Chicago River Cleanup

The 30 Day Challenge was developed by our Team based on our experience working with communities. We’ve learned that the first weeks are critical to build momentum and get off to a good start with any community project. Teams who complete these steps within the first month are much more likely to successfully complete their project!

The Challenge is a series of simple steps that each applicant has to complete to get their project off the ground and unlock funding, if there is funding currently available for that idea in your region. Steps include watching a video and/or reading content, telling us more about your project, forming a team so that you have support, having your first team meeting, sharing a team photo, and sharing a project action plan.

Once funding is received it can be used to cover direct set-up costs of the new community project. For example space rental, insurance fees, seeds and planting materials, tools, training fees; pretty much any materials you might need for a project that benefits your community.

Funds cannot be used for the costs of work that has already been carried out, costs unrelated to the setup and maintenance of the new project, payments to group members for their work on the project. Funds can’t be used for the promotion of religious causes, non-charitable activities, sponsorship or fundraising events. Please read the terms and conditions for further details.

On idea pages, if there is funding available for the idea in your region you will see “Funding available” and the region listed in the turquoise box. When you first login you will also see a green banner at the top of the screen saying “live funds near you” if there is funding available in your region. The ChangeX homepage will feature those live funds near you.

A note on the waitlist: when all the funding has been allocated to applicants, new applicants will go on a waitlist. If some applicants that are in the fund don’t successfully complete the 30 Day Challenge their funding will be released and can be then allocated to those on the waitlist. To see if you are going on a waitlist check the main fund page, ideas fully allocated will have the note “Join the waitlist” instead of “Apply to start”.

ChangeX is a platform that connects communities to proven ideas and funding.

By empowering local changemakers with proven ideas from social innovators and accessible funding from our partners, we aim to build healthier, more inclusive and sustainable communities. Our work is aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and together with our partners, we aim to impact 1 billion people globally by 2030.

• Communities: Get the funding, resources and support you need to start impactful projects in your community.
• Social innovators: Connect with local changemakers, access funding to scale your idea, and impact more communities globally.
• Funders: Fund the themes and regions they care most about, with measurable impact, and at global scale.

We believe that by bringing the best social innovations and the world’s changemakers together in a shared community, we can accelerate the spread of innovations across the world and have a bigger impact. Together we aim to unleash the potential of changemakers by enabling collaboration, by sharing knowledge and resources, by connecting changemakers across different disciplines and innovations and by opening up access to the world’s best proven social innovations to everyone.