The COVID-19 crisis has catalyzed an urgent need for large-scale public health and economic re-opening and recovery initiatives, which will create thousands of new employment opportunities. At the same time, it has created unprecedented and rapid unemployment and loss of income in ways that amplify the inequities already defining our region's labor market. It is [...]
Apprenticeship 2020 is a new $3.2M fund to accelerate efforts to scale high-quality work-based learning programs in Chicago. Local and national foundations including JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce.org, The Joyce Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, Pritzker Traubert Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and others, have launched this collaborative effort, in partnership with employers and other stakeholders to test new [...]
The Genesis Movement developed from a collaboration between the Funder Alliance and the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC) that began in 2013 and continues today. The Funder Alliance first awarded IMEC a planning grant to help develop an Industry Workforce Partnership for manufacturing. But what developed in 2014 was a different kind of initiative. IMEC [...]
When the Funder Alliance started in 2012 it inherited an industry workforce partnership focused on manufacturing in Chicago’s Calumet region called the Calumet Green Manufacturing Partnership or CGMP. Initially it was a collaboration of community colleges, CBOs and local governments focused on improving career pathways for local residents into good jobs in manufacturing. The Funder [...]
https://youtu.be/-HYtXSFsgY8 In the spring of 2017, the Obama family made a $1 million gift to the Funder Alliance with instructions to use the funding to support a “generational shift” in Chicago’s building trades workforce. The Obama family knew that underrepresentation of communities of color and women in building trades careers is a persistent problem, [...]
The Financial Services Pipeline (FSP) initiative was a partnership that financial services firms created in 2014 to increase the representation of African Americans and Latinos in their sector. The Chicago Community Trust and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago were also integral to its formation. The FSP brought together about 18 financial services companies, [...]
Reimagine Retail Chicagoland is a collaborative workforce development initiative funded by Aspen Institute with support from the Walmart Foundation. The initiative’s three main strategies include helping improve the quality of jobs for workers in entry-level positions, create pathways for advancement in retail and related sectors, and increase employee engagement, productivity, and retention. ReimagineRetail Brochure [...]
Since 2013, the Funder Alliance has invested in the worker center movement in Chicagoland, helping eight worker voice/worker empowerment agencies band together and form a new agency, the Raise the Floor Alliance (RTF). In that time, RTF has solidified its capacity, hiring staff and establishing a successful model of collective action. Together they work [...]
