Crossroads Fund

Crossroads Fund supports community organizations working on issues of racial, social and economic justice in the Chicago area.

At Crossroads Fund we believe that big change can come from small beginnings. Some of the biggest victories we’ve seen in this city, from accessible public transit for people with disabilities, to the successful campaign to abolish the death penalty in Illinois, started out as small grassroots movements that were considered too radical for most funders. That’s where Crossroads Fund comes in. We gi

08/06/2024

The Illinois Climate Bank Campaign is hiring a campaign director to lead and manage its statewide efforts to ensure that the IL Climate Bank and other environmental funds have a direct impact on poor and communities of color. This campaign is powered and convened by ONE Northside, Illinois People's Action, The People's Lobby, and United Congregations of Metro-East. The position is based out of ONE Northside but will work throughout Illinois. Learn more about the position and how to apply at bit.ly/ilclimatebankhiring

Illinois Aims to Spend $900 Million Revamping Prisons. Let’s Close Them Instead. 08/06/2024

Illinois Aims to Spend $900 Million Revamping Prisons. Let’s Close Them Instead. Rebuilding decaying prisons isn’t the answer — shuttering them is.

08/06/2024

WRITE THIS NUMBER DOWN! NLG members will be staffing our legal support hotline 24/7 during the DNC. We will be connecting protesters with attorneys for in-custody legal visits and representation for cases.

Photos from Chicago Torture Justice Center's post 08/06/2024
Photos from La Casa Norte's post 08/06/2024
Photos from Arab American Action Network's post 08/06/2024
08/06/2024

We will be here next Sunday, come join us! And let us know if you can help us table!💖🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Photos from Erie Neighborhood House's post 08/06/2024
Photos from Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO)'s post 08/06/2024
Photos from Crossroads Fund's post 08/05/2024

GRANT OPPORTUNITIES]
HEY HELLO, HELLO…hello, hello!

Work in the Chicago Metropolitan Area?

OUR TECHNICAL RESPONSE FUND AND CRITICAL RESPONSE FUND APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN!

📢SPREAD THE WORD!📢

✨Apply before the deadlines✨

To learn more about the grants and eligibility visit bit.ly/cf-grants

Crossroads Fund supports organizations rooted in communities in the Chicago metropolitan area, including Northwestern Indiana, which we define as the area between the state border and Gary, IN.” in the funding criteria section.

Photos from Crossroads Fund's post 08/05/2024

[GRANT OPPORTUNITIES]
HEY HELLO, HELLO…hello, hello!

Work in the Chicago Metropolitan Area?

OUR TECHNICAL RESPONSE FUND AND CRITICAL RESPONSE FUND APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN!

📢SPREAD THE WORD!📢

✨Apply before the deadlines✨

To learn more about the grants and eligibility visit links in bio.

Crossroads Fund supports organizations rooted in communities in the Chicago metropolitan area, including Northwestern Indiana, which we define as the area between the state border and Gary, IN.” in the funding criteria section.

Photos from Crossroads Fund's post 07/01/2024

Part 4: Fiscal Year 2024 RECAP (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024). Thank you to our grantees fighting at the intersection of LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, workers' rights, racial justice, disability justice, and more. We want to share some of our fiscal year 2024 highlights!

Slide 1️⃣
✨We’re Growing and Showing Out✨
We welcomed our latest addition to the Program team, Nouha Nacer Boundaoui! We are thrilled to have her as part of the Crossroads Fund team. Her participation in last year’s Giving Project, this year’s current cohort of Cultivate: Women of Color Leadership program, and an ongoing Crossroads grantee will provide exciting leadership.

Slide 2️⃣
✨Advancing Women of Color Leadership✨
Cultivate: Women of Color Leadership Program*, nurtures and builds the power and strength of women of color through a one-year program supporting each participant's personal and professional development needs.

The 2024 Cultivate Cohort included:
Dr. Angelique Orr (West Side Rising), Arianna Salgado (Prison Neighborhood Arts & Education Project), Carmen Scott Boria (Arts and Culture, The Firehouse Community Arts Center), Cecily Relucio (Umuwi Ethnic Studies), Cynthia Brito (Revolutionary Youth Action League), Ebony DeBerry (ONE Northside), Elizabeth “Lisa” Avila (Labor Education Center), Evelyn Venegas (ICCIR), Rev. Jaime Fluker (Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation), Jennifer Griffin (Palenque LSNA), Jennifer Tani (Healthy Schools Campaign), Jill Manrique (Chicago Jobs with Justice), Latonya Maley (Affinity Community Services), Mayra Sarabia (Southwest Organizing Project), Min A Kim (KAN-WIN), Natasha Erskine (Raise Your Hand Illinois), Nouha Boundaoui (Believers Bail Out, Pilar Audain (Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation), Porshé Renee Garner (A Long Walk Home), Rachel Pate (Chicago United for Equity), Rosa E. Martinez (Instituto ANCLA), Starr De Los Santos (Women Employed)

*Cultivate: Women of Color Leadership (Cultivate) is a joint effort of the Crossroads Fund, Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW), Woods Fund Chicago, the Chicago Community Trust, and Walder Foundation.

Photo by Noha Bouqartacha

Thank you to everyone who supported us in FY2024. Together, we continue to create meaningful impact and advocate for justice. 🌟

Photos from Crossroads Fund's post 07/01/2024

Part 3: Fiscal Year 2024 RECAP (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024). Thank you to our grantees fighting at the intersection of LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, workers' rights, racial justice, disability justice, and more. We want to share some of our fiscal year 2024 highlights!

Slide 1️⃣
✨Brought Our Community Together to Celebrate✨
Our annual fundraiser, Seeds of Change: Seeding Solidarity, was a great success. We honored and celebrated United Working Families with the Ron Sable Award for Activism, recognized Stop Cop City - Atlanta with the Donald F. Erickson Synapses Award, and awarded People for Community Recovery with the Lynda J. Tipton Memorial Award for Social Justice. The event raised a record-breaking $219,000, meeting our fundraising goal! We couldn't have achieved this without your support.

Photo By Karina Mireya

Slide 2️⃣
✨We Donor Organized and Made Out Tent Bigger✨
Through the 2024 Giving Project, we brought new people into this work. We are proud and grateful for our 10th Giving Project cohort. This cohort of 19 people* raised $103,554 from 255 donors. With an additional $165,085 from Crossroads Fund and our donors, they are on track to distribute $250,000 to 32 organizations.

*bit.ly/givingproject-2024

Slide 3️⃣
✨Increased Our Grantee's Potential✨
The Capacity Building Initiative aims to help organizations enhance their ability to achieve their missions. Recognizing the challenges in changing organizational culture, policies, practices, and management, the program uses a cohort model to foster peer-to-peer learning and collaboration beyond the program. We recently held orientation with the grantee cohort in early June at the Chicago Art Department.

We are excited to be working alongside Crossroads Fund and Woods Fund Chicago grantees, including: 18th Street Casa de Cultura, Alliance of the SouthEast (ASE), Free Root Operation, Goodkids Madcity Englewood, Latino Union of Chicago, Liberation Library, Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition & Solidarity (MAMAS), Ujimaa Medics, WESTSIDE RISING, and Youth Empowerment Performance Project (YEPP).

Photos from Crossroads Fund's post 07/01/2024

Part 2: Fiscal Year 2024 RECAP (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024). Thank you to our grantees fighting at the intersection of LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, workers' rights, racial justice, disability justice, and more. We want to share some of our fiscal year 2024 highlights!

Slide 1️⃣
✨Prioritized Rest and Restoration✨
Kristina Roque celebrated her 13th work anniversary at Crossroads Fund and was able to enjoy her second sabbatical with her grandchild in the winter.

Slide 2️⃣
✨Supported Youth Organizing in Chicago✨
As part of our $5.7M in grants, we redistributed $255K through the Youth Fund for Social Change (Youth Fund) to 28 youth-led organizations. Special thanks to our Youth Fund committee members, Aliemah Bradley, Alicia Brown, Destiny Harris, Devonta Boston, Maru Pinto, and Nikia Watkins, for participating in site visits and making grant decisions.

Slide 3️⃣
✨Hosted the 4th Annual James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund Celebration✨
The 4th Annual James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund Celebration took place on Tuesday, October 24, at the Chicago Teachers Union Headquarters in honor of the late James Thindwa, a dedicated social justice organizer.
The evening featured a panel discussion on the role of activists and progressives in the new Brandon Johnson administration and the 2024 presidential election. Morgan Elise Johnson from The TRiiBE moderated the discussion, with insights from Kennedy Bartley, Rey Wences Nájera, and Jung Yoon.
Remarks were also given by the 2023 James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund grant recipients, Bring Chicago Home and Illinois Worker Cooperative Alliance.
Attendees had the opportunity to engage with fellow changemakers.

Photos from Crossroads Fund's post 07/01/2024

Part 1: Fiscal Year 2024 RECAP (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024). Thank you to our grantees fighting at the intersection of LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, workers' rights, racial justice, disability justice, and more. We want to share some of our fiscal year 2024 highlights!

Slide 1️⃣
✨We Strategized With Our National Partners✨
In the Summer of 2023, Crossroads Fund staff members Jane, Joanna, Lizette, and Michael spent a week on the Sacred Grounds of Oahu Island, Hawai’i, for the 2023 Giving Project National Convening to meet our sibling organizations*. It was significant to be invited by Indigenous peoples, considering a state overburdened with tourism, extraction, and its implications on the environment. Giving Project practitioners gathered intentionally at Camp Palehua and made space for ceremonies to deepen connections with one another, the land and the struggle for indigenous sovereignty, landback and de-occupy campaigns. Thank you to the Hawaii People's Fund for hosting and creating a transformational convening.

Member Funds: Bread and Roses, Chinook Fund, Hawai’i People’s Fund, Social Justice Fund NW, Maine Initiatives, Headwaters Foundation, North Star Fund.

Photo by Nigel Charles

Slide 2️⃣
✨Created the Solidarity Fund✨
In its first year (Fiscal Year 2024), the Solidarity Fund successfully distributed $957K to 43 organizations.
The Solidarity Fund is a pooled fund that supports organizing groups that address systemic issues faced by newly arrived migrants and the lack of affordable housing in Chicago. It prioritizes grassroots mutual aid efforts and housing-related organizing campaigns.
In collaboration with philanthropic partners*, Crossroads Fund established this fund to support those responding to current challenges and working towards collective liberation. The fund aims to address the intersecting needs of Black, migrant, and unhoused communities in Chicago.
*Woods Fund, Michael Reese, Circle of Service, Lloyd Fry Foundation, Builder's Initiative, Chicago Community Trust, Blowitz Ridgeway, Walder Foundation, Field Foundation, Irving Harris Foundation, Healthy Communities Foundation.

Photo by Sarah-Ji

06/25/2024

♋️ Cancer season is here, and at CrossroadsFund, we're filled with Cancer energy!

🥳Join us in celebrating our amazing birthday twins, Nouha and Lizette, by wishing them a happy solar return.🌅

06/19/2024

Juneteenth - A Day to Celebrate and Recommit

On Juneteenth, we celebrate freedom and recommit to the work of racial justice. Juneteenth is honored annually on June 19th, marking the moment in 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation was belatedly enforced, following a delay of nearly 2.5 years in notifying African Americans in Confederate-controlled southern states such as Texas of their freedom.

As we celebrate the freedom that comes with Juneteenth we are acutely aware of how freedom/choice is under attack. Last summer, we started to monitor the implications of the Supreme Court decision to reverse Affirmative Action race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities. We therefore anticipated the detrimental effect it would have in public and private sectors, including philanthropy. This effect was on full display with the legal challenge brought forth in August 2023 against Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based foundation that provides business grants to women of color. In the last two weeks, a new lawsuit was brought to challenge the Evanston's reparations payments to Black residents, while the Supreme Court of Oklahoma dismissed a lawsuit seeking reparations brought by the last known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

As a movement funder for justice, we are steadfast in our commitment to the struggle for freedom. Our pledge is to consistently fund and resource organizing for racial, social, and economic justice. In these moments, we must double down on our commitment to support organizing that safeguards our freedoms.

Until Freedom!

Jane Kimondo
Executive Director
Crossroads Fund

Make a donation today!
bit.ly/cf-givenow

06/19/2024

With immense gratitude, we bid farewell to our esteemed board members, Emmanuel Andre, Roxana Enriquez, Jon Quinn, and Ireri Rivas Mier y Teran as they reach the end of their term. Your unwavering dedication, visionary leadership, and tireless efforts have been instrumental in our journey. Thank you for your invaluable contributions and collaborative spirit!

06/06/2024

Join us in welcoming Nouha Nacer Boundaoui (she/her), Crossroads Fund’s new Program Manager. Nouha is an anti-surveillance organizer and community weaver dedicated to fostering healthy and community-centered grassroots organizing. As the granddaughter of Algerian revolutionaries and the daughter of survivors of the Algerian War for Independence, Nouha’s commitment to movements for liberation and freedom is deeply rooted, unwavering and prioritizes health, healing, and liberation for all.

Nouha has served as a National Lead with Believer's Bail Out, a community-led bail fund freeing Muslims from pre-trial and immigration incarceration. In addition, she has vast experiences managing public health research projects, leading community-based art interventions, and consulting for human rights nonprofits and community organizations.

Nouha is part of the Crossroads Fund community through her participation in the Giving Project, as a participant of the current cohort of Cultivate: Women of Color Leadership program and as a Crossroads Seed Fund grantee. In her new role, Nouha will provide leadership to the Cultivate: Women of Color Leadership program, provide support to the Capacity Building Initiative and to Crossroads Fund as a whole.

Nouha is a graduate of Northwestern University and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, where she focused on the intersections of race and health, examining how social determinants, colonialism, and structural violence impact the well-being and freedoms of communities of color.

Welcome Nouha!

05/23/2024

APPLICATION CLOSING SOON! APPLY BEFORE MAY 31st!

Solidarity Fund will be closing for this fiscal year but we will be back and running in the Fall!

The Solidarity Fund is a collective resource that provides financial assistance to organizing groups tackling systemic issues impacting newly arrived migrants and the lack of affordable housing in Chicago communities. As a recipient of this fund, your organization will have access to critical resources that will help you achieve your mission.

Crossroads Fund is dedicated to bringing together our colleagues in philanthropy to create innovative models for redistributing resources that respond to the current moment while advancing our collective liberation. Our focus is on supporting work that is responsive to the intersecting needs of all Chicago communities, particularly Black, migrant, and unhoused communities. We believe in the power of community organizing and are committed to supporting organizations that work towards a more equitable and just society.

To learn more about the eligibility requirements and application procedures for the Solidarity Fund, visit bit.ly/solidarity_fund

Photos from HANA Center's post 05/22/2024
Photos from AFIRE Chicago's post 05/22/2024
05/22/2024

¡Acompáñanos comrades! Exposición de Arte y Charla: Apoyo Mutuo y Revolución— una exposición de arte, la lucha de inmigrantes y historia mexicana revolucionaria, con el compañero Tonatiuh Ayala y Protestarte Chicago/ Yolotl **** Join us comrades! Art and Talk Exhibition: Mutual Aid and Revolution—an exhibition of art, struggle and revolutionary Mexican history, with comrade Tonatiuh Ayala and Protestarte Chicago

Photos from Crossroads Fund's post 05/21/2024

Reflecting on FY23: Together, we made strides toward justice! With $5.8 million distributed among 218 grantee partners, our collaborative efforts touched various fronts - from arts and culture to economic development, immigrant rights, and beyond.

Dive into our annual report to witness the impact of our collective work and be inspired to join us in tackling today's challenges head-on.

View our 2023 Annual Report at: https://bit.ly/3UOWKcc

Highlight an Emerging Storyteller at the CMAs 05/01/2024

Highlight an Emerging Storyteller at the CMAs Dear Narrative Change Community: This year, we've noticed a gap in recognizing our young storytellers. To honor the spirit of the Community Media Awards and the voices of tomorrow, we're inviting our community to spotlight emerging storytellers. If you know a young, creative individual whose work ca...

Timeline photos 05/01/2024
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Videos (show all)

🌺On behalf of the @crossroadsfund board and staff at Crossroads Fund, thank you for making Seeds of Change: Seeding Soli...
🌺[2 DAYS TO GO!] Please review our “We Keep Eachother Safe” protocols, which include details on what to wear 🤠, mask req...
🌺Crossroads Fund’s online/silent auction is an exciting part of our Seeds of Change: Seeding Solidarity annual celebrati...
🌺While this is an in-person event, the program segment will stream live on Crossroads Funds’ YouTube channel. SHOUT OUT ...
YOU’RE INVITED!Spring is just around the corner and with it comes our annual fundraiser, Seeds of Change: Seeding Solida...
🌺Please join Chandra Palmer our Board and Host Committee Member, to the Crossroads Fund annual spring fundraiser, Seeds ...
⏳️Don't miss out! Seeds of Change is quickly approaching. Get your tickets today, invite a friend, and come to uplift an...
🌱🏵🌱📆[SAVE THE DATE]📆🌱🏵🌱We can’t wait to celebrate with you on March 31, 2023!With the new year approaching, we invite yo...
Apply today to be part of the 2023 Giving Project cohort!  The Giving Project is an innovative model for building leader...
📢You’re invited to the James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund's Third Annual virtual celebration Don’t Agonize, Organi...

Address


3411 W Diversey Avenue, Ste 20
Chicago, IL
60647

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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