The Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities, a coalition of philanthropic organizations, launched the Chicago Fund for Safe and Peaceful Communities in 2016.

The Chicago Fund exists to create the conditions for violence prevention and reduction during the summer months, and supports activities by nonprofit organizations that build community cohesion and promote safety and peace.

The Partnership is the administrator of the Fund for Safe and Peaceful Communities, which is supported by institutional and individual donors whose contributions make it possible to award thousands of dollars in grants.

The Fund offers rapid-response grant opportunities designed to support community-based actions and activities that make neighborhoods safer. It was created in direct response to the many people and grassroots organizations that are already taking powerful, on-the-ground action in their neighborhoods.

Donors to this Fund also are engaged in larger, long-term efforts to help address the problem of violence prevention and community safety. What makes this Fund different from those efforts is that its intended purpose is to provide highly-targeted, immediate support to smaller, neighborhood-based groups over the summer. To be clear, the Fund is not meant to be a quick fix to the broad and complex problem of violence nor is it a substitute for the intensive and wide-ranging efforts already underway (or being planned) to develop responses to the many root causes of the challenge.