Grants

Grant Recipient

Elevate Energy

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $150,000

The Lightbulb team - Elevate, in partnership with Business Services Collective (BSC), and Sustainable Options for Urban Living (S.O.U.L.) - provides a tailored approach to serving diverse construction businesses in order to increase their participation in the growing clean energy economy in Chicago and Illinois.

Grant Recipient

Communities United

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $35,000

Grant Recipient

Growing Community Media NFP

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $70,000

GCM seeks funding for its Greater West Side Own Your Home project, a multiplatform storytelling and education campaign designed to help close the racial gap in homeownership in the Black and Hispanic communities on the West Side of Chicago and in Proviso Township that it currently serves with its nonprofit local community journalism. Through GCM's Austin Weekly News and Village Free Press print and online publications, community relationships, and live and recorded video events, Greater West Side Own Your Home will share stories of local homeowners who have successfully purchased their homes to inspire other community members to do the same. It will provide expert resources to community members about how to navigate the many layers of purchasing a home. And it will reach beyond these communities through sister publications to educate broader audiences to build the will to dismantle systemic obstacles to homeownership among Black and Hispanic individuals and families.

Grant Recipient

Block Club Chicago NFP

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $50,000

A $50,000 investment from the Chicago Community Trust will help bolster our housing coverage on the city’s South and West sides. For the past five years, Block Club has tackled issues ranging from property tax inequity, homelessness, gentrification, tenants rights and affordable housing. We explored how Black and Latino Chicagoans are buying two-flats to build generational wealth and preserve these iconic Chicago buildings. We work with neighborhood groups to promote workshops on homeownership — and ensure this coverage is seen by residents thanks to our hyperlocal and wildly successful newsletters. Our Invest South/West coverage was some of the most robust in the city — and we didn’t just show up to groundbreakings with the mayor. Our reporters sought out residents, stakeholders and explored whether these projects were reflective of what the broader community wanted to see. We will continue to monitor these projects as another administration takes over with its own priorities. Grant support from the Chicago Community Trust will allow us to expand and focus this coverage.

Grant Recipient

Shriver Center on Poverty Law

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $150,000

The Shriver Center on Poverty Law (Shriver Center) requests a $150,000 grant from the Chicago Community Trust to support its leadership and meaningful work across multiple coalitions, including the Cost-of-Living Refund Coalition, Time to Care Coalition, Illinois Domestic Workers Coalition, and Responsible Budget Coalition. We will leverage these networks throughout the grant period as they strive to promote economic and racial justice, strengthen families and communities, and advance policies and reforms that address the racial wealth gap. Our advocates generally serve as the primary legal and policy experts of these tables, increasing the strength and ultimate success of each coalition.

Grant Recipient

Manufacturing Renaissance

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $50,000

Manufacturing Renaissance, MR, was founded in response to the crisis in communities created by the massive deindustrialization that took place in Chicago—particularly on the West and South sides. After years of research and engagement, we recognized that the crisis could have been averted, that we could prevent a significant number of existing companies from closing. As a result of our years of experience, today we are confident a more inclusive manufacturing sector could be a strategic vehicle for community development rebuilding those predominantly Black and brown communities heavily impacted by deindustrialization from decades ago. Equitable development through manufacturing is not only about workforce development, but MR is guided by a profound commitment to inclusion in production, product development, engineering, management, and ownership. Through MR’s Manufacturing Ecosystem Services program area, we play a leading role to raise awareness and build public interest and political will that supports building coalitions, providing technical assistance supports and advocate for the policies that support manufacturing-related programs that advance scalable, sustainable development solutions. This reflects a unique approach to development that MR views as a framework for an industrial policy agenda which we refer to Inclusion & Industry 4.0. If successful, MR programs will contribute to closing the racial wealth gap and increasing the share of economic prosperity for Black, Latinx and other low-income, marginalized or people of color communities. MR is seeking general operating support to increase our chances for impact and success for Manufacturing Ecosystem Services initiatives underway, including the Chicagoland Manufacturing Renaissance Council and Manufacturing Succession Solutions.

Grant Recipient

Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc.

Awarded: August 2023 Awarded Amount: $75,000

Chicago Lawyers’ Committee seeks continued funding to help us build strong communities through the provision of legal and policy advocacy support of community groups and coalitions working and living in historically disinvested communities of color. With support from Chicago Community Trust, we will continue to provide legal and policy advocacy in two of our core civil rights program areas: Education Equity and Equitable Community Development and Housing. Community Need and Our Vision of Lawyering: The law too often has been a central tool in the disenfranchisement of and disinvestment from communities of color. For generations, city, state, and federal laws and policies created systemic barriers that prevent Black and Brown community members from enjoying strong, safe, economically thriving neighborhoods with strong, safe schools for children. In the first half of the 20th Century, the Chicago Real Estate Board established a system of legal covenants that prohibited the sale or rental of residential property to African Americans and thereby forced Black migrants from the South to crowd into narrow strips of land. Similarly, the Federal Housing Authority, which guaranteed millions of residential mortgages starting in the 1930s, redlined African American neighborhoods, refusing to insure mortgages in these areas, and thereby preventing the issuance of mortgages and ensuring race-based housing segregation. In the latter part of the 20th Century and the early 21st Century, the national War on Drugs, and an intractable school-to-prison pipeline led to mass incarceration of Black and Brown community members. Disparate access to legal representation and policy expertise dramatically exacerbated these problems. Many communities of color have seen decades of disinvestment resulting in failing infrastructure, deteriorating buildings, vacant land, general lack of public and private investment, the underfunding of education and the defunding of vital community services. Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights works (1) to break unjust structures and systems to create racial and economic equity, and (2) to center the priorities of communities of color as a driving force for our work. We bring our staff’s legal guidance and expertise to provide our constituents with various options to advance racial justice and community-identified priorities. The tools we use include impact litigation; policy analysis, formation, and development; communications; and substantive expertise in the areas of education, land use, housing, and other core civil rights. Summary of work. In our Equitable Community Development work, we provide legal and policy supports to community-based organizations and coalitions fighting against the negative consequences of historic disinvestment and, in some, cases, current gentrification, with a focus on Chicago’s South and West Sides. We help communities shape and effectuate advocacy and practices that build resilience and opportunity. We do this through popular education that builds advocacy power, crafting and advancing legislation, negotiating with public and private entities, and filing litigation on their behalf, when necessary. In 2022 and 2023, we have worked closely with organizations such as the Lugenia Burns Hope Center to advocate for long-promised affordable housing development on CHA-owned land, even as the City and CHA make deals to transfer this land to wealthy investors/business leaders. On June 1, 2023, we filed litigation in federal court to halt the transfer of land long designated for affordable housing to the Chicago Fire Professional Football Club. With our education equity work, we work closely with students of color, primarily in Chicago and Cook County, who are vulnerable to losing access to educational opportunities because of punitive and exclusionary discipline. We help students who experience harassment and bullying in school because of their race/ethnicity and their families. We also conduct systemic advocacy work, with groups such as Raise Your Hand, to advocate for a more equitable school funding and to fulfill the promise of Illinois's Evidence-Based Funding Law. Currently, EBF is underfunded by more than $7.2 billion, meaning nearly two generations of public-school children likely never receive an adequate education, much less a quality future. When the law first passed, EBF promised equitable funding to ensure fully resourced public schools for all Illinois students by 2027. At the current rate of funding, EBF will not reach its goal until 2054. Over 83% of Illinois’s districts are now underfunded—making the state 45th out of 50 for equitable school funding.