteed income pilots (GI), as well as shaping markets to deliver the basic goods and services that communities need to thrive; in Illinois, that includes our work to support the governor’s public grocery store pilot. In the year ahead and with the support of the Chicago Community Trust and other funders, ESP is seeking to expand and build on our past success in Illinois by focusing on the following: (1) DRIVING GUARANTEED INCOME EFFORTS IN CHICAGO, COOK COUNTY, AND ACROSS ILLINOIS When the pandemic relief efforts unleashed the power of cash, ESIL was a leader to the coalition that both fought back against the anti-GI legislation and pushed for the positive ones. We invested in narrative change and communications strategies to move GI work in IL forward. To date, ESIL expanded efforts to support the growing GI movement by providing critical support through coalition building, coordinating a media cohort of participants equipped to authentically share their experiences, and technical assistance that connected experts to policymakers for the guaranteed income pilots in Evanston, Cook County, and the city of Chicago. Now that these pilots have ended, we are shifting our focus to cultivate the growth of the Illinois Guaranteed Income Community of Practice (GICP) and support efforts to win a guaranteed income in Chicago, Cook County, and statewide. Just this past year, through our C4 sister organization Economic Security Project Action (ESP/A), we held the State of Illinois’ first Guaranteed Income Hearing in the Senate and opened the door to legislative debates about how Illinois can operationalize GI statewide. Our coalition on cash led by ESIL has developed critical voices and leaders, our research has identified persuadable populations, and now we stand equipped with effective messaging to begin bringing GI forward as a primary policy consideration for Illinois. In 2024-2025, we seek to support the transition of pilots into policy by uplifting participants’ stories, organizing letters to the editors of local newspapers like the Chicago Tribune, engaging community organizers through town halls and education initiatives, and connecting these stories to local partners around Illinois to drive guaranteed income as a statewide policy. This narrative campaign is built around the GI messaging research recently released by ESP that shows there is a large, persuadable audience we can educate about GI. Support from the Trust would supercharge these efforts by allowing up to make investments in a broader range of audiences such as communities of color. Moreover, support would allow us to expand our coalition to include more organizations working downstate that can connect us to new audiences such as students in Carbondale and parents in Metro East. By building a simple and effective statewide GI narrative campaign that’s reinforced locally, we believe we can capture those unexposed to GI around the state as policy formulation takes place over the summer and fall of 2024. (2) INCREASING UPTAKE FOR THE STATE’S TAX CREDITS THROUGH DIRECT FILE AND BUILDING ON RECENT WINS Tax credits are central to ESP’s mission to fight to build an economy that delivers for people. In Illinois, we started our efforts when ESIL was first launched by creating the IL Cost-of-Living Refund, which focused on expanding the state’s Earned Income Credit (EIC) to cover more Illinoisans. Our efforts have already notched important wins for Illinoisans, including expanding the EIC to cover all childless workers and Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) filers and creating the first-ever Illinois CTC covering children 12 and under. Together, hundreds of millions of new dollars are flowing to parents across Illinois. Specifically, in 2024-2025 we’re focused on increasing the uptake to increase the overall impact these wins will have. To do this, we will deploy the IL Cost-of-Living Refund Coalition, which now boasts 54 members, to ensure the state is equipped with easier, more financially accessible administrative tools like the IRS Direct File program. Not only will this move save taxpayers money, but it will also increase the overall number of people receiving the state tax credits by removing a major cost barrier. This builds on our efforts from the past year working with the Department of Revenue and the Governor’s office to prepare for the second round of the IRS Direct File tool’s launch. By connecting executive leaders in Illinois to states who already accomplished integration with the Direct File tool, we can coordinate the transmission of information and expertise to ensure Illinois can quickly and efficiently deliver on this public option as the state Child Tax Credit begins distribution. Between new incentives to file taxes through the CTC and a free, clear path to apply for these credits, we seek to increase the number of eligible families in Illinois claiming this critical assistance, reversing a decade of slow loss that’s now seen just three in four eligible families claiming the federal EITC. As we coordinate efforts to inform, encourage, and enable Illinois’ executive leadership to commit to the IRS Direct File tool, a simultaneous action must be taken to connect coalition partners to IRS Direct File experts to ensure appropriate educational material is primed and the pilot of the tool launches with exceptional exposure through ads, media moments, and organizing before the 2025 tax season. (3) SUPPORTING THE EMERGING EFFORTS AROUND PUBLIC GROCERY STORES AND AN RX KIDS PROGRAM IN ILLINOIS In tandem with our efforts to advance policies that put cash in the pockets of Illinoisians, ESP is heavily invested in advancing public options policies in Illinois: government-provided goods and services designed to provide the essentials for everyday families. In the year ahead, we will be building on initial efforts in Illinois committed to exploring these policies. Specifically, the Illinois Grocery Initiative seeks to provide grants to local governments to aid in the creation of grocery stores in food deserts. Through its localized expertise in ESIL, ESP provided technical assistance to the cities of Chicago and Venice as they applied for grants via this new state program and led the feasibility studies. As we look ahead to 2024-2025, we will continue supporting these two cities and the governor’s office to site identification through coalition partners’ engagement, building a narrative campaign through op-eds, and training media leaders to ensure this new endeavor is well positioned to amplify the power of government in shaping markets nationwide. Additionally, we presently are leading in educating and informing state leadership about what an Rx Kids program in Illinois could look like. Rx Kids is a groundbreaking guaranteed income pilot that supports pregnant people in the city of Flint, Michigan with $1,500 during pregnancy and $500/month throughout the baby’s first year. ESP is extremely proud to co-chair the advisory board of Rx Kids and is excited to share its impact with a wider audience. In Illinois, ESP is focused on working to inform policymakers on the impact such a publicly funded Rx Kids program can have for children and families. ESP will advance a bold, shared North Star vision for how the state could use public funds, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other underutilized existing programs, to establish an Rx Kids program in Illinois. Key to this effort will be informing and engaging the Illinois GICP members and potential philanthropic partners to build support for such a program. What we believe is that Rx Kids offers an opportunity to directly invest in the health of new moms and ensure a solid foundation to stand upon as they identify and connect to these resources in the most critical moments of a child’s life. We see these emerging pilots as important interventions that will require additional, long-term investments to be successful.
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Grant Recipient
NORTH SIDE HOUSING AND SUPPORTIVE SERVICES
A $125,000 grant would immensely help us pay the operating costs of our new 70-bed, best-in-class shelter that we expect to open this November, before winter weather hits Chicago. Construction started in April. As first-time owners of a building, we know operating a large shelter will cost significantly more than operating shelters as tenants in open-floor plan church basements. Our primary funder, The Chicago Dept. of Family and Support Services (DFSS), has said they would consider an increase in their funding for the new shelter, but would not commit to an increase. For calendar 2023, DFSS funded $480,000 in shelter operating costs. We will ask that DFSS consider starting budget discussions for the new shelter later in July.
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Grant Recipient
CHICAGO COMMUNITY LOAN FUND
Chicago Community Loan Fund (CCLF) is seeking 1.5 years of funding for up to $150,000 to support hiring a Portfolio Analyst which will be a new position that will help get more capital in neighborhoods that need it most by working with current borrowers that have strong probability to become repeat borrowers.
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Grant Recipient
Change Illinois
We aim to continue work to ensure the successful implementation of the ban on prison gerrymandering to take effect in 2025 statewide for the 2030 census. We aim to build off of our Chicago redistricting work and a redistricting survey we sponsored to build support for people and community-powered, transparent ward redistricting. We seek to grow our community organizing efforts, especially in the city's South and West sides, and statewide to grow civic power and engagement in democracy reforms like equitable redistricting, ending prison gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, improved ballot access and transparent budgeting and governing.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago State University Foundation
Approximately two-thirds of all jobs require postsecondary education. However, Illinois public universities and colleges have experienced a significant decline in college enrollment of African American students by 37% in recent years. Designated by the U.S. Department of Education as Illinois’ only four-year Predominantly Black Institution (PBI), CSU is actively working to reverse this trend and increase college enrollment and graduation rates of traditionally underrepresented black students in the Chicago area through its Rise Academy initiative. Well aligned with the Chicago Community Trust’s commitment to programs demonstrating connections to post secondary success with limited debt burden, CSU’s Rise Academy is a first-year, tuition free student success program. Designed to provide students new to CSU with an early and supportive introduction to college, Rise begins with a five-week summer orientation. During the academic year, students receive ongoing academic, cognitive, and social-emotional support in the form of one-on-one check-ins, embedded tutoring, and cohort-based monthly workshops and social events. The scholarship covers tuition, fees, and textbook costs after accounting for grants and scholarships; students also receive a laptop and internet access. With the support of leaders across the city and the state, CSU is taking swift action to dismantle barriers to education equity for Black and Latinx communities. Rise Academy is a part of a suite of data-driven strategies for increasing CSU’s student enrollment, retention, and graduation rates; it is an initiative that will drive measurable - and sustainable - results to close the Black and Latinx education and wealth gap in Chicago and the State of Illinois.
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Grant Recipient
Heritage Museum of Asian Art
Driven by the mission of preserving, presenting, and promoting pan-Asian culture, the Heritage Museum of Asian Art aims to re-explore and convey the stories and cultural significance embedded in Asian heritage through collaboration with artists from diverse fields, emphasizing interpretation aligned with presentation.
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Grant Recipient
South Asian American Policy & Research Institute (SAAPRI)
Celebrating its 23rd year of serving Chicago’s ever-growing South Asian American (SAA) population, SAAPRI is requesting General Operating funds from the Asian Giving Circle to continue using community-based research to formulate equitable, just, and socially responsible policy recommendations that affirm the rights of and improve the lives of the under-served South Asian American community in Illinois. According to SAAPRI's analysis of the 2020 census data and recently released report "Making Data Count: South Asian Americans in the 2020 Census," since 2010, the South Asian American population in Illinois has grown by 39% and is the largest and fastest growing group of Asian Americans in Illinois, accounting for 39% of the state’s Asian American population. SAAPRI’s high quality equity research is the necessary foundation on which direct-service organizations, lawmakers, activists, and those directly involved with and impacted by policy change can act and respond to the most pressing issues in the diverse South Asian American community. Support from Asian Giving Circle would be crucial to maintain current programs that bring South Asian American voices to the table, scale up initiatives developed in response to today’s evolving crises, and bolster SAAPRI’s organizational structure to continue building the socio-economic and political capital of Illinois’s South Asian American population for the next 20 plus years.
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Grant Recipient
Japanese American Citizens League
Intergenerational Conversations: Ripples of the Past is a JACL Chicago program that brings Chicago-area Nikkei (people of Japanese ancestry) together to connect and process the trauma of WWII forced displacement and incarceration through personal story sharing. It was created to bridge the gap in programming for the community’s need for containers to reflect on and heal from the generational impact of incarceration.