Calling all innovators: Share your ideas for bringing more financial capital to disinvested communities. The Open Call is an efficient vehicle to equitably source innovation and an important tool to achieving the Trust’s vision for the region.
Donor Name: The Chicago Community Trust
State: Illinois
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: Ongoing
Size of the Grant: Up to $250,000
Grant Duration: 12 months
Details:
The Open Call for Ideas is a new approach to sourcing innovation. A good idea can come from anywhere at any time. But ideas need to be heard to affect change. While philanthropy is generally nimbler than government and more responsive than private capital, accessibility is an ongoing challenge for most foundations. An open call for ideas changes that by creating an efficient, virtual “open door” through which the Trust’s Catalyzing Neighborhood Investment team can source innovation, hear new voices, and respond more quickly to time-sensitive opportunities.
Qualified Ideas
- Place-based Planning: The creation of bold, community-informed plans makes their neighborhoods more livable and our region more competitive. They invite ideas for research, analysis, and planning activities that can advance new or existing plans focused on neighborhoods or specific issues.
- Asset-based Development: The creative use of community assets —be it a park, a transit station, or an architecturally significant building—has the ability to attract capital and jumpstart the local economy when adequately resourced. They welcome concepts, plans, and activities for leveraging the power of place-based assets as catalysts for neighborhood investment.
- Finance/Development Innovation: Capital fuels the engines of change and possibility, but only when people can access it. They seek innovative ideas for financial products, services, programs, activities, and structures that bring neighborhoods capital affordably, efficiently, and equitably. Ideas may be new concepts or improvements to existing ones.
- Policy: Inequitable public policies have played an enormous role in preventing communities of color from accessing capital. They invite ideas for policy research, analysis, and activities that allow neighborhoods to attract investment, facilitate real estate development, and build community wealth. Ideas may be related to new or existing policies, regulations, and market-based incentives at the local, regional, and state levels.
Funding Information
- Grant Amount: Up to $250,000
- Grant Term: 12 months from time of approval; Grant extensions and multiyear grants must be approved by Trust staff.
Eligibility Criteria
The Open Call was designed to solicit idea submissions from four types of applicants:
- Nonprofit organizations
- For-profit entities with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship
- Local government entities
- Individuals with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship
For more information, visit The Chicago Community Trust.
