Success Story: Grant Writing Support for Illinois Non-Profits  

Elevate and its partners provided grant writing support to Jacqueline Williams, co-director of the Evolve Foundation, and Ryan Jones, Chief External Relations Officer of Academy for Global Citizenship, pictured above.

It can be challenging for nonprofits to access government funding because grant applications are often complicated to complete, especially for smaller organizations.   

To ensure nonprofits can access the funding they need, Elevate partnered with Anese & Associates, a Black woman-owned grant writing firm, to offer grant writing support to two Illinois nonprofits that support and train people who want to work in the clean energy industry.  

The Chicago Justice40 Accelerator is a grant writing program funded by JPMorganChase, which helps grassroots organizations grow their climate projects. After completing the program, Illinois-based nonprofits Academy for Global Citizenship and Evolve Foundation applied for Community Change Grants which would provide them with about $40 million of funding for projects that will directly benefit their neighborhoods.  

Academy for Global Citizenship operates a six-acre site on the Southwest Side of Chicago that houses an early education center, a health clinic, teaching kitchens, and other community programming. The Community Change Grant they applied for would help fund a new facility called the Green Business Institute that will allow them to expand their offerings in the community.   

As the only full-time employee of Academy for Global Citizenship’s External Relations department, Ryan Jones said he didn’t have the necessary resources to apply for a federal Community Change Grant all by himself.   

“First and foremost, working in tandem with someone was amazing. It’s a grant we’ve looked at before, but I knew I would never be able to do it on my own,” said Jones, Chief External Relations Officer of Academy for Global Citizenship. “If you’re an organization that doesn’t have a lot of experience in government grants, the applications are difficult to navigate and understand. It’s a very rigid process, so it was very helpful to work with Elevate and Anese & Associates, who are nimble and know what the government is looking for in an application.”  

Another non-profit that participated in the grant writing program was Evolve Foundation, a subsidiary of the nonprofit Zealous, which operates the Renewing Sovereignty Project. The Renewing Sovereignty Project provides wrap-around services for individuals working to complete job training programs, like stipends as well as access to emergency funds, childcare, and other services while they go through their programs. The project also supports alumni by connecting people with employment opportunities, offering job interview prep, financial literacy education, and more. The Community Change Grant that they applied for would provide three years of working capital for them to accomplish this work. Evolve Foundation wasn’t eligible to apply for the grant on its own, so it partnered with the organization Faith in Place, which was the lead applicant. Therefore, Faith in Place will also benefit from part of the grant funding and use it to create workforce training programs and electrify homes and community spaces on the West Side of Chicago.   

Jacqueline Williams, co-director of the Evolve Foundation, also said she wouldn’t have been able to craft the grant application without support from Elevate and Anese & Associates, who helped solidify Evolve Foundation’s partnership with Faith in Place as part of the consulting process.   

“I’ve written maybe 40 or 50 grants, but I still had an extremely difficult time trying to make sure this was done correctly,” Williams explained. “It’s onerous to fill out a government grant, it’s a huge burden. It could be a full-time job, and we definitely did not have the capacity for that to be our only job, so it was helpful to have someone focused on breaking it down.”  

The grant writing training program was designed to guide nonprofits through the process of applying for federal Community Change Grants, which can be challenging to navigate due to their complexity. The nonprofit staffers who participated in the training were paired with a grant navigator who walked them through the lengthy grant application step by step, providing guidance and insight throughout the process.  

The nonprofits each came to the program at different points in the grant writing process, so the support looked different for everyone, but each of the nonprofit staffers met weekly with their grant navigators to collaborate throughout the entire process.   

“It was helpful to meet weekly with our grant navigator and I feel like we developed a solid working relationship,” Jones said. “Sometimes we’d have other calls or emails outside of that too. As it intensified at the end, I felt like we were talking all day every day.”  

The grant navigators identified the nonprofits’ needs and collaborated with the organizations’ teams to identify relevant projects that could benefit from Community Change Grant funding, organize the data required for the grants, craft language to successfully apply for the funding, and answer any questions that came up along the way.  

When Jones started the grant writing program, he brought the materials he’d been using to fundraise for the Green Business Institute, which the Academy for Global Citizenship plans to open in 2026. Jones felt confident in communicating the Green Business Institute’s mission and construction plans, but a grant navigator supported him in shaping that messaging, so it aligned better with specifications laid out in the Community Change Grant.  

For example, the grant navigator helped Jones expand messaging on the workforce development component of the Green Business Institute and highlight how its other resources will help the community be more resilient against climate change, especially highlighting that the West Side of Chicago is particularly prone to flooding.  

“I’ve done a couple smaller government grants on my own, but the biggest thing is that I just don’t have the knowledge of what’s been successful in applications in the past,” Jones explained. “Elevate and Anese & Associates were able to translate it for me and point out what they liked in our application, and areas we could improve or take out. They were able to drill down and test us on some of the outcomes and specifics the government wants to see. That’s invaluable and something I couldn’t get anywhere else.”   

While traditional grant consultants deliver a written grant to their clients, this program was designed to be a high-touch, educational experience so that nonprofits can use what they’ve learned to continue applying to grants like these on their own. There were also opportunities for the nonprofits to collaborate and learn from each other, fostering community building that could lead to future partnerships.  

Through programs like this, Elevate is working to ensure other nonprofits have the tools and education they need to successfully acquire the funding they can use to meaningfully impact their communities.  

As both nonprofits await their application outcomes, the nonprofit staffers who participated in the program shared that they received invaluable training that will help them apply for other large grants in the future.