The Crossroads Fund is seeking applications for its Community Resilience Fund to strengthen grassroots efforts and increase organizational capacity in the face of a rapidly evolving political landscape and exarcerbated challenges.
Donor Name: Crossroads Fund
State: Illinois, Indiana
County: Cook County (IL), DuPage County (IL), Kane County (IL), Lake County (IL), Lake County (IN), Will County (IL)
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 11/11/2025
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: 1 Year
Details:
Through the Community Resilience Fund, they aim to support Chicago’s bold, connected, and courageous communities by equipping movement ecosystem with the resources, tools, trainings, and counsel needed to keep them safe. This fund will provide emergent, rapid-response grants to support organizations that are:
- Responding to rapidly evolving public policy shifts
- Restrategizing statewide coalitions
- Hosting emergent convenings, trainings, strategy sessions
- Pivoting community-organizing campaigns
- Planning urgent mobilizations, or direct-action
- Strengthening their legal, organizational, and digital security or crisis planning
Funding Types
- Enhancing organizational infrastructure and housekeeping, including governance protocols, risk assessments, critical wellness support, and crisis management and communications planning.
- Emergency response funding for organizations facing immediate physical or digital threats due to legal or security vulnerabilities.
- Rapid Response and Urgent Mobilizations to counter unexpected policy changes or political threats that endanger communities and defend collective rights and safety
- Emergent Convenings and Community Solidarity that foster strategy development, solidarity, healing, and organizing among impacted communities while creating space for shared learning and strengthening.
- New Campaigns, Coalitions and Pathways to support new or growing coalitions, and to scale campaigns that aim for collective impact and long-term change.
- Strategic Shifts and Experimentations that re-strategizes responses to a shifting political landscape while encouraging bold tactics and models to expand base-building, communications, and/or grow organizing reach and effectiveness.
- Legal Assistance for organizations facing urgent legal vulnerabilities and challenges.
- Digital Security to strengthen overall organization infrastructure through practices, policies, governance, risk assessments, crisis management or communications planning.
Funding Information
- Grants can range from $5,000 to $30,000.
- Funds should be used within 12 months of receipt.
Eligibility Criteria
- Grassroots Leadership: They support groups that involve the people who are directly affected by an issue at all levels of the organization – in planning, organizing and leading, and working to continue building leadership within the grassroots community.
- Solid Plan: clear purpose and well-planned goals, objectives, activities, timeline, and budget.
- Work in the Chicago Metropolitan Area: includes Chicago and surrounding counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, and Will, along with Lake County, Indiana.
- Current and Returning Grantees with budgets under $700,000 will be prioritized.
For more information, visit Crossroads Fund.
