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
Roseland Community Medical District
To implement the work outlined in the Roseland Community Medical District Master Plan, an executive director and limited staff needs to be hired. This funding request will cover the expenses associated with hiring and employing full time and part time staff, along with associated office expenses, necessary to implement the Master Plan as contemplated by the Roseland Medical District Commission.
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Grant Recipient
The Chicago Community Foundation/Elevated Chicago
Elevated Chicago requests $300,000 to support the pre-development needs of three ETODs to advance projects towards completion.
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Grant Recipient
DEVCORP NORTH
DevCorp North dba Rogers Park Business Alliance (RPBA) continues to experience delayed State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity grant awards, contracts and payments. We have leveraged our organizational operating capital reserves to continue to provide services as planned. At risk of needing to make painful programming adjustments again in 2024, we respectfully request a renewal of the $50,000 in a bridge grant of working capital from Chicago Community Trust to fund our Business Accessibility Toolkit Program (BAT). Thanks to funding in 2023, BAT successfully served its target clients who are low-median income historically underserved people of color, especially Black, Latinx and other diverse business owners and entrepreneurs who own and operate existing businesses in our service area. Ongoing challenges with State of Illinois’ unreliable timelines, static funding levels, lack of clarity and minimal responsiveness to requests for guidance are resulting in our hesitation to apply for other government grants. For example, we received an intent to fund notification on 1/18/24 for the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) we host at RPBA for the same amount as we were granted in 2023. When we were awarded the designation in 2020, we were told that annual increases were the norm. Unfortunately, with COVID, things changed and last year was the first time that we were allowed to increase our funding request. Now, in 2024, we have again been informed that 2024 will be funded at the same level as 2023. In addition, we have an intent to fund but as of 4/1/24, we have not yet received a contract for 2024. This means that although our Q1 deliverables are complete, we cannot request reimbursement since we do not have a contract.
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Grant Recipient
CITY COLLEGES OF CHICAGO FOUNDATION
City Colleges of Chicago is requesting support for the third year of its math redesign project in the total amount of $150,000. This funding will support advancing CCC’s developmental education strategies intended to improve student momentum into and through college-level mathematics. CCC seeks to maintain project management support to continue progress made during Year 1 of the project , all of which builds upon the recommendations of the Developmental Education Planning Committees, the math discipline, and the pilot instructors of the program. Continued progress will require project management support and funding for program design, delivery, and improvement. The project manager convenes faculty, develops project plans, monitors deliverables, and ensures progress toward full implementation of the math redesign. Additionally, the project manager serves as the knowledge manager of all efforts focused on improving early momentum into and through math gateway coursework. The improvement of outcomes through curriculum and course redesign sits at the intersection of the work initially undertaken by the Developmental Education Planning Committee and the Equity Champions initiative. Our curriculum redesign will add co-requisite opportunities, create a single developmental level course that can prepare students for either STEM or non-STEM math pathways, and create short continuation courses to prevent students from needing to take a step backward in their progression. CCC will develop and deliver robust faculty development for the new curriculum to ensure improved student outcomes and continue to provide non-credit Level Up workshops so that students can maximize their initial placement. The result of this work will be a pilot of a sequence of math courses and supports designed with student success and progression in mind, leading to more students taking and passing college-level math in their first year.
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Grant Recipient
Ladies of Virtue NFP
Ladies of Virtue (LOV) is a nationally recognized, award-winning, mentoring and leadership development program serving over 2,000 young women and girls in Chicago annually (600 girls enrolled in leadership programming and 1500+ served via community outreach). Additionally, LOV is founded and led by a Black woman, rooted in Black communities, and serves historically disinvested neighborhoods including those disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Unfortunately, LOV is at a disadvantage when it comes to applying for - and stewarding - essential federal and other government funding. This funding is needed to support the vital workforce and community development services LOV provides. Requested funds would build LOV's capacity to apply for and manage government funding by increasing our financial management capacity, further developing our Salesforce data management CRM and data integration tools, easing the process of data collection, storage, analysis, and reporting.
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Grant Recipient
P33
P33 is requesting funds for General Operations to support our efforts to increase the representation of Black and Latinx individuals in the tech sector and to fulfill our mission of making Chicago a top-tier tech hub driving inclusive economic growth.
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Grant Recipient
ILLINOIS HISPANIC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION
The Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation, serving as a fiscal agent for the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, seeks support to strengthen the organizations' internal capacity to identify and apply for grant opportunities generated by the availability of American Recovery Act Plan (ARPA) funding at the federal, state and local level. Support from this grant will also enable the organizations' to hire a dedicated staff person to support the management, coordination and reporting responsibilities for the organizations' existing grant-funded programs. Building this capacity internally will enable the organizations to allocate resources and remain focused on the broader goal of ensuring that a bilingual, culturally-sensitive business technical assistance ecosystem is available and accessible to the growing number of Latino small businesses and entrepreneurs in Northeast Illinois.
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Grant Recipient
LiftUp Communities
LiftUp Communities, LUC, the c3 arm of an employment social enterprise, accelerates the stability and mobility of low-wage workers, their family and friends, by addressing generational poverty head-on, expediting trusted social services referral, and concurrently finding and swiftly addressing gaps in resource access and delivery. LiftUp Communities’ works symbiotically with a growing portfolio of employment social enterprises and MBEs where our primary client pipeline works, as well as their social fabric: household, extended family, and self-identified support networks. In this grant period, LUC’s gap-filling priorities include incorporating human-centered program design to scale pilots; Concierge Services, potentially adding Health-Medical billing and Education-FAFSA to current Financial Wellness and Immigration and Legal Services tracks; Confidence Program, language and digital literacy; Barrier Reduction Fund and Program; Baby Bonds-529 Savings Program; Stability Skills Workshops; Youth Internship, and; our initiatives to formalize the Side Hustle. Clients are supported with 1:1 family-centered case management combined with stability coaching to navigate and access wraparound services addressing their specific needs. Additional goals this grant period include implementing use of Apricot case management software, fortifying program evaluation and analysis for faster iteration and innovation, and a keen focus on guiding clients in their progressively increasing use of services, as well as expanding our reach within our clients’ social fabric. We plan to socialize our insights and learning, both progress and failures, within the nonprofit and social impact sectors.