New Youth Homelessness Innovation Fund aims to spark bold solutions

CHICAGO — Polk Bros. Foundation and Crown Family Philanthropies, longtime supporters of efforts to prevent and end youth homelessness, announce the launch of the Youth Homelessness Innovation Fund, which will award a total of $500,000 in grants ranging from $10,000 to $300,000 to nonprofit organizations or collaborations proposing activities that promote bold, disruptive, and transformation solutions to promote housing stability for young people.

The goal of this Fund is to improve outcomes for young people experiencing housing instability and homelessness by spurring creativity, enabling disruption, and encouraging risk, thereby advancing new opportunities, catalyzing bold solutions and bolstering the momentum of the Chicago Task Force on Homeless Youth and the Youth Advisory Board. Applicants are encouraged to think and plan beyond existing approaches and propose bold ideas that move the goal of housing stability for youth experiencing and at-risk of homelessness forward, faster.

Locally and nationally, a collective movement has been building to prevent and end youth homelessness. A broad range of institutions and sectors have been assessing how to better leverage individual and collective work to address and ultimately resolve persistent issues facing our communities. This work has led to increased coordination and collaboration for greater results, new program models, and new ways of deploying resources to support these efforts.

As funders and advocates for positive systems change, we, too, feel the urgency to further coordinate and collaborate for greater impact. Crown Family Philanthropies and Polk Bros. Foundation are excited to join together and encourage local momentum in this area of work.

Apply by Monday, June 3, 2019

Learn more. Find out more about eligibility, priority areas and how to apply in the Youth Homelessness Innovation Fund Request for Proposals (RFP). The RFP has been informed by young people involved with the Chicago Continuum of Care who opted to provide feedback in group-based sessions.

Questions? An optional in-person technical assistance (TA) session will be held on Thursday, May 2, 2019 from 3-4pm at the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, 1615 W. Chicago Avenue. (The room number will be determined later.) Attending the TA session is encouraged but is not required to be considered for funding. Please RSVP by April 29th to ApplyYouthRFP@PolkBrosFdn.org.