Our Learnings

More than a dozen organizations offering activities, healing and education to girls in Chicago received funding this week to expand their programs. LOV received maximum grant awarded.

Our community partner and 2022 Fast Pitch participating leader, Dion Dawson, founder of Dion’s Chicago Dream, unveiled his second set of Dream Vaults last week. They will provide 175 households with free produce every week.

Yolanda Fields, executive director of our community partner Breakthrough, writes in this op-ed that violence prevention needs a hyperlocal focus.

Dion Dawson, our 2022 Spirit of Fast Pitch award winner and co-chair of our 2023 Fast Pitch Fun(d) Squad, recently wrote an op-ed for Crain's Chicago Business about how City Hall can help end hunger in Chicago.

A Black-, family-owned coffee shop has opened in Austin’s Soul City Corridor after meeting with Malcom Crawford, executive director of our community partner Austin African American Business Networking Association.

The Chicago White Sox honored our Fast Pitch participant Southside Blooms as a part of their "Southside Mondays" where they feature an impactful business on the Southside of Chicago!

Asiaha Butler, Athena Williams, and Malcolm Crawfor, three of our community partner executive directors, are featured in this article.

Athena Williams, executive director of our community partner Oak Park Regional Housing Center, spoke at at the annual Austin Coming Together panel.

Curtis Granderson, baseball star, participated in a food giveaway, handing out grocery bags full of four healthy meals provided by our community nonprofit the Firehouse Community Arts Center who give out meals weekly.

A worrying trend is seen by those of us who work with nonprofits led by and serving people of color.

Philanthropy must learn to center relationships without backing away from the inherent messiness of diverse points of view.

Her giving approach underscores the importance of human-centered grant making.

Leaders of color are bringing their considerable talents and lived experiences to top leadership positions in the social sector. At the same time, as incoming executive directors and CEOs, they often face institutional and systemic challenges that make it difficult for them to fully thrive in their roles. Here are four ways funders can help new leaders avoid common challenges and invest in their success during leadership transitions.

This article outlines the bias that systems change thinking can often have against smaller, community based organizations and outlines case studies where the impact of investing in small nonprofits has been monumental. Their recommendation: support smaller, locally led organizations to unlock their incredible potential to influence systems.

Black women have always stood up and pushed for social progress—despite being deeply marginalized by the very systems they push to change. We all benefit when our most transformative change agents are given the time and resources necessary to dream big.

Most nonprofits operate on razor-thin margins and need more philanthropic support for training in fundraising, leadership, and financial management, a new survey has found.

In this oped, the author encourages behavior from the donor and nonprofit organization that are counterproductive to the relationship building and trust- based philanthropy that we know makes a difference. Take a read to find out what not to do!

When we rethink who is a philanthropist, who receives philanthropic support, and who has the power to decide where philanthropic resources flow, we unlock philanthropy’s potential to create lasting, positive social change.

SSIR discusses how thousands of undercapitalized community-based leaders could quickly gain significant momentum if impact investors and funders change their strategy. The five “what if” scenarios outlined in this article are examples of where shifting social capital could make real impacts in communities like Chicago’s South and West Sides.

SVP Chicago is dedicated to developing relationships, by both working closely with each of the nonprofits we partner with, and by fostering connections between these organizations. In this article, SSIR discusses how strengthening connections has been shown to help solve problems, even at the systemic level.

Decades of disinvestment have left the once-thriving South Side neighborhood with few full-service dining options. Local entrepreneurs and community groups are working to change that.

Through “unBlocked Englewood,” Tonika Lewis Johnson and the Chicago Bungalow Association are paying for home repairs along one block, which the organizer hopes can help reverse decades of discriminatory housing policies.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have been studying guaranteed income programs in the region, but there are some results data alone can’t reveal. So, one Chicago-based sociologist spoke with people receiving monthly cash assistance to find out more about the difference it makes in their lives.

Hear perspectives and stories from residents who have stayed in West Garfield Park despite the nearly constant gunfire.

Systemic Drivers of Health extend beyond traditional health care and the individual’s immediate situation to include the behavioral, social, environmental, and structural factors that can have a direct impact on their overall health. In order to truly understand these factors, innovators need to examine the root cause drivers of our health challenges.

About a quarter of Black babies and toddlers in rental households face the threat of eviction in a typical year, a new study says, and all children are disproportionately at risk.

Chicago’s “environmental justice neighborhoods” were identified in a new study, which will help inform how the city develops communities overburdened by pollution and industry.

Throughout Chicago's South and West sides, retail corridors are heavily populated with stores that do not keep wealth in the community.

An estimated 60 percent of those leaving prison are unemployed a year later. But after a push for “second chance hiring,” some programs show promise.

The effects of redlining still reverberate today and are a major contributor to Chicago's wide and persistent racial wealth gap. The predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods on the South and West sides have yet to recover from a transfer of wealth from homeowners to real estate speculators.

A recent study showed that half of Chicagoans witness a shooting by the time they turn 40. Violence interrupters say this is further evidence of how gun violence is borne out of systemic neglect of Black and Brown neighborhoods.