Chicago Grants - Arts, Sports-based Youth Development, & Environmental Justice

_NOTE: We are not accepting new proposals in our spring grant cycle. Organizations that received support in 2022 are welcome to reapply. The August deadline above is open to Arts and Environmental Justice Program applications._

Prince Arts Program

The people of Chicago need and deserve a thriving cultural life. The Trusts support the core missions of outstanding arts organizations with general operating support and occasional project grants to enhance their creative artistic products.

Sports-based Youth Development

Inspired by a trustee’s positive experience with sports as a youth, PCT provides general operating support grants to sports-based youth development (SBYD) organizations in Chicago. SBYD combines best practices from youth development, mentoring, athletics and physical fitness, and academic enrichment. It contributes to improved health and fitness, and just as importantly, helps youth become better at planning, coping with stress, and engaging in positive relationships with peers and adults. Such benefits may prove particularly crucial for youth who face risks and challenges like concentrated poverty, higher rates of obesity and other chronic health conditions, exposure to violence, and limited availability of afterschool and recreational activities. PCT gives preference to organizations serving middle-school-age youth and to those that provide coaches trained in youth development and implement trauma-sensitive approaches to service delivery.

Environmental Justice

Prince Charitable Trusts’ Chicago Environmental Justice\* Program acknowledges and supports Chicagoans’ right to healthy communities where the air, land, and water are clean and people have abundant access to open spaces and natural areas for growing food, healing, learning, health and well-being, gathering, and recreation. We recognize that this is not the reality for many ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American) residents in our highly segregated city where persistent racism leads to disproportionately poor air and water quality and unhealthy living conditions resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations and/or government laws, regulations, and policies.

We trust these residents’ knowledge about their neighborhoods, the issues they face, and the policies and resources they need to secure healthy and thriving communities. We understand achieving and sustaining environmental justice involves responsiveness to opportunities and a willingness to take risks coupled with long-term commitment and steady financial resources.

Prince Charitable Trusts’ Chicago Environmental Justice Program prioritizes addressing the mounting impact of historical and ongoing environmental racism through:

• Giving the majority of our funding to organizations that center people harmed by racial and environmental injustice and those that are led by and developing the leadership of people of color
• Support for Chicago-based organizations whose efforts focus on benefits to Chicago’s Black and Latine residents
• Support for community-based organizations with an environmental justice program or project that corresponds to one of PCT’s strategies
• Consistent, multi-year, general operating support in most cases

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

• The Trusts make grants only to charitable organizations that are exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and are classified as public charities under Sections 509(a)(1) or 509(a)(2).
• The Prince Arts Program
  • supports arts groups in the city of Chicago with annual budgets above $2,000,000.
• Sports-Based Youth Development Eligibility- PCT will consider SBYD organizations that:
  • Have SBYD as their primary focus
  • Have operated at least three years
  • Deliver services to a program population in which 75% or more of youth have family incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level or in schools where 75% or more of students are eligible for free and reduced price school lunch
  • Have at least one professional program staff person
  • Serve a consistent group of school-age youth in most or all of its programming
  • Provide at least 90 minutes of programming per week for at least 20 weeks of the school year
  • Promote physical and emotional well-being
  • Foster an age-appropriate and positive environment when competition is part of the program
  • Train coaches and program staff to deliver a consistent program model or curriculum and build positive relationships with youth
  • May provide or connect participants to academic supports and/or help them access higher education.
• Environmental Justice Eligibility- In order to apply for a grant in the program area your organization must:
  • Have its offices and a majority of its programming within the Chicago city limits
  • Have a mission dedicated to environmental justice, the environment or nature
  • OR be a community-based organization with a strong environmental justice, environment, or nature-based program or project
  • We seek proposals that correspond to at least one of these strategies:
  • Nurture, strengthen, or promote community control and stewardship of land and/or water resources in neighborhoods experiencing historic disinvestment
  • Draw attention to environmental racism and/or the disproportionate impact of climate change in ALAANA communities and advocate for community-led solutions
  • Support the next generation of environmental leaders, urban farmers and gardeners, and advocates

Ineligibility

• The Trusts do not fund projects that promote or proselytize any religion.
• While we do fund the projects of faith-based organizations, those projects must be secular in nature.
• The Trusts do not fund organizations that discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, race, color, creed, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any veteran’s status.
• Special Project grants are not available to grantees of the MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince.