Vital Communities Grant Guidelines

Overview

The Chicago Commitment team invests in people, places, and partnerships to advance racial equity and build a more inclusive Chicago. The Vital Communities focus of the strategy draws on these three elements to support a diverse and resilient metropolitan area.

Chicago is a global city with vibrant, diverse neighborhoods and a strong civic culture. Yet historical and current systemic disparities create unequal access to resources and opportunities for many groups, including Black, Latine, Indigenous, Asian, LGBTQIA+, and disabled people and communities—especially when these multiple identities intersect.

We believe that a dynamic metropolitan area is dependent upon equitable community development. The Vital Communities focus of the Chicago Commitment’s work stimulates development in historically disinvested neighborhoods by making early investments in response to community needs that contribute to economic growth. We support place-based economic development and creative placemaking and placekeeping initiatives to improve the quality of life for individuals in neighborhoods that have experienced disinvestment. We also support organizations whose research and analysis inform socially beneficial and equitable development.

Criteria

Place-Based Initiatives

Place-based initiatives address the unique characteristics and needs of people within a specific location. We will concentrate resources primarily on pre-development of commercial corridors and industrial clusters in ten communities (listed below). These initiatives may include comprehensive planning; land use planning and management; community outreach; or urban design that attracts commercial and industrial real estate investment. Recognizing Chicago’s history, our place-based funding is primarily concentrated in neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. After reviewing our strategy in 2022, we made refinements to help us achieve greater impact. Specifically, we narrowed the geographic footprint of our neighborhood-level economic development funding to amplify our impact, increasing our investments in a smaller number of communities. These modifications enable us to deepen community partnerships, pursue greater cohesion across our approaches toward equity, and strengthen the capacity of organizations working in the smaller footprint.

In determining where to invest in place-based economic development, our team analyzed an array of different indicators related to Chicago neighborhoods, including levels of community engagement, income and wealth, demographic shifts, public safety, and the history of investment and/or disinvestment, among others. This process led us to focus our economic development grantmaking in these neighborhoods:

• Austin
• Belmont Cragin
• Gage Park
• Garfield Park (East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park)
• Greater Englewood (West Englewood and Englewood)
• Greater Roseland (Roseland and West Pullman)
• Humboldt Park
• North Lawndale
• South Lawndale/Little Village
• South Shore

We believe that seeding early investment in commercial corridors and industrial clusters, particularly when responsive to community needs, can jumpstart a sustainable foundation for comprehensive community and economic development that is locally owned. It can also position place-based initiatives to seek larger investment opportunities, such as public funding, tax incentives, and other philanthropic and corporate investment strategies. In general, Vital Communities will not focus on one specific development or provide funds to close a single deal; rather it will invest in the general capacity of the leading organizations to enable them to undertake the necessary range of revitalization projects underway in each corridor, industrial area, or initiative. 

Grants will be made to community-based organizations engaged in economic development to produce socially beneficial development deals. These awards will facilitate the pre-development of commercial corridors and industrial clusters, when grant funds are necessary to explore a wide variety of financing options. These organizations will have a record of community planning, prior experience in development, and the capacity to support new projects. 

While we are using geographic areas for our place-based economic development work, our other grantmaking programs are offered citywide and reflect and address the broad diversity of Chicago.

Creative Placemaking and Placekeeping

Creative placemaking and placekeeping techniques are place-based community and economic development tools that use art and cultural activities and installments to animate public spaces, rejuvenate structures and streetscapes, improve local business visibility and public safety, and bring people together to build a shared understanding of culture and community.

We recognize and support the existing cultural and creative assets within Chicago communities. Our aim is to augment the place-based work within the Vital Communities portfolio by:

• Supporting cultural and creative initiatives designed to elevate cultural awareness;
• Supporting a sense of belonging; and
• Promoting community assets.

This will help spur economic growth in historically marginalized neighborhoods and in communities that have experienced disinvestment, as well as in low- or middle-income places where the current population is at risk of displacement.

Infrastructure Support Organizations

Over decades, our support for neighborhood initiatives has underscored the value of investments in local and regional infrastructure support organizations that, in turn, provide organizational development support to individual neighborhood efforts. The forms of organizational development support may include planning, management, policy research, evaluation, data analysis, or other services offered to groups working at the community or regional level. We have also learned that it is cost-effective to spread the expense of these forms of support across many neighborhood efforts. As such, we will continue to provide strategic support each year to a selection of these organizations, while exploring opportunities with other funders to provide coordinated support to the field.

What We Fund

Place-based Initiative Awards

In our ten designated communities, we support organizations that:

• draw on community assets and the potential to attract commercial real estate or industrial development;
• engage residents in designing development plans that strive to build on community assets and anticipate unintended consequences, such as displacement;
• have a record of community planning, prior experience in development, and the capacity to support new projects; and
• have been nominated by a diverse group of advisors who serve as external nominators of promising place-based initiatives.

Creative Placemaking and Placekeeping Awards

We support projects that:

• effectively address a community purpose, issue, or need;
• bring residents together to make social, physical, and economic changes in their neighborhoods through arts and culture; and
• enable greater access for communities to participate in and benefit from artistic or cultural activities, particularly where few such activities exist.

Infrastructure Support Organizations

We support entities that conduct planning, management, policy research, evaluation, data analysis, or other forms of organizational development support to groups working at the community or regional level.

Application Process

Initiatives and organizations that wish to be considered as place-based initiatives, creative placemaking and placekeeping projects, or infrastructure support organizations may submit a brief description of their work through our grants portal.

In addition, we are eager to learn about initiatives and organizations that have not previously received support, as well as new ideas from prior grant recipients.

Selection Process

To augment MacArthur Staff's knowledge of place-based funding opportunities, from time to time we will invite civic and community leaders with broad and varied knowledge to nominate place-based initiatives within the ten designated communities. The nominators, who may not recommend organizations with which they are affiliated, serve to broaden our knowledge of the range of local opportunities. While this process will produce more nominations than we can support, it is designed to bring place-based initiatives not known to us to our attention. Initiatives and organizations within the ten communities that wish to be considered for support may "self-nominate" by submitting a brief description of their work through our grants portal.

We will invite applicants selected through this process to submit proposals. MacArthur Staff will consider these requests, with final decisions made by the Foundation.

In the future, the selection process may change to ensure that we can consider even more possibilities.

Updated June 2024