Changing the odds for
Our Youth
Your support propelled our mission forward to fight poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for Chicago’s youth.”
In a year of extraordinary challenges, our portfolio not only persevered, but provided Chicago’s youth with critical holistic supports and delivered an unprecedented level of impact. Our portfolio organizations now reach more than 42,000 youth from cradle to career, providing a range of innovative, life changing opportunities for our city’s young people.
In addition to our core portfolio, our Emergency Relief Fund provided essential supports to more than 600,000 youth and families. And through our newly launched Catalyst Fund, we strengthened and broadened our core portfolio with five new investments on Chicago’s West Side.
In a year of unrelenting challenges, your support propelled our mission forward to fight poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for Chicago’s youth. We are grateful for your continued partnership in this work.
Portfolio Impact Snapshot
42,079 - Our portfolio served more than 42,000 youth—from cradle to career—in 2020.
4,200 - Due to the work of our grantee organizations, 4,200 more students are on track to long-term success.*
67% - Of youth served by our grantees 67% are on track to achieve long-term success. This is 10% more than similar Chicago youth who are not beneficiaries of our support.
* Our key success metric, youth on track to long-term success, is a product of both the size of our portfolio (reach) and the strength of its outcomes (achievement of key success milestones).
A Better Chicago is changing how Chicago fights poverty by investing in bold ideas that create opportunity for our youth. We raise funds from donors who want to amplify their impact, then invest both meaningful grant dollars and strategic capacity-building support that help our grantees grow in scale and impact.
A Better Chicago is committed to advancing racial equity and ensuring Chicago youth are economically mobile and thriving in education, career, and life. Given this nation’s longstanding history of systemic inequity, we focus our efforts on funding and scaling ideas that expand opportunities for Black and Latinx youth, with particular emphasis on those ideas coming directly from the communities we serve. Read our full statement here.
We know that the challenges are great, and the need is even greater. However, we believe that, together, we can build a city where all youth have what they need to thrive in education, career and life.
National poverty rose 2 points from June to July 2020 to 11.4% (40% more than the largest historical one-year change).
Impacts are largest for Black Americans, children, and those without a high school degree.
High school attendance fell by 7 points to 81% and elementary school attendance fell by 3 points to 92% between the 2019-2020 and the 2020-2021 academic years. 2
Low-income and non-white youth suffered the most across school attendance and enrollment metrics.
44% of young children experienced an increase in mental or behavioral health symptoms during the pandemic. 3
260,000+ CPS students qualify for free/reduced lunch each year. 5
17,000+ CPS youth experience homelessness each year, relying on school for essentials, laundry, and stability. 6
As of December 2020, Illinois was one of six states with unemployment rates 5 percentage points higher than pre-pandemic. 7
If prior years’ positive trends had persisted, 33% of Illinois youth ages 16-19 would have been employed in summer 2020. Instead, only 16% were. 8
1 UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy;
2 CPS via ABC News;
3 Lurie Children’s Hospital;
4 Director of UIC’s Center for Literacy (via Chicago Runtimes);
5 Chicago Food Bank;
6 Chicago Coalition for Homeless;
7 Mathematicas;
8 Illinois Policy.
Our overarching goal is for youth in Chicago to grow to be economically mobile and thrive in education, career, and life. Through our portfolio, we increase the number of Chicago youth with the resources and opportunities critical for long-term success.
Youth
Our portfolio continues to serve more young people year after year. In 2020, our grantees served more than 42,000 youth—from early learners to college graduates.
The generosity of our donors and corporate partners makes our work possible. We reached a new fundraising record in 2020 with more than $8 million dollars raised to support our portfolio of youth-serving nonprofits.
We are proud to have a diverse group of individuals, corporations, and foundations that donate to help break the cycle of poverty for current and future generations. In 2020 alone, we engaged more than 1000 donors.
We know that the youth most impacted by systemic inequities, and now the pandemic, are on the South and West sides of Chicago. We launched our Catalyst Fund in 2019 to direct resources to highly effective community-imbedded leaders serving youth on the South and West Sides and made our first Catalyst Fund investments in 2020.
Our five new Catalyst Fund investments are Black, community-embedded leaders with innovative approaches to serving youth on the West Side.
Austin Childcare Providers Network is an organization focused on elevating childcare provider quality and developing a collaborative pilot focused on ensuring that children leave early childcare provides ready for kindergarten by creating continuity of learning and practice among childcare (pre-K) providers and elementary schools.
The Firehouse Community Arts Center’s VIP (Very Important Process) Program is focused on the prevention and interruption of violence by providing young adult men with mentorship, leadership development and access to skills training and job opportunities.
Along with learning the sport of boxing, which serves as a meaningful physical outlet for youth, The Bloc provides youth from the West Side of Chicago with academic coaching and mentorship.
MAAFA’s mission is to repair and rebuild West Garfield Park by improving the quality of life of emerging adult, Black and Brown men and their families. MAAFA focuses on creating holistic “oasis of opportunity” for these young men to equip and empower their movement from “at risk” to thriving.
West Side United’s Cluster of Care Community Hub will provide students and families with wraparound services and resources conveniently located in the school building. The Hub’s key programmatic support areas will include primary care, mental health services, social-emotional learning support, and trauma-informed professional development training.
Our key success metric, youth on track to long-term success, is a product of both the size of our portfolio (reach) and the strength of its outcomes (achievement of key success milestones).
Each A Better Chicago grantee tracks indicators tied to one or more key success milestones (e.g., grade-level reading and math attainment, high school graduation, quality career attainment). We measure overall outcomes by comparing grantee and portfolio results to external benchmarks of youth with similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
Our annual portfolio-wide impact metric estimates our portfolio’s impact on the number of youth on track to long-term success as:
(Reach) x (Portfolio success % - Benchmark success %)
Our portfolio served more than 42,000 youth—from cradle to career—in 2020.
Due to the work of our grantee organizations, 4,200 more students are on track to long-term success.
Of youth served by our grantees 67% are on track to achieve long-term success. This is 10% more than similar Chicago youth who are not beneficiaries of our grantees.
A Better Chicago portfolio organizations serve youth from communities disproportionately impacted by the current pandemic and systemic inequities in our country. This includes BIPOC, low-income, and other marginalized communities.
Black and/or Latinx
Low-income
A Better Chicago provides a combination of unrestricted funding and management support, including capacity-building assistance and thought partnership, to empower grantees to tackle their most pressing strategic and operational challenges.
In 2020, we executed seven different external management support projects with six of our grantee organizations. Many of these projects were portfolio-wide workshops to address challenges regarding fundraising and communications strategies during the pandemic.
Building Effective Presentations
in partnership with our impact council
Project Management in a Virtual World
in partnership with our impact council
Managing to Change the World
in partnership with The Management Center
Virtual Meeting Best Practices
in partnership with Bain & Company
Fundraising During COVID (Dual Pandemics): Mindsets and Strategies to Survive
in partnership with Teach For America
Philanthropic Giving Trends
in partnership with Northern Trust
Virtual Fundraising Best Practices
in partnership with our grantees Pitch In and Chicago Scholars
Through their recently completed strategic planning process, Chicago Scholars identified that their scholars consistently experience structural exclusion based on race and class in both college and the workplace. As a result, the organization pursued this project to intentionally and explicitly integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into how Chicago Scholars achieves its organizational goals. A Better Chicago provided input during the consultant selection process and funded 50% of project costs.
With a program model anchored in SEL, Pitch In bolstered its program team’s knowledge, skills, and capacity in SEL and redoubled its goal of delivering developmentally scaffolded, high-quality curriculum and student supports through an extended series of professional development workshops and coaching. A Better Chicago provided input during the consultant selection process and funded 75% of project costs.
As part of its commitment to becoming an anti-racist organization, KIPP Chicago’s network-wide leadership team engaged in a series of DEI workshops to create a clear vision and pathway towards a more racially just and equitable experience for students, families, teachers and staff. A Better Chicago funded 50% of project costs.
2020 was a particularly important year for A Better Chicago as we celebrated 10 years of impact. We launched innovative partnerships, hosted compelling events, and redirected critical resources to communities in need while introducing our work to new audiences.
We became one of the anchor residents of FBRK Impact House, joining fellow funders in Chicago’s first innovation-based philanthropy center founded by former Bears player Israel Idonije.
We hosted Chicago at the Crossroads documentary screening and panel discussion with filmmaker Schodorf and Firehouse Community Art Center Executive Director Pastor Phil Jackson.
We launched Emergency Relief Fund in response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s disproportionate impact on youth from low-income, Black, and Latinx communities.
We teamed up with World Central Kitchen, Chicago Public Schools, and NFL Player Adrian Clayborn to support students and families by providing more than 11,000 meals to more than 5,000 households during the summer months.
We celebrated Chicago Public Schools’ highest-ever graduation rate of 83% that was propelled by gains from Black students. Additionally, we invested with CompUDopt to supply thousands of graduating seniors facing financial hardship with laptops and other technology needed to pursue their postsecondary goals in a hybrid learning environment.
We joined forces with Mikva Challenge to host the first-ever State of Chicago’s Youth virtual town hall where youth leaders shared policy recommendations focused on health, education, juvenile justice, housing, and safety/policing.
We co-hosted an “Innovation Through Crisis” event with The Chicago Public Education Fund to showcase exemplary leaders in our schools and their efforts to empower Chicago’s youth to thrive even in times of uncertainty.
We launched our One West Side partnership with the Chicago Blackhawks Foundation to invest at least $2 million in exemplary BIPOC leaders from Chicago’s West Side serving youth from cradle to career.
We made our first Catalyst Fund investments to support community-embedded leaders with innovative approaches to serving youth across the South and West sides of our city.
We celebrated 10 years of impact with our A Better Future virtual fundraiser honoring the nonprofit leaders, youth changemakers, and generous donors who are stepping up to build a better future for us all.
Through our Emergency Relief Fund, we invested $2.5 million in 47 local nonprofits serving more than 600,000 youth and families. The organizations below worked diligently to bring direct financial support, essential goods, and innovative educational programming to communities hardest hit by COVID-19.
youth and families served
32 new to ABC (13 current grantees, 2 former grantees)
Identified 76 organizations for potential future funding
The significant volume of applications we received represent the massive and evolving need, especially on the South and West sides of our city. Of these applications, about 35% were related to food and groceries, 15% for mental health supports, and 20% for remote learning technology (e.g., devices) and/or wifi.
Our Emergency Relief Fund grantees focused on three main areas of need, with the majority of organizations addressing more than one need.
Our funding also supported the expansion of high-quality learning and engagement opportunities, including:
Remote learning devices
Households with WiFi
Provided in college-related expenses
Youth and families with access to remote mental health services
Youth in K-12 with enhanced remote learning opportunities
Covid-19 has been a real game-changer for me in terms that I never knew what situation I would be in. It changed the way I learned, the way I worked, and also the way that I would communicate with others. I had to move to online learning. …It is not only hard but sometimes tough to make sense of what is being taught. Bottom Line has helped me navigate this different type of learning.”
Your generosity has helped make obtaining my degree from National Louis possible, and I am incredibly grateful for this.” “I grew up in Chicago and attended high school in a low-income community. … I am the youngest of five children and the first to attend college. Growing up in a less privileged community caused me to experience financial challenges, but it helped me realize the importance of education.”
The emergency funds have been nothing short of a blessing. Coming from a family who has been stuck and plagued by a cycle due to our socioeconomic status, these emergency funds have given me a way to have a burden slightly alleviated. …These funds have been a huge help in ensuring I have everything I need to become successful in life. Without the accessibility to these funds I do not think I would be able to afford the cost of attendance for the university I attend.”
Thanks to the generosity of A Better Chicago, and many other supporters who followed ABC’s lead in responding to the nonprofit sector’s deep needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, in early May, Pitch In successfully pivoted its social-emotional learning curriculum to a remote format and launched its first-ever virtual programming! Our middle school students are now able to log into a secure Zoom meeting on a weekly basis, connect with their Pitch In family and Mentors, share how they are coping and where they need support, and engage in activities that build their mind muscle and creativity.”
In addition to COVID-19 emergency relief efforts, A Better Chicago’s incredible portfolio of core organizations provides Chicago’s youth with the education, skills, and opportunities to succeed and break the cycle of poverty.
Supporting community-embedded leaders with innovative approaches to serving youth across the South and West sides of the city
Austin Childcare Providers Network
Firehouse Community Arts Center
MAAFA Redemption Project
The Bloc
West Side United
Seed investments in promising organizational models that are ready to scale
BARR Center
Braven
College Possible Chicago
iMentor Chicago
Intrinsic Schools
Pathways at NLU
Pitch In
Significant investments to grow successful organizations with strong track records of impact
Bottom Line Chicago
Chicago Scholars
KIPP Chicago
Noble Network of Charter Schools
OneGoal-Chicago
One Million Degrees
Thank you to everyone who made this work, and this report, possible.
A special thanks to: Bark Design, Becky Altman, Samantha Estacion, Christy Joyce, Vaish Shastry, Laura Walzer, and Danielle Veira.