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.
-
Grant Recipient
Center for Community Self-Help
The Center for Community Self-Help (Self-Help), in partnership with The Resurrection Project (TRP), the Hope Center Foundation of Chicago (HCF), and Lawndale Christian Development Corporation (LCDC), requests $40,000 to support our proposal to Advance Sustainable Homeownership in the greater Chicago area. These funds will supplement our second-year funding, allowing our collaborative to increase the geographic reach of our program by adding a new partner (HCF) - a trusted community organization serving greater Roseland - while minimizing the financial shock to existing collaborative members. Together, our two funding proposals seek to directly complement and enhance the work of the Reclaiming Chicago Initiative (RCI), a campaign organized by United Power for Action and Justice to help families in the South and West Sides of Chicago build wealth through homeownership. For this iteration, the collaborative will build on the learnings of our first year of funding and support the RCI vision by providing counseling services to individuals across the home purchase spectrum, utilizing referral channels to connect potential homebuyers to affordable financing solutions, forging new relationships to increase homebuyer DPA access, and piloting an expanded reserve program to protect new owners against unforeseen financial emergencies that may threaten their new ownership status. Through these efforts, we will work towards our long-term Reclaiming Chicago goal of increasing and sustaining the number of Black and Latino homeowners across the South and West Sides of Chicago.
-
Grant Recipient
Metropolitan Planning Council
MPC is committed to building equity in Chicago's built environment by tackling systemic challenges that have historically marginalized communities of color. This organizational grant will support three key initiatives: 1. Great Rivers Chicago focuses on collaborative governance and community engagement to improve riverfront development and environmental stewardship. MPC will work with the River Ecology and Governance Task Force to enhance co-governance, community involvement, and long-term river asset management. 2. The Chicago Citywide Land Use & Zoning Assessment aims to facilitate comprehensive land use planning and reform Chicago's zoning regulations. MPC will conduct public engagement, evaluate Planned Developments, and develop accessible resources to guide community stakeholders and policymakers. 3. The Home Lending Partnership Implementation Program is part of MPC's Change Lab and seeks to create equitable pathways to homeownership for underserved communities. By fostering collaboration between financial institutions and community-based organizations, the program will address systemic barriers to economic stability and homeownership for residents of color. The requested general operating support will enable MPC to sustain and expand these initiatives, driving lasting community revitalization and economic inclusion for communities of color.
-
Grant Recipient
Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance
During year 1 of our program, CAFHA, Breakthrough Urban Ministries, and NHS built a new program, as part of the 3C initiative, from the ground up. The HCV Homeowner Mentor Program, was designed by and for housing choice voucher holders. Homeowner Mentors are housing choice voucher holders who have the lived experience of using a voucher to purchase a home of their own. They serve as guides for prospective homeowners and provide one-on-one support throughout the homebuying process by working with their housing counselor counterparts to help participants meet program requirements and set personal goals. An additional component of this program was the establishment of a Homeowner Club for Housing Choice Voucher Homeowners to offer peer support, tips, and resources on an ongoing basis. The Club is a place for HCV Homeowners to access trusted resources and recommendations for everything from grant programs and free homeowner resources, to home maintenance and reliable and affordable contractors for home repairs. For our year 2 of the program, we will continue our main services of mentorship and building up the Homeowner Club, all while creating greater efficiencies and nimbleness into the program design. Year 1 was defined by building and learning; we envision Year 2 as a time for deepening and expanding our impact.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Grant Recipient
Commercial Club Foundation
Chicago’s vibrant economy remains the anchor of the American heartland, generating nearly $1 trillion in annual economic activity. These impressive macro numbers mask an underlying dynamic; though minority residents constitute nearly one-third of Illinois’ population, they are grossly underrepresented in corporate supply chains. That’s why the Civic Committee launched an economic inclusion strategy called the Business Diversity Initiative (BDI). Our vision is to make Chicagoland the most economically inclusive and prosperous region in the country by increasing spend with underrepresented businesses, hiring residents from underinvested areas of the South and West sides, and creating an ecosystem of organizations working collectively to sustain change. The Civic Committee commissioned research from McKinsey that revealed that Illinois’ future favors 4 high-growth sectors; Professional Services, Financial Services, Manufacturing and Technology. These high-growth sectors drive more than 40% of Illinois’ GDP, 30% of jobs and have margins of 5-45%. Civic Committee member organizations spend annually in excess of $70B on Professional Services and $40B on Technology. Although more than 33% of Illinois residents are Black or Hispanic, their businesses account for <1% of total revenues. There is a significant gap in Chicago between high-growth sector demand and underrepresented business supply. In 2022, the Civic Committee launched the BDI Task Force, led by co-Chairs, John Rogers, Founder, Chairperson and Co-CEO of Ariel Investment and Scott Santi, former CEO, and non-Executive Chairperson of Illinois Tool Works. This twenty-person senior executive group is charged with addressing Chicago’s underrepresented business supply gap and adjacent wealth gap. In 2024, the Civic Committee hired Regina Heyward as Senior Vice President of Economic Inclusion to provide BDI executive leadership. At the invitation of the Chicago Community Trust, the Civic Committee requests support to implement the full scope of the BDI Task Force’s implementation plan. A complete budget and explanation of expenses is included herein.
-
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.
-
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.