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
Youth Outlook
Youth Outlook aims to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ youth in the suburbs of Chicago and rural Illinois. For the young people we serve, Youth Outlook’s direct service programs facilitate ongoing personal growth, the development of a positive identity, and access to affirming healthcare. For families, we provide support, resources, and advocacy tools. For teachers, social workers, and other youth-serving professionals, Youth Outlook helps them create atmospheres in their institutions that are more welcoming to LGBTQ+ youth. Each year, Youth Outlook serves at least 400 youth ages 12-24, 95% of whom identify as LGBTQ; 65% identify as transgender, non-binary, or gender fluid. We also serve 25 families with kids in grade K-6, 50 additional parents and grandparents, and 3,000 youth-serving adults.
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Grant Recipient
SIT Hub
We are requesting $36,000 in creative arts funding in order to provide art therapy services and host community arts events to LGBTQ2SIA Chicagoans, with an emphasis on reaching trans and queer creative workers struggling to find financially and culturally accessible mental health resources. The requested amount of $36,000 would enable the latest addition to our team, our art therapist and event producer, to provide 10 hours of individual and group services per week and facilitate one community arts event per quarter. This funding is critical for the LGBTQ+ community because it bridges the need for culturally aligned and accessible mental health services with opportunities for creative expression and community arts programming.
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Grant Recipient
Taskforce Prevention and Community Services
TaskForce Prevention and Community Services respectfully requests $30,000 to support our mission to improve the sexual health and overall well-being of LGBTQ+ youth of color in Chicago. We do this by providing a safe space for fellowship, HIV/STI screening and education, and on-site referrals to medical, housing, and other social services. Together with our staff, community members, board members, and other stakeholders, we are working towards a world without health disparities and we’re committed to being a respectful, caring partner serving everyone affected by health disparities through our comprehensive, integrated prevention, care, and treatment programs.
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Grant Recipient
GF Productions
Gender Fucked Productions envisions a world where trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming artists are able to thrive and make art that pushes beyond any binary we could imagine. We advance trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming equity through supporting artists and coalescing radical community. It is so vital to our community that we share stories of trans joy, resilience, and connection in this era in which trans people have been under attack on all fronts. GFP hopes to be a major contributor to trans resilience here in Chicago and beyond by supporting our community’s emerging artists. Gender Fucked Productions has an ever expanding list of performance types, and we’re currently producing in the areas of dance, musical cabaret, puppetry, new play development, and open mics. The aesthetic of our work is centered on not only blurring the lines of gender but also the lines of genre. For our projects, the biggest financial priority is paying the artists we work with. We have been paying small stipends and wish to increase this dramatically. For example, our Producer Mentorship Program has the highest paying stipends and is only $500 for a 6 month commitment. This inability to pay artists what they are worth continues to perpetuate societal inequalities, especially in regards to race and disability. This means only those who have pre-existing financial stability have been able to work with GFP. In 2024, we allocated a total of $4,000 towards these mentor and mentee stipends. Support from the LGBTQ Community Fund would allow us to continue our paid Producer Mentorship Program next year, retain the mentees as mentors, and increase the total stipend amounts. While we have a strong cohort of artists that believe in what GFP is doing, this kind of low pay has led to some of our collaborators having to leave or take breaks from our work. We have the structure, connections, community trust, and people in place, all we need is the financial support. We are prepared to put the funds to use immediately upon receiving them. We would put this award towards the continuation of said mentorship program in 2025, our inaugural trans play/music festival in the works for spring 2025, and raises in the small stipends for our artists at all levels. Additionally, all senior leadership positions are unpaid, so this grant could allow for compensation not exceeding that of our programs’ producers.
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Grant Recipient
About Face Theatre Collective
About Face Theatre (AFT) is honored to request $40,000 in general operating support from the Chicago Community Trust. We believe that our organizations have a shared vision for the future of Chicago as a place where all members of the LGBTQ+ community can thrive and live life to the fullest as their authentic selves.
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Grant Recipient
One Roof Chicago
Chicago's LGBTQ+ community is facing pressing needs at both ends of the lifespan - a crisis in youth homelessness, accelerated aging among people living with HIV, and an acute lack of culturally competent support for seniors. At the same time, the national political climate presents an existential threat to our community, with Illinois becoming a sanctuary state for individuals fleeing discriminatory and deadly policies elsewhere. One Roof Chicago is a transformative initiative to build a welcoming and inclusive intergenerational community on the South Side of Chicago for older adults and young people. * Affordable housing centered around the needs of LGBTQ+ elders and older adults living with HIV * Supportive housing at the same site for LGBTQ+ young adults impacted by homelessness * Focused job training in culturally competent senior care ORC is designed to provide proof of concept for the kinds of infrastructure and policy models that our community needs, now and with increasing urgency as time passes. In 2025, we will be moving forward on several fronts: (a) launching the first cohort of our workforce development program to provide seniors with caregivers from within our own community and supporting our young people with a stable and rewarding career ladder; (b) completing the property transfer process from the City and finalizing site plans; and (c) proceeding from pre-development to the financing phase of the project, including preparing a Low Income Housing Tax Credit application and taking the first steps toward a full capital campaign. Funds will support our ongoing operations and staffing to ensure we hit our marks as we move forward toward these ambitious goals.
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Grant Recipient
Prison and Neighborhood Arts-Education Project
The Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) began educational programming at Stateville Men's Prison in 2011 and in 2022 began running programming at Logan Women's Prison. Our programming bridges offering educational curriculum inside with community advocacy efforts on the outside and aims to build relationships of reciprocity that bring artists, scholars, and writers together with incarcerated. PNAP is seeking support to fund expenses related to our programming at Logan Women's Prison which is expanding from one to two sessions this fall '24 session. Logan participants are openly LGBTQIA identified and hold crucial lived experiences as incarcerated individuals that must be a greater part of the narrative on incarceration. Programming at Logan began as monthly reading groups and zine making workshops attended by as many as 100 individuals. As gatherings progressed, some individuals eventually organized their own groups and zine making sessions. This is significant in that our facilitators aim to encourage input and initiatives into Logan programming that are directly led by participants. We are seeking funding to cover programming expenses for work executed by our current part-time Logan Program Coordinator and an incoming part-time facilitator. This year, we will grow from one monthly session to two monthly sessions. One session will be information based while the other will be creative based. Students will decide what sort of curriculum they want and the facilitator will build out the structure for the session with the Logan participants and seek the necessary supplies. The session will begin this fall '24 quarter and continue through spring '25. Our Logan programming has a strong partner in the Women's Justice Institute among many other volunteers that uplift women and those incarcerated in women's prisons. The long term vision for these initial sessions is to prepare students for the possibility of exploring academic programming in 2-3 years tentatively with the University of Illinois-Springfield. An official degree program is more likely in the next five years, however, our current programming will focus on building up related skills in critical thinking and writing in preparation for academic coursework. Our Logan programming is growing quickly but will be limited if run solely by part - time staff. Our goal is to secure funding for a full time staff position by FY26 and increase funding for class supplies.
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Grant Recipient
BLACK ALPHABET NFP
The Culturally Responsive Therapy (CRT) program offered by Black Alphabet is a pioneering initiative aimed at addressing the mental health disparities within the Black LGBTQ+ community. The program is designed to provide culturally competent mental health services, including one-on-one therapy sessions, group art therapy counseling, and community-based art workshops that are sensitive to the intersectional experiences of race, gender, and sexual orientation. By offering tailored mental health support, the CRT program seeks to enhance the well-being, resilience, and overall quality of life for its participants. With this $40,000 grant request from the Chicago Community Trust, if granted, we will be able to continue supporting the sustainability of this program for our participants and interested community members, further providing ongoing access to equitable mental health resources administered by licensed clinicians.