CHICAGO, March 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CME Group Foundation today announced that it has awarded over $2.2 million in grants to further support higher education and career initiatives across Chicago and Illinois.

"Every stage of the pipeline from classroom to career has been impacted by the ongoing pandemic," said Kassie Davis, Executive Director of the CME Group Foundation. "It is more important than ever to support organizations that help low-income students get to college or post-secondary training, graduate and get a strong first job."

These grants include $700,000 to support CME Group Foundation Scholars. The CME Group Foundation Scholarship Program was created for minority students majoring in finance and computer science related majors within targeted universities. The scholarships will cover up to $20,000 for each recipient for the 2021-22 school year, with potential for renewal for three years up to the 2024-25 school year.

Funding also includes $100,000 over two years to support Bottom Line, which partners with first-generation college students from under-resourced communities to help them get into and through college and successfully launch a career, as well as $100,000 over two years to support One Million Degrees, a holistic, wraparound support model dedicated to accelerating community college students' progress on career pathways to economic mobility.

For more than a decade, CME Group Foundation has served as an advocate for early childhood, K-12 and higher education and has funded transformative projects that promote real, measurable impact.

A complete list of these 2021 grantees follows:

• Scholarship America to support CME Group Foundation Scholars ($700,000 in 2021)
• Genesys Works ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Braven ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• America Needs You ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• Youth Job Center ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Wall Street Bound ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Greenwood Project ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Bottom Line ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• One Million Degrees ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• College Possible ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• UChicago Network for College Success ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Better Future Forward ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• iMentor ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• OneGoal ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• Posse Foundation ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Associated Colleges of Illinois ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Partnership for College Completion ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• The Chicago Community Trust to support Progressive Pathways ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• Empower Illinois to support the Future of Illinois Program ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• University of Chicago Consortium on School Research ($25,000 in 2021 and $25,000 in 2022)
• Advance Illinois to support the Illinois 60 X 25 Network ($50,000 in 2021 and $50,000 in 2022)
• Rock the Street, Wall Street ($25,000 in 2021)
• Northwestern University to support STEAMbassadors ($50,000 in 2021)

For more information about CME Group Foundation, please visit the website: www.cmegroupfoundation.org.

About CME Group Foundation

CME Group Foundation helps today's students keep pace with dramatically evolving technology, creating a workforce for the future that is equipped with the skills to meet tomorrow's global challenges. By bringing together the brightest minds in education to generate fresh approaches to early math, computer science, personalized learning, and college and career success, we are sparking system-wide change that benefits all students, from cradle to career. They will shape the future of the world's most important industries, including our own, so we give them the tools they need to achieve their full potential.

About CME Group

As the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) enables clients to trade futures, options, cash and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, and analyze data – empowering market participants worldwide to efficiently manage risk and capture opportunities. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals. The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex® platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates one of the world's leading central counterparty clearing providers, CME Clearing. With a range of pre- and post-trade products and services underpinning the entire lifecycle of a trade, CME Group also offers optimization and reconciliation services through TriOptima, and trade processing services through Traiana.

CME Group, the Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Globex, and, E-mini are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc. NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and ClearPort are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. BrokerTec, EBS, TriOptima, and Traiana are trademarks of BrokerTec Europe LTD, EBS Group LTD, TriOptima AB, and Traiana, Inc., respectively. Dow Jones, Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and S&P are service and/or trademarks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC, Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and S&P/Dow Jones Indices LLC, as the case may be, and have been licensed for use by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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