LGBTQ Community Fund Grants $420,000 to Support Youth, Seniors, and the Arts in 2024

The LGBTQ Community Fund, an affinity fund of The Chicago Community Trust, unites donors to support Chicago’s LGBTQ community. Since its founding in 2010, the Fund has provided nearly $3.5 million in grant support to more than 60 organizations. 

Based on recent needs assessments of Chicago’s LGBTQ community, the Fund’s annual grantmaking has focused on key areas defined by these findings. The focus for grantmaking in 2024 was on smaller organizations working with operating budgets under $2 million focused on supporting Seniors, Youth, and the Arts.  

In 2024, the LGBTQ Community Fund awarded 17 grants totaling $420,000 to the following organizations: 

• About Face Theatre Collective: For general operating support toward their mission of advancing LGBTQ+ equity in Chicago through community building, education, and performance 
• Association of Latinos Latinas Latinxs Motivating Action (ALMA): For general operating support toward their mission of building power, advocating for justice, and supporting the well-being of all Latinx LGBTQ+ communities 
• Black Alphabet NFP : For general operating support toward their mission of promoting social equity awareness and education in all aspects of life for the Black LGBTQ+/SGL community using public-facing media and arts programs. 
• GF Productions: For general operating support toward their mission to advance trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming equity through supporting artists and coalescing radical community. 
• Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles: For general operating support toward their mission to educate the public at large about the positive aspects of the metropolitan Chicago LGBTQ community through public musical performances, workshops and non-musical events.  
• Life Is Work: For general operating support to enhance and expand their existing Unity in Wellness drop-in center, dedicated to serving the TLGBQ community with creative outlets and gender-affirming resources in a welcoming and educational environment for youth. 
• Links Hall: For general operating support towards their mission of encouraging artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development and presentation of new work in the performing arts. 
• One Roof Chicago: For general operating support toward their mission to build an LGBTQ+-centered intergenerational community on Chicago’s South Side for older adults and young people most in need of affirming housing, meaningful connection, and career development. 
• Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project: For general operating support toward their mission to build relationships of reciprocity that bring artists, scholars, and writers together with incarcerated people and our communities. 
• Public Media Institute: For general operating support toward their mission to create, incubate, and sustain equitable cultural programming through the production of socially engaged projects, festivals, exhibitions, and media. 
• School of Opulence: For general operating support toward their mission as a preparatory Academy that uses the underground culture of the Ballroom House scene to support LGBTQIA+ Communities of Color. 
• Sex Workers Outreach Project Chicago: For general operating support toward their mission of providing direct aid to and advocacy for anyone working in the sex industry, including through cultural programming that foregrounds the work of queer sex-worker artists. 
• Sisters in Cinema: For general operating support toward their mission to center and celebrate Black girls, women, and gender nonconforming media makers, providing programs designed to educate, raise visibility, and support and serve our communities. 
• SitHub: For general operating support toward their mission of supporting LGBTQ mental health and well-being through art therapy services and host community arts events for LGBTQ2SIA Chicagoans. 
• Taskforce Prevention and Community Services: For general operating support toward their mission to improve the sexual health and overall well-being of LGBTQ+ youth of color in Chicago. 
• Youth Empowerment Performance Project: For general operating support towards their mission of creating a brave environment for LGBTQI+ youth experiencing homelessness. 
• Youth Outlook: For general operating support towards their mission of improving the lives of LGBTQ+ youth in the suburbs of Chicago and rural Illinois.