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
Chicagos Sunshine Enterprises Inc
Sunshine Enterprises (SE) and the South Shore Chamber Community Development Corporation (SSCCDC) will offer two cohorts of SE’s "Community Business Academy" (CBA), a 12-week cohort-based model of technical assistance for local entrepreneurs. These two cohorts for artists and artisans industries will serve 15-20 entrepreneurs each. SE will then offer Business Acceleration Services and Credit to Capital programming including coaching, credit improvement, access to capital, and workshops. After each CBA, SSCCDC will conduct “The Artisans Collective” (TAC) retail readiness training program (twice total). TAC’s retail readiness program is a 6-week, cohort-based model of technical assistance geared towards helping artisans become retail-ready. It is then paired with affordable access to The Artist Hub, a commercial space in South Shore for qualified businesses with the long-term goal of the clients being ready for retail space in South Shore’s commercial corridors. The Artist Hub will feature low-rent access to space as well as create a place of enjoyment and community. Further, SSCCDC will offer supplemental workshops for continuing education. New in this grant period, SSCCDC will launch a 3 full-day Prepare to Shift workshop series (offered twice) in addition to the TAC retail readiness training. SE will offer expanded advanced coaching options to help clients access capital, and SSCCDC will offer a 4-session Bank of America Financial Literacy workshop series twice during the grant period. Together these innovations will better prepare clients for retail readiness and accessing capital. Together SSCCDC will serve at least 50 unduplicated clients in addition to those served in the SE CBA. Combined with those alumni served by SE’s Business Acceleration Services and Credit to Capital programming, the partnership will serve at least 110 entrepreneurs overall. The partnership will include the continuation of several interventions to improve the success of the entrepreneurs, including supporting entrepreneurs at over a dozen pop-ups (and sponsoring entrepreneurs to attend), developing an even clearer bridge from CBA to TAC curriculum, and providing affordable commercial spaces in South Shore for clients to utilize for business activities.
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Grant Recipient
YOUNG INVINCIBLES
Young Invincibles (YI) trains and guides young adults (ages 18-34 years) to amplify their stories and lived experiences. We elevate young adult perspective with decision makers and leaders of higher education and workforce policy. With them, we conduct young adult research, build campaigns, speak out, and forcefully push for progress in systemic policy reforms. YI closely collaborate with our partners in the field to ensure young adult voices are amplified and are centered in policy reforms that will impact them, particularly young adults from traditionally marginalized communities.
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Grant Recipient
Shriver Center on Poverty Law
The Shriver Center on Poverty Law (Shriver Center) requests a $140,000 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 Fund Our Futures Illinois Coalition. Our work across these coalitions aligns with one of the Trust’s priority policy areas – Income Growth Solutions. Engaging in coalition work allows Shriver to put its values of supporting community-driven advocacy, using a racial justice lens, into practice. We explicitly focus on race because we understand that policy choices that keep people mired in poverty disproportionately impact people of color. According to the 2023 Illinois Commission on Poverty Elimination and Economic Security, more than 1.4 million or 11% of Illinois residents are living in poverty, and 630,012 or 5.1% are living in deep poverty. People of color in Illinois are substantially more likely to live in poverty than White Illinoisans. For every dollar a White household earns in Illinois, a Black household earns 52 cents. Of those living in poverty, 25% are Black/African American and 16% are Hispanic/Latino. This is compared to 9% for White Illinoisians. Close to one in eight Black Illinoisans is living in deep poverty. More than a third of Black children were below the poverty level in 2018, which was 1.75 times that of the next lowest group (Latinx children at 20%). The work of each coalition addresses the racial wealth gap by providing the lowest income Black and Latinx Illinoisans with more direct cash assistance, changing our state’s tax code to raise more money from wealthier individuals and corporations, and ensuring that low wage workers have access to paid time off and paid family and medical leave so they can maintain their jobs while benefiting from time off to spend with their families or address health concerns for themselves or their family members. Our advocates generally serve as the primary legal and policy experts at these tables, increasing the strength and ultimate success of each 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.
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Grant Recipient
Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project
FLAP proposes to help Chicagoland’s low-wage immigrants, including, recently-arrived Latine immigrant families and youth, 15 to 26 years old, to apply for work permits and expungement to be able to enter to the workforce accessing better jobs. Through its free legal services, Know Your Rights community education program and in cooperation with the Latine Consulates and law firms FLAP partners with, the organization will empower low-wage immigrants, including youth, with law knowledge to better negotiate salaries to find better wages and more stable jobs and avoid exploitation and human labor and/or sex trafficking.
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Grant Recipient
North Lawndale Employment Network
North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN) is a place-based, nonprofit workforce development organization whose mission is to increase the earnings potential of the North Lawndale community of Chicago through innovative employment initiatives that lead to economic advancement and an improved quality of life. NLEN is more than a workforce development agency; we are a social justice organization that uses innovative employment initiatives to undo the devastating impact of historic disinvestment on Chicago’s West Side. Through our neighborhood-based employment initiatives that address the root causes of poverty, NLEN works to bridge the racial wealth gap and serves as a driving force for social equity and racial healing on Chicago’s West Side. NLEN is committed to solving the problem of unemployment among men and women with criminal backgrounds and individuals impacted by poverty and gun violence. As an experienced practitioner and trusted subject matter expert, NLEN collaborates with community stakeholders to lift families and communities out of poverty to reduce gun violence and recidivism. Our 24-year history of successfully managing placed-based initiatives that deliver employment and supportive services to residents recovering from the effects of mass incarceration and chronic exposure to gun violence has proven to interrupt the cycle of violence. NLEN provides integrated job readiness, employment training, career pathway development, job placement, and retention services – with wraparound and barrier reducing support – that begin with a comprehensive orientation and enrollment process, participant assessment, and individual employment plans (IEPs); and continues with case management, supportive service coordination, and occupational skills training. Our unique programming leads to upskilling and certifications for participants, ensuring program graduates are equipped with the hard and soft employment skills, along with industry-recognized credentials, which lead to family-sustaining jobs, long-term employment success, and economic advancement. NLEN assesses each program participant to customize the wraparound support needed to address barriers to program participation, training, and sustained employment. Supportive services include healthcare and mental health support, financial coaching and services, housing and homeless prevention services, civil legal aid, transportation, work uniforms, tools, supplies, tuition, books, and digital literacy training. As a core component of our job readiness program, occupational skills training, and job placement services, NLEN’s Financial Opportunity Center (FOC) contributes to the bundled support of program participants, supporting their financial wellness and economic advancement. The FOC team includes certified financial wellness coaches that lead the intake and assessment process; work closely with our Client Solution Specialists to coordinate wraparound supports; provide one-on-one coaching to establish financial goals and create and implement financials plans; and provide financial and digital literacy workshops.
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Grant Recipient
HOUSING FORWARD
Housing Forward is requesting $150,000 in general operating funds from the Chicago Community Trust to further our vision of ending homelessness and our mission of bringing people out of housing crisis and into housing stability. Flexible funding from foundations like the Trust will be utilized to support programs, staffing, and other administrative costs as needed to fulfill our mission for all 2,000 of our existing clients each year, particularly as we work to expand our own congregate shelter and supportive housing options available to our clients.
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Grant Recipient
University of Chicago Urban Labs
Safe and stable housing allows people to live with security and dignity. It also provides the stability necessary to invest in themselves and their communities. Unfortunately, housing is not considered a right or entitlement in the United States: only 26 percent of households who are eligible for housing assistance receive some form of support due to chronic underfunding of these programs. At the same time, the supply of affordable housing has dramatically declined in recent decades, creating a permanent housing affordability gap for a vast majority of low-income households. The challenge of finding affordable housing is particularly acute for returning residents, who face additional barriers to accessing subsidized housing and pronounced discrimination in the labor market. For these and other reasons, people who are exiting incarceration are at extremely heightened risk of experiencing homelessness as compared to other residents, particularly within the first month of release. Stable housing is critically important for returning residents to successfully reintegrate into the community and, notably, is required to avoid reincarceration; “insufficient housing” is considered a parole violation. Despite the clear need for services to address a wide range of foundational housing and additional supports for this population, there is very limited evidence on what types of programs help returning residents find stable housing. There is rich ethnographic data on the barriers returning residents face when trying to find stable housing and reintegrate into the community, but much less information on how existing pilots or programs may be falling short of addressing these barriers and meeting returning residents’ complex support needs. The Cook County Justice Advisory Council (JAC) and City of Chicago Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) have both secured funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to launch pilots focused on addressing the housing needs of returning residents. Each program offers a short-term housing subsidy and wraparound supportive services. JAC and DFSS both believe that stable housing is pivotal to promoting economic mobility for residents, allowing them to obtain and retain employment. They further expect that residents’ well-being will improve and their probability of recidivating will decrease. Given the limited guidance from existing research, as well as the fact that these innovative pilots are both new programs for each respective agency, JAC and DFSS have invited the Inclusive Economy Lab (IEL) to serve as an analytic partner and help them understand in real-time whether these programs are meeting their stated goals. IEL is proposing two complementary research components to better understand how these programs are serving returning residents: 1. A process evaluation, for which IEL will co-design a data dashboard with the JAC to help them understand whether programming is meeting important interim metrics, such as lease up rates, length of time required to find housing, and participant levels of engagement in supportive services (note: DFSS has already developed a similar dashboard internally, which can serve as an important model) 2. Qualitative data collection from those directly impacted, including program participants, service providers, parole officers, and landlords, to glean insight into the successes and challenges that each group is experiencing through their participation in the respective programs. Partners will use these quantitative and qualitative to improve their programming in real-time, helping ensure the success of these two specific pilots, and will also use lessons learned to inform the design of future programs, should the pilots be sustained and scaled. IEL will facilitate a community of practice with the two agencies that will meet on a quarterly basis, allowing partners to reflect on these insights and identify implications for ongoing program design and administration in real time. IEL will compile a policy brief with key findings from the pilots and lessons learned in the Community of Practice by August 2026. (Note: the timeline for this project is two years, extending one year beyond the one-year CCT grant.)
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Grant Recipient
Business Services Collective NFP
EMPOWER offers back-office services to create financial readiness for accessing capital leading to access to construction projects. Since inception, EMPOWER has supported nearly 50 BIPOC entrepreneurs to leverage the market opportunity in construction to create the pathways for wealth and job creation reducing the racial wealth gap. EMPOWER is a partnership between Business Services Collective NFP DBA BUILDERS AVENUE and Greenwood Archer Capital, funded by FEBG/CCT since 2020 when we joined forces to create an ecosystem of support for BIPOC businesses to build financial health and access capital. For 2024-25 the partnership will focus on serving the existing clients of GAC through post loan support to be successful at the expanded credit limits. We will also expand our work to support upto 10 clients from the construction portfolios of upto 3 new CDFIs