The Chicago Community Trust is requesting proposals for Press Forward Chicago – Capacity Building Grant 2025.
Donor Name: The Chicago Community Trust
State: Illinois
County: Cook County (IL)
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 05/08/2025
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: 1 Year
Details:
Press Forward Chicago is a grantmaking initiative administered by The Chicago Community Trust and designed in partnership with the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and local journalism donors and practitioners. By making philanthropic investments in diverse local news outlets in the Chicago region, Press Forward aims to catalyze innovative solutions to the challenges facing local news, amplify impactful journalism practices, and grow financial investments into the media ecosystem to ensure residents have access to relevant, credible, and trusted information.
Goals & Outcomes
Through its investments, Press Forward Chicago seeks to:
- Scale proven strategies and innovations that address the challenges of today’s media environment; and
- Revitalize the local news infrastructure, ensuring robust reporting on critical issues facing Chicago’s communities.
Priority Strategies & Activities
The goals of this funding opportunity are to:
- Support hyperlocal or local media organizations seeking to increase their current reach through audience expansion and the adoption of new business strategies and approaches; and
- Experiment with practices to build sustainable revenue models.
Grant Type
For capacity building. Grants will be for one or both of the following:
- Audience Growth and Engagement: Efforts to increase audience numbers across various platforms, including newsletters. Additionally, growth of audience engagement across platforms.
- Sustainability: Organizations developing new, scalable business models for their own stability and financial sustainability in local news.
Funding Information
This is a one-year, one-time funding opportunity, ranging between $25,000-$75,000 per media company or nonprofit.
Eligibility Criteria
- Applicants must be based in Chicago and/or the neighboring suburbs. Nonprofits, educational institutions, independent media outlets, and fiscally sponsored journalism projects with an operating budget of less than $5 million are eligible to apply.
- Proposals should demonstrate a clear plan for impact measurement and sustainability beyond the grant period.
- Newsrooms that focus on underserved communities and those most proximate to the issues that are being covered.
- To be eligible for a grant award, an applicant must be:
- A nonprofit organization with evidence that it (a) has been recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as an organization described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Code; (b) is fiscally sponsored by a Section 501(c)(3) organization; or (c) is a governmental unit within the meaning of Section 170(c)(1) of the Code; Described in Section 170(b)(1)(A) of the Code, other than a “disqualified supporting organization” within the meaning of Section 4966(d)(4) of the Code; and
- Be located within and/or primarily serving residents of Chicago and/or nearby suburbs within Cook County.
- Sponsored organizations without 501(c)(3) status must identify a fiscal sponsor as soon as possible and ask them to complete and certify an organization profile in The Chicago Community Trust’s grants management system, GrantCentral, before the sponsored organization’s application submission.
For more information, visit The Chicago Community Trust.
