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
The Beyond the Groove Foundation
The mission of the Beyond the Groove Foundation (“BTGF”) is to direct and empower Chicago youth and young adults through music, technology, educational, cultural and recreational activities. The BTGF was founded by the Chosen Few DJs - a Chicago-based crew of African American DJs who were instrumental in the founding, growth and development of Chicago House Music - as a vehicle to give back to the community and to assist in providing safe, fun and culturally enriching activities for youth and adults. This application seeks funding to help BTGF’s support of the 30th Anniversary Chosen Few Picnic & Festival (the "Picnic"), which after cancellation in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be held on July 2, 2022 in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago. The Picnic is a beloved event in Chicago’s African American community that furthers the mission of the BTGF and has a significant social, cultural and economic impact on the South Side community where it is held. Through music, dance, communion, fellowship and peace, we engage in powerful civic storytelling concerning the origins of a now worldwide genre of music - and the culture that surrounds it - that was proudly born in Chicago's African American community.
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Grant Recipient
FamilyFarmed
Food:Land:Opportunity support will be used to grow and refine the Good Food Accelerator and its associated programs "Go to Market" and "Accelerate for Growth". These programs will serve the needs of entrepreneurs in underserved communities. Additional effort and capacity will be geared towards community engagement and outreach to better serve minority and women food business owners.
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Grant Recipient
HOUSING ACTION ILLINOIS
This proposal combines Housing Action Illinois' grant renewal requests under two separate RFPs: 1) General operating support under Protecting & Advancing Equitable Homeownership, and 2) Programmatic support under Coalitions for Equity in Wealth Policy. We have labeled our responses accordingly, to indicate what is applicable to our Homeownership work, and what is applicable to Coalitions. Homeownership: Housing Action Illinois will continue to advocate for policies to create and preserve homeownership opportunities in Black and Latinx communities suffering from a lack of private lending, relatively low property values, and high property tax burdens. We will also focus resources on preserving homeownership among long-time Black and Latinx residents in communities experiencing gentrification, displacement, and rapidly increasing property values. CRA: Housing Action Illinois seeks continued support for our co-leadership of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Coalition, which works toward policies to increase the availability of credit and institutional investments in low- and moderate-income communities, particularly communities of color. This year's focus will be to advocate for final state and federal Community Reinvestment Act implementing rules that specifically advance racial equity and meet the needs of low-income communities and communities of color. Coalition partners focus on various needs and constituencies, including lending, small business, community development, financial wellness education, and racial equity. Housing Action’s knowledge and expertise relates to policy advocacy and affordable housing issues, such as residential mortgage lending, housing counseling, and the needs of homebuyers, homeowners, renters, and people experiencing homelessness.
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Grant Recipient
NORTHWEST SIDE HOUSING CENTER
The Northwest Side Housing Center’s (NWSHC's) holistic financial wealth building program (our Housing Counseling and Financial Opportunity Centers) focuses on building household wealth by improving the economic well-being of our community through an anti-racist, intergenerational, and community-led lens. We have learned, to best serve our community, we need comprehensive, integrated approaches that align resources to support households. Our current programmatic work serves over 5,000 families annually and has four established tenets: (1) holistic financial coaching for program participants, (2) leadership development opportunities for program participants, (3) inclusive workforce development services for participants, and (4) comprehensive income support services for participants. Our core housing services include; foreclosure prevention counseling, first-time homebuyer counseling, and rental counseling.
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Grant Recipient
JACKSON ACTION COALITION
Austin is a community on the move. One of Chicago’s most historic neighborhoods, Austin is now proving it can overcome the challenges of disinvestment, deindustrialization, and crime by building on its strengths: community, creativity, and caring. Centered on Chicago Avenue, the Soul City corridor is a new public-private partnership using tax increment financing to envision and build a new westerly gateway for Chicago - - linking the neighborhood’s proud culture to the prosperity of western suburbs, and inviting visitors and residents to enjoy the music and food that are unique to Austin’s resilient African-American community. Already, signs of progress abound. New businesses are opening, and home prices in Austin in 2020 are up nearly 25% over the previous year. Proudly situated at one of the flagship intersections in the Soul City corridor, Soul City Studios is designed to embody and promote these community values. Soul City Studios occupies a special place in the heart of the Soul City corridor -- singled out within the February 2020 Chicago Avenue Soul City Corridor Commercial Development Study Neighborhood Revitalization Plan as the “Entertainment Hub” of the neighborhood’s “Soul Center”. Enthusiastically supporting and promoting this vision, we believe the Austin community needs access to the arts, opportunities to pursue healthy lifestyles, and a space where it can gather and let its voices be heard. That is our guiding vision for Soul City Studios. To meet these community needs, we intend to tastefully rehabilitate our historic corner building near the western entrance to Soul City. The ground floor will be occupied by upscale entertainment-related services, such as a wellness lounge and an art gallery. One of the existing second-floor apartments will be retrofitted as a state-of-the-art recording/podcast studio while the second unit will be upgraded and updated, lending the corner a vital community-supporting residential presence. Soul City Studios has already secured advance tenancy commitments from community-based creative partners, including the show “The Brunch Bunch” on Inspiration 1390AM radio, an iHeartMedia station based in Chicago, Sweet Vegan Bakes dba Sweet Vegan Wellness Lounge, as well as Soul City Art. We are honored to have the support of $250k in grant funding from the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund. We are requesting a PDF grant to pay for architectural schematic drawings, holding costs, engineering plans, loan application and appraisal fees and legal costs necessary to launch a mixed-use rental building. Once the pre development is complete we plan to start rehabilitating the building in June, with an expected construction phase of three-to-six months. During the rehabilitation, we will invest our $250K of NOF Grants for construction & implement commercial leases. When the building is ready in early 2023, our tenants will move in and occupy the space. Which will Create Local resident-led businesses that improve local quality of life, Employment Opportunities & Offer community amenities through our commercial tenants such as Healthy cooking classes, Art Workshops, and Radio/Podcast Training.
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Grant Recipient
Regents of the University of California, Davis
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Grant Recipient
New Covenant Community Development
This is a partnership that was created based on similar visions for supporting small business owners through the development of their busi ness skills. We also specifically focus on development of their financial skills needed to successfully start, grow and manage their business. We plan to increase our impact in this grant year. Beyond our past offering, we also have come to understand there is a need for support of our business owners in dealing with trauma. We believe that it is now critical to be able to provide some level of support in this area to address some of the obstacles that our population encounters.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Trust