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…
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
Sisters in Cinema
Sisters in Cinema centers and celebrates Black girls, women, and gender-nonconforming media makers, providing programs designed to educate, raise visibility, and support and serve our communities. We are dedicated to empowering and uplifting voices within the LGBTQ+ community through media arts. We address the unique needs of LGBTQ+ seniors by fostering community and belonging, and we support LGBTQ+ youth through vocational services, leadership development, and safe, inclusive spaces. Our programs provide LGBTQ+ inclusive arts and culture opportunities, ensuring diverse representation and tailored support for those facing intersecting forms of oppression. By focusing on historically marginalized, underrepresented, and underserved groups of Black people, including older adults, youth, trans, gender non-conforming individuals, and women/femmes, we strive to create an equitable and inclusive environment where members of the Black LGBTQ+ community of media makers and storytellers have equal opportunities to create and thrive.
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Grant Recipient
Life Is Work
Life Is Work (LIW) requests $40,000 in general operating support to enhance and expand our existing Unity in Wellness drop-in center, dedicated to serving the TLGBQ community with creative outlets and gender-affirming resources in a welcoming and educational environment for youth. The Center is open every Thursday from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 5463 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60651. During these hours, African American and Latinx TLGBQ and gender-diverse participants can access a safe space where they can speak freely about their personal experiences of loss and grief, as well as navigate the intersectionality of various marginalized identities. Participants can address complex and unresolved experiences centered around death, sex work, survival sex work, dismantling of friendships, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, distrust in medical systems, dangers of saying no, and sex positivity. The Unity in Wellness drop-in center also addresses the unique needs of TLGBQ youth, including affordable housing, by increasing youth access to housing navigation by entering youth into the Homelessness Management Information System(HMIS), where they can obtain housing referrals. The drop-in center allows youth to engage in transitional housing, gender-based housing for individuals who are survivors or fleeing domestic/ intimate partner violence. Youth will be connected to domestic violence advocates for additional support. Youth can access ID and birth certificates to reduce barriers with name changing and meeting housing eligibility requirements. By utilizing the drop-in center, youth can obtain streamlined health care services to access Monkey Pox vaccinations in partnership with CDPH, gender-affirming care, and psychotherapy provided by Rush Hospital social workers. The community will have access to resources such as a food pantry and solidarity closet that will help address food insecurity and clothing necessities. Addressing barriers to employment within TLGBQ Unity in Wellness drop-in center will provide youth with internal referrals to access vocational services that will help with life skills development and access pathways for employability. The drop-in sessions are not only centered on community and belonging but also on increasing leadership development, advocacy, and the offering core programming services such as non-medical case management needs for supportive services, HIV Prevention services such as HIV testing and linkage to care PrEP, and PEP referrals to increase access to sexual health and wellness, and Gender-affirming housing to combat issues of safety, acceptance and housing discrimination.
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Grant Recipient
Public Media Institute
Public Media Institute (PMI) is a 35 year old nonprofit that has over the years grown into a hub for Chicago’s LGBTQ+ artist and media communities, particularly on the South West Side. By taking care of platforms like Lumpen Radio 105.5 FM, Co-Prosperity, and Buddy, PMI convenes and amplifies a heterogenous range of marginalized voices through broadcasts, exhibitions, convenings, and long term relationships. Our organization’s mission is deeply rooted in progressive activism, which has always included elevating LGBTQ+ artists, performers, and youth. Having started as a hub for young folks via Lumpen Magazine in 1990, the organization now focuses more on fostering intergenerational dialogue and community-building through publications, exhibitions coalitions and events that bring older and younger artist organizers together, and by intentionally working with predominantly queer artists from a large range of backgrounds on our volunteer Programming Council. Operating with a budget just under $1.5m, PMI is positioned to put more concerted effort into programs that serve queer people in the Chicago area. Our leadership, staff, and programming are composed of 85% BIPOC and 40% LGBTQ+ individuals, and having funding earmarked for work with friends of Dorothy work allow us to do so much more saying “yes” to the exciting projects that Chicagoland’s swishiest artists and media makers want to present on our platforms. We seek funding to continue and expand our efforts, particularly in supporting queer performance art exchanges with venues like Links Hall and our midewstern network of MdW partners, promoting intergenerational exchange and oral history work with artist organizers who were active in the 80s and 90s through our NAAO + Act Up radio interviews and publication research, and by amplifying the voices of LGBTQ+ youth and elders on the radio via a genderqueer audio portrait initiative led by trans Yollocalli graduates. Since 1990 one of our taglines has been “a front for the left in the arts,” and as such we understand that our various projects don’t fit any one identity box very cleanly, but neither does the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and we have done a lot to build power and platforms as scrappy BIpoc and queer folks on the south side and we would love to be able to use what we’ve built even more in service of queer community in Chicago, the best city on the continent! We are grateful for your consideration. Fingers crossed!
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Grant Recipient
LAKESIDE PRIDE MUSIC ENSEMBLES INC
Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles, a 501(c)(3) organization, is seeking general operating funds in order to sustain our rapidly growing membership of over 400 musicians. Our reach spans the entire Chicagoland area with performances in Lakeview, Pilsen, South Shore, West Town, Andersonville, Buffalo Grove, and beyond. Operating for over two decades, our storied organization looks to expand our community to any and all LGBTQ+ and allied musicians who are seeking community through the musical arts.
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Grant Recipient
Youth Outlook
Youth Outlook aims to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ youth in the suburbs of Chicago and rural Illinois. For the young people we serve, Youth Outlook’s direct service programs facilitate ongoing personal growth, the development of a positive identity, and access to affirming healthcare. For families, we provide support, resources, and advocacy tools. For teachers, social workers, and other youth-serving professionals, Youth Outlook helps them create atmospheres in their institutions that are more welcoming to LGBTQ+ youth. Each year, Youth Outlook serves at least 400 youth ages 12-24, 95% of whom identify as LGBTQ; 65% identify as transgender, non-binary, or gender fluid. We also serve 25 families with kids in grade K-6, 50 additional parents and grandparents, and 3,000 youth-serving adults.
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Grant Recipient
SIT Hub
We are requesting $36,000 in creative arts funding in order to provide art therapy services and host community arts events to LGBTQ2SIA Chicagoans, with an emphasis on reaching trans and queer creative workers struggling to find financially and culturally accessible mental health resources. The requested amount of $36,000 would enable the latest addition to our team, our art therapist and event producer, to provide 10 hours of individual and group services per week and facilitate one community arts event per quarter. This funding is critical for the LGBTQ+ community because it bridges the need for culturally aligned and accessible mental health services with opportunities for creative expression and community arts programming.
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Grant Recipient
Taskforce Prevention and Community Services
TaskForce Prevention and Community Services respectfully requests $30,000 to support our mission to improve the sexual health and overall well-being of LGBTQ+ youth of color in Chicago. We do this by providing a safe space for fellowship, HIV/STI screening and education, and on-site referrals to medical, housing, and other social services. Together with our staff, community members, board members, and other stakeholders, we are working towards a world without health disparities and we’re committed to being a respectful, caring partner serving everyone affected by health disparities through our comprehensive, integrated prevention, care, and treatment programs.
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Grant Recipient
GF Productions
Gender Fucked Productions envisions a world where trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming artists are able to thrive and make art that pushes beyond any binary we could imagine. We advance trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming equity through supporting artists and coalescing radical community. It is so vital to our community that we share stories of trans joy, resilience, and connection in this era in which trans people have been under attack on all fronts. GFP hopes to be a major contributor to trans resilience here in Chicago and beyond by supporting our community’s emerging artists. Gender Fucked Productions has an ever expanding list of performance types, and we’re currently producing in the areas of dance, musical cabaret, puppetry, new play development, and open mics. The aesthetic of our work is centered on not only blurring the lines of gender but also the lines of genre. For our projects, the biggest financial priority is paying the artists we work with. We have been paying small stipends and wish to increase this dramatically. For example, our Producer Mentorship Program has the highest paying stipends and is only $500 for a 6 month commitment. This inability to pay artists what they are worth continues to perpetuate societal inequalities, especially in regards to race and disability. This means only those who have pre-existing financial stability have been able to work with GFP. In 2024, we allocated a total of $4,000 towards these mentor and mentee stipends. Support from the LGBTQ Community Fund would allow us to continue our paid Producer Mentorship Program next year, retain the mentees as mentors, and increase the total stipend amounts. While we have a strong cohort of artists that believe in what GFP is doing, this kind of low pay has led to some of our collaborators having to leave or take breaks from our work. We have the structure, connections, community trust, and people in place, all we need is the financial support. We are prepared to put the funds to use immediately upon receiving them. We would put this award towards the continuation of said mentorship program in 2025, our inaugural trans play/music festival in the works for spring 2025, and raises in the small stipends for our artists at all levels. Additionally, all senior leadership positions are unpaid, so this grant could allow for compensation not exceeding that of our programs’ producers.