The Driehaus Foundation works to ensure the built environment is enhanced by the preservation and reuse of historic places, community-driven planning, and sustainable and well-designed new buildings and landscapes. Our goal is to help promote a positive quality of life and a strong sense of place – the kind of public places that are unique and special, focus on the human experience, and where people want to live, work, and play.
Residents across the South and West Sides of Chicago have big ideas for the neighborhoods they want to live and work in. Yet they often lack access to funding, technical expertise, educational resources, and the networks needed to turn those dreams into reality. At the Driehaus Foundation, we believe healthy urban environments must be designed by and for residents, and that resources at every stage of development are essential to building places that enrich the lives of all Chicagoans.
To help communities move toward implementation, the Foundation supports local nonprofit developers and community development intermediaries, and contributes to pooled funds to leverage additional investment and increase impact.
Duo Development is an innovation studio and nonprofit developer whose mission is to create built environment innovations for the benefit of society. Duo does this through ethical real estate development; strategy, design, and innovation services; and research and ventures to disseminate lessons learned. Too often, traditional real estate development leaves residents out of ownership, reinforcing racial wealth gaps and perpetuating extractive redevelopment cycles.
Community members consistently express needs for neighborhood-serving commercial spaces, affordable housing, and cultural venues. Through Duo’s Obras Compartidas/Shared Works program, residents get access to four essential elements to launch projects: technical know-how, financing, networks of trusted professionals, and design excellence. Duo flips the joint venture model to give residents majority ownership (70% Compa (co-owner) / 30% Duo), ensuring new projects align with community priorities, build local wealth, and create catalytic physical anchors. Duo asks, “What might our city be if everyday people built our neighborhoods?”
Community Desk Chicago (the Desk) is a community development intermediary that works in under-resourced neighborhoods to shift power dynamics through community wealth-building and small-scale infill commercial real estate development. The Desk leverages relationships, aggregates risk-tolerant capital, and provides high-touch case management and training so community leaders can develop real estate, build a pipeline of projects, and raise the capital needed to implement local plans. Its long-term vision is a Chicago where every community has the resources to create healthy built environments that support vibrant spaces, positive economic activity, and shared prosperity.
The Neighborhood Capital Fund is a funders collaborative led by The Chicago Community Trust that has raised approximately $20 million to support underinvested neighborhoods, primarily on the South and West Sides of Cook County. The Fund provides streamlined, late-stage capital grants for brick-and-mortar projects to help close remaining financing gaps so projects can move into and through construction. It prioritizes community-led developments located within half a mile of recent economic activity to build on momentum and focuses on projects that have secured more than 75% of resources needed. By supporting multiple projects at once, the Fund helps accelerate visible, neighborhood-scale change.
We are honored to support these partners as they preserve, revitalize, and enhance the built environment in communities across Chicago.
