Nomeward Bound
A Chiditarod Fundraising and Racing Team
Who are you? What is this?
Nomeward Bound is a Chiditarod Team that has been racing since 2015.
In September 2025 Nomeward Bound was recognized as Chiditarod’s ALL TIME TOP FUNDRAISING TEAM having raised $190,000+ for the Chiditarod Foundation’s Grant Program.
Wait… what ?
Chiditarod is a 501(c)(3) raising money to fight hunger — all while dressing up and causing chaos. CHIditarod is Chicago’s 100% volunteer-driven epic urban shopping cart race, charity food drive, costumed beauty pageant, talent show, fundraiser, parade, and chaos generator.
It’s probably the world’s largest mobile food drive.
In 2026, Chiditarod is celebrating it’s 21st birthday and the more than ONE MILLION DOLLARS raised since it’s inception!
Set your calendars for CHIditarod XXI on Saturday March 7th, 2026.
Fundraising and Grant Making? A Good Cause and not just Chaos? Tell me more!
In 2025, the Chiditarod Foundation gave out $121,000 in Community Grants. Another truly mind-blowing year of generosity of our donors means 21 organizations can further their reach to addressing food insecurity in northern Illinois. Fourteen program development grants were awarded at $5,000 each, and seven infrastructure grants were awarded at a maximum level of $8,000.
The Chiditarod grant program has historically prioritized funds to organizations addressing food insecurity, and specifically programming and infrastructure that provides:
- Innovative or novel ways to address challenges to food access and availability
- Health nutrition or creative work on some aspect of food
- Innovative educational opportunities about food
- Building partnerships with other organizations and policy-relevant leaders engaged in local issues
Cool, but… why are you all dressed like Gritty?
Why not?
Gritty was our team theme in 2022. None of us are from Philly, and none of us are even really hockey fans. We didn’t say it made sense.
We handmade all of the costumes, and King Gritty on top of one of our carts, and yes, in 2026 we are still finding bits of Gritty Fur in odd places.
Didn’t you win Best in Show in 2024 for dressing up as a Chicago River Architecture Tour, and yet you’re still showing off Gritty on your homepage?
Yup.
We even had a dedicated Chiditaline Tours website, and a dedicated website for 2025’s Corvidarod – but here we are. Still Gritty.