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
Northern Illinois University
STAMP is a collective impact partnership between Education Systems Center at Northern Illinois University (EdSystems), the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association Education Foundation, and regional collaboratives comprised of public school districts and their postsecondary and employer partners. STAMP’s goal is to prepare youth for in-demand, living wage careers in manufacturing, with a special focus on recruiting and retaining historically marginalized populations including Black, Latinx, and female youth. STAMP’s focus is on developing high-quality college and career pathways from secondary to postsecondary and careers, which include robust work-based learning and acquiring in-demand industry credentials. This proposal seeks funding to specifically support STAMP in Chicago, suburban Cook County, and Kane County. STAMP received funding for school years 2022¬–24 through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s Job Training and Economic Development program. A competitive grant renewal is currently pending with the state agency, which has shared that both the total number of grants awarded, and the award amounts will decrease. At minimum, support for this proposal will cover the funding gap; ideally, when braided with the agency funding, it will allow STAMP to serve more students in the Chicago metro region.
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Grant Recipient
Logan Square Neighborhood Association
Palenque LSNA respectfully requests program support to continue our work in the administration, research, and coalition building components of the Illinois Community Land Trust Task Force. This renewal comes at a crucial time as, due to administrative delays in the state, the Task Force began meeting later than expected and now our timeline has been extended with Task Force meetings concluding in December 2024 and a report to be published in Spring of 2025. Illinois Senate Bill 2037, passed in partnership with the Illinois Housing and Development Authority (IHDA) and the office of Governor JB Pritzker, established this Task Force. The bill presents a unique opportunity to further our collective efforts in promoting equitable wealth building and community shared ownership arriving as community land trusts (CLTs) gain momentum regionally as a tool for increasing homeownership in Black and Latinx communities. Entry level homeownership is increasingly inaccessible to families; good quality homes are too expensive in gentrifying neighborhoods and too rare in disinvested ones. However, CLTs reverse this trend by creating opportunities to build wealth while ensuring neighborhood stability in both gentrifying and disinvested communities. Through CLTs, neighborhoods retain land ownership and equitably compete with investors, leading to balanced, community-driven development and more opportunities for Latine and Black families to access generational wealth. The state of Illinois recognized this benefit. In January of 2023, it awarded the Here to Stay Community Land Trust $5 million in American Recovery Plan Act funds to accelerate land acquisition and development and to provide equitable subsidies for new homeowners. However, policy barriers inhibit the growth and success of CLTs. The State remains uninformed and unprepared to repair racial wealth gaps through homeownership in part because of their unfamiliarity with CLTs as a model for neighborhood stability and their lack of relationships with budding regional CLTs. This is beginning to change. The Task Force will continue to conduct research and lead community engagement, the findings of which will become a report published in partnership with IHDA. This report will set an agenda for strategic policy reforms to accelerate the success of CLTs, seeding future systemic reforms and additional funding to increase homeownership in Black and Latinx communities. We are still collecting data and discussing solutions, we do not expect a bill to be created yet therefore we do not intend to lobby for any legislation as we are still collecting data and discussing solutions. We believe that CLTs are essential to creating affordable housing options, preserving neighborhood stability, and empowering residents to build wealth and achieve economic security through shared ownership. With the Trust's support, we aim to leverage the Task Force to develop and implement policies in the future that expand access to community ownership of land and ensure long-term affordability for Chicago’s most vulnerable people.. Through our efforts to promote and support Community Land Trusts, we are directly addressing the racial wealth gap in Illinois. By creating affordable homeownership opportunities in Black and Latinx communities, CLTs help build wealth and ensure neighborhood stability. These efforts are crucial in reversing the trends of gentrification and disinvestment that disproportionately affect these communities. Our commitment to community engagement and education ensures that residents are empowered to take an active role in their neighborhoods, fostering a sense of ownership and economic security. By addressing the systemic barriers to CLT adoption and operation, we are working towards a more inclusive and equitable housing landscape in Illinois.
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Grant Recipient
Safer Foundation
Safer Foundation (Safer) proposes its Healing Economic And Racial Trauma through Homes (HEARTH) program to provide justice impacted Cook County residents with affordable housing units and rental subsidies. The overarching goal of the project is to provide a productive, supportive, and permanent pathway toward stabilization by providing subsidized, permanent supportive housing for at-risk or housing insecure individuals to address, reduce and/or eliminate associated barriers and cost burdens to housing. The program is further positioned to respond to socio-economic insecurity through an array of holistic, wraparound services that address and advance employment outcomes, access to social services, and physical, mental, and behavioral health while employing harm-reduction principals to address the long-term stability and well-being of at-risk individuals leading to living wage employment. This work is crucial in supporting the reentry efforts of those released from incarceration and addressing many issues of our highest poverty communities.
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Public Interest Research Group Education Fund
Illinois PIRG Education Fund is a recognized leader on utility accountability and insurance reform. Our successful coalition building and strategic, long-term approach have successfully shaped public narrative and policy outcomes. We led the charge in standing up to powerful utility companies, paving the way for a remarkable shift in utility regulation in Illinois last year - including a new focus on affordability. We launched a coalition to tackle unfair and excessive car insurance rates, taking on another industry that was considered too powerful to challenge in Illinois. In a relatively short period of time, our campaign has elevated the issue, built political will, and demonstrated that meaningful reforms are achievable. Utilities and insurance are both relatively universal - utilities provide essential services and insurance is required to drive, which many Chicagoans must do to access education, work and health care. But in both industries, common practices have disproportionate impacts on communities of color as observed through greater energy burdens, disproportionate utility disconnection rates, and objectively discriminatory car insurance rates. We have consistently demonstrated an ability to convene and lead coalition efforts that lead to tangible change. With the generous support of the Chicago Community Trust, we’ve made significant progress building power and advancing policy priorities over the past several years. The coming year presents exciting opportunities to build upon our progress: after eight years of campaigning, we are on the verge of implementing fundamental reforms to the Peoples Gas pipe replacement program, which has significantly contributed to crippling utility debt particularly in majority Black neighborhoods in Chicago. We are also at an inflection point in our car insurance campaign, transitioning from initial organizing and educating to campaigning to advance tangible policy reforms that will rein in excessive and discriminatory car insurance rates.
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Grant Recipient
Greenhouse Scholars
Greenhouse respectfully requests a grant of $200,000 from the Chicago Community Trust in support of our Whole Person College and Post-College Young Leaders Programs. This grant would allow Greenhouse to execute current programs with quality and expand our impact and services for Chicago-area young adults both during and for a decade following college. This work ensures the diverse constituents we serve are well-positioned to build generational wealth and to create opportunity, prosperity, and access to choices for others in their families and communities.
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Grant Recipient
Center for Community Progress
Community Progress’ and Chicago Community Trust’s (Trust) ongoing partnership, has yielded great results from 2022 to 2024, specially with the passing vital legislation to reform the Illinois property tax system (SB 1675). With the continued support from the Trust, Community Progress will provide the following services aimed at building wealth in communities of color – specifically Black and Latine households– by minimizing the harms imposed by vacant and deteriorated properties and increasing housing stability: (1) Support the Trust and its community partners, including, but not limited to, Cook County and statewide stakeholders in their efforts to implement the 2022-23 property tax system reforms; (2) Assess and educate the Trust and relevant stakeholders on the potential impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Tyler v. Hennepin County (Tyler) on the Illinois Property Tax Code (PTC), including identifying the need for, and helping to assess, proposed legislative responses to address concerns regarding the Supreme Court decision; (3) Conduct research, identify, and design a range of potential legislative and policy solutions to enhance the ways in which Illinois communities can more equitably, effectively, and efficiently leverage the PTC to keep vulnerable families in their homes and to reduce vacant, tax-delinquent properties; and (4) Work with the Trust to explore how it can best partner with local organizations and nonprofits to implement policy and practice changes to address vacant properties and support families hoping to secure and maintain property that has been passed down to them (i.e., heirs’ property).
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Grant Recipient
Loyola University of Chicago
Loyola University Chicago developed Arrupe Continuing Scholars, a two-year to four-year pathway to a bachelor’s degree, as part of its overall commitment to serving a diverse population of students. The program builds on Loyola’s successful associate’s degree program, Arrupe College, and continues the Jesuit tradition of offering a rigorous liberal arts education to a diverse population of students, many of whom are the first in their family to pursue higher education. Arrupe College uses an innovative model that ensures affordability while providing care for the whole person, and students graduate with their Associate of Arts degree with little or no debt. For 50 or more of these graduates continuing on in Loyola bachelor’s degree programs annually, Arrupe Continuing Scholars provides a range of academic resources, tutoring, career planning and social supports such as peer mentoring. Designed as a cohort model, Arrupe Continuing Scholars creates a supportive campus community designed to foster a culture of inclusivity and belonging, increasing students’ likelihood of success. We respectfully request a grant of $200,000 from the Chicago Community Trust for Arrupe Continuing Scholars to expand student success services and address barriers to bachelor’s completion for Arrupe graduates.
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Grant Recipient
Inner-City Muslim Action Network
Incorporated in 1997, IMAN was established with a singular goal in mind, to provide restorative whole-life, wrap-a-round support to residents of two of Chicago's most severely under-resourced communities, Chicago Lawn and Englewood. Our mission is driven by the people that are directly affected and deeply invested in resolving the social issues impacting these under-resourced south side communities. IMAN employs integrative holistic interventions to address structural and systemic injustices impeding a dignified quality life for people in marginalized communities by fostering health, wellness and healing through its integrative approach. We are able to achieve this by providing quality healthcare, case management and wrap-around services through our arts & culture, organizing & advocacy and a transformative ReEntry program. IMAN’s Green ReEntry program's intention is to restore both justice and dignity to individuals who have been trying to survive and overcome systems that have made progression nearly impossible. It is critical and necessary to address the whole person as oftentimes unresolved trauma can impede one’s pathway to success. Therefore, our approach is to provide GRE participants with access to barrier reduction services in the form of housing (for those that need it), primary and behavioral healthcare support and soft skills training such as resume writing, financial literacy and leadership development through various multi-layered seminars including the “ Know Your Rights” seminar. In terms of hard skills, IMAN’s program participants receive classroom training from licensed carpenters, welders, and HVAC professionals as well as on the job training opportunities. The program’s successes include a 80% completion rate amongst all GRE participant leaders. This approach is costly but necessary as we are wholeheartedly committed to addressing the issues of racial equity by creating a pathway to sustainable employment, wealth creation and a path to home ownership for individuals and families that are most deeply affected. We know that investments such as this will ultimately lead to the stabilization of under-resourced communities such as Chicago Lawn and Englewood. Chicago Community Trust’s support would be beneficial to covering the costs associated with the soft skills, educational and the job placement component of our program.