Good news for Chicago small organizations just got better because some top-level organizations now have a viable expansion resource in the Chicago Community Loan Fund (CCLF). Such a resource empowers them with cashflow to more effectively leverage existing resources and build capacity.
Like most small organizations you know the importance of program expansion can be challenging yet it’s invaluable. Achieving the expansion of one’s organizational footprint is often a far more monumental challenge. So, in 2022, CCLF provided funding or partial funding in the community with loans to a range of community-based organizations seeking to purchase properties and or make capital improvements that facilitate existing mission-based programs or the establishment of new ones.
Taking on such risks is rare, but CCLF is not a conventional small business lender, but rather a real-estate community developer that provides flexible loans for housing, commercial real estate, community facilities and social enterprises.
Some of the organizations like Black Ensemble Theater, Blacks in Green and XS Tennis each tapped CCLF resources to purchase properties in their communities and expand their assets as well as their footprints programmatically and helping to anchor their community.
• Most deserving is Black Ensemble Theater company founded in 1976 that produces works, especially musicals, related to African American culture. It’s housed at the Black Ensemble Cultural Center located in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. Headed by its renowned founder, actress, producer and playwright Jackie Taylor, BET secured funding from CCLF to develop a new media technology center across the street from the theater.
• Blacks in Green, or BIG, is an environmental advocacy organization. Naomi Davis founded BIG in 2007 to design and develop green, self-sustaining mixed-income, walkable villages populated by African Americans and to educate community members and stakeholders.
CCLF provided BIG with a grant via the Communities in Color Fund in 2022.
• XS Tennis and Education Foundation is a not-for-profit organization with the mission to provide underserved Chicago youth with safe spaces and positivity through community-based tennis and academic enrichment that could lead to college enrollment. CCLF provided XS Tennis with capital for its current facility and to develop its next phase by purchasing property at 5410 S. State. The new loan will aid the organization, which is collaborating with the University of Chicago, to produce office space and housing for tennis players.