Amplify! Advocate! Disrupt!
10 Years of Collective Care
Our Vision
Women Unite! (WU!) and Chicago United Solidarity Project (CUSP) have an ambitious vision for 2026. Through a year-long series of collaborative events, we hope to build power and resources by connecting communities of care across and throughout Chicago.
How This Started
In 2024, WU! and CUSP launched their first-ever Summer Series, which brought multiple organizations together to co-host fundraising and resource sharing events that have collectively brought in nearly $40,000.
Amplify! Advocate! Disrupt! 10 Years of Collective Care expands our Summer Series concept across a full calendar year and partners us with at least six different community-based organizations.
Who We Are
Chicago United Solidarity Project (CUSP) creates radical and regenerative systems of care to meet people’s basic needs, while building solidarity and political power across Chicago. In 2025, CUSP is on pace to distribute:
40,000 lbs of food, feeding 300 families/month
30,000 articles of clothing
1,500 hygiene kits
36,000 diapers
3,000 gallons of drinking water
20,000 lbs of pet food, feeding 400 pets/month
Women Unite! (WU!) believes in the power of women and the key role we play in making our world a more just, compassionate place. We strive to uplift the voices of all who have been silenced. Each year, WU! provides nearly 8,000 hours of free and sliding-scale capacity building services to grassroots organizations across Chicago.
Farm-to-table dinner at Cedillo’s Fresh produce during our Summer Series in July 2025.
Our Goals
We have an ambitious goal of co-hosting up to 8 collaborative events throughout 2026. Through these this series we hope to:
Build relationships and share resources.
We believe the scarcity mindset is bullshit. There is more than enough for everyone. Collaborative events are a way to put this belief into practice. By sharing networks, resources, and connections, we hope to grow our overall community’s access to resources.
Prioritize people over philanthropy.
We believe that our current nonprofit system is meant to serve the rich and maintain the status quo. One key way this happens is by pitting nonprofits and community-led organizations against one another for funding. Through collaborative events and capacity building, we hope to replace competition with community and prioritize people over philanthropy.
Cultivate solidarity economies.
Events, when done intentionally, can create economic opportunity. We hope to use our ambitious event schedule to support and grow solo entrepreneurs and other hyperlocal small businesses by paying them for their services and promoting them across platforms. Examples include: caterers, day-of event support, DJs, videographers, photographers, etc.
Our first ever Mutual Aid Fair, May 2025.
Participating Organizations
Budget Transparency
To help us achieve this goal, we hope to raise $100,000 over the course of the year that will be spent to plan and execute up to 8 events and guarantee a minimum donation to all participating organizations.
$51,000 event costs for up to 8 events (dollars will be spent primarily on BIPOC, WOC, immigrant, and queer run businesses that are local to Chicago)
$24,500 cover portion of three full-time salaried positions spent on event planning and execution
$15,500 consultants (event planning, design, communications, day-of logistics)
$9,000 covers community event and raffle tickets for the year; ensuring free access for folks from frontline communities
Our first-ever Winter Wellness event with a yoga flow led by The Groove Chicago and sound bath from LiBelleration Yoga in February 2025.
“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.”
—Audre Lorde, Learning From The 60s
Our Commitments
To ensure restorative, respectful, and productive collaboration, we’ve created a comprehensive set of Operational & Community Agreements. We are sharing it here to increase overall transparency as well as to provide deeper insight into our values and driving principles.