Our Focus
Building Community Wealth Across Generations
Our Goal,
In Focus
To create pathways out of poverty and toward economic opportunity for residents of Chicago’s historically disinvested communities
Vision for Change
We believe Chicago can be a city where every resident has access to meaningful opportunities for agency, upward mobility and belonging — through access to safe and supportive schools, robust learning pathways, family-sustaining and dignified employment, quality affordable housing, and opportunities for family and collective ownership that sustain community wealth and build well-being for the long-term.
The Changes We Seek Through Our Grantmaking
Community wealth is about more than money. It’s about the opportunities, resources and assets that help communities thrive and retain what they build.
Communities thrive when resources remain and are reinvested for future generations, when residents can earn income in accessible and dignified ways, when students succeed academically because they feel connected to school and enjoy meaningful learning opportunities, and when housing is stable and affordable.
Our grantmaking supports organizations and initiatives that work in key priority areas and use specific approaches to contribute meaningfully to these outcomes in Chicago’s historically disinvested, economically-marginalized communities:
Grantmaking Priorities
Foundational Pathways
Programs, policies, innovation, and supports for students and adults to engage in their own learning, access opportunity and begin to secure the lives they envision for themselves and their communities. We support efforts that increase:
Student Connectedness to Learning by:
Labor Force Participation by:
Sustained Community Assets
Programs, policies, and new models that ensure Chicago’s historically disinvested, economically-marginalized communities can develop and build assets that grow locally and thrive by increasing:
Local, Shared Ownership that strengthens and sustains resources for families living in historically disinvested neighborhoods by:
Access to Capital that:
Ability to Stay in Place by:
While these are the priority areas that will guide our Building Community Wealth Across Generations grantmaking for the next several years, we are also eager to learn of – and may occasionally provide grants to – other innovative approaches and effective ideas that show promise toward the ultimate goal of building and sustaining community and family wealth in south- and west-side neighborhoods.
Arts and Culture in Building Community Wealth Across Generations
The Foundation encourages arts and culture-based efforts as part of this goal. The arts create and anchor vibrant public spaces, creative initiatives serve as vital engines for economic growth, and arts programs foster connection, social cohesion, and engagement in school and community.
Approaches We Seek to Fund
Real transformation happens when programs, community power, infrastructure, policies and new ideas move forward together. That’s why we fund work that drives progress in the above Grantmaking Priorities and that takes one or more of the following approaches:
Immediate intervention
Direct services, programs, and critical care to help alleviate the effects of poverty and inequity and improve quality of life
Typical grant range: $50,000 – $150,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.
Community power and influence
Organizations, networks, and coalitions working to build community, trust, and shared goals to act together to influence change
Typical grant range: $75,000 – $150,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.
Ecosystem of change
Efforts to create critical infrastructure and conditions for social change through multiplier effects such as research and data dissemination, public awareness efforts, convenings, leadership development, and nonprofit sector strengthening
Typical grant range: $100,000 – $250,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.
Community innovation
Proof-of-concept efforts to develop, pilot, or otherwise accelerate creative ideas that are responsive to emerging community needs and that can provide shared learning for community, the field and philanthropy
Typical grant range: $50,000 – $150,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.
