CVI Ecosystem Support for the Government Alliance for Safe Communities
Client: Government Alliance for Safe Communities | Partner: BCG
Opportunity
Community Violence Intervention (CVI) uses a range of evidence-based strategies to engage communities to prevent and disrupt cycles of violence and retaliation. It links individuals at highest risk of violence involvement with community resources to mediate conflicts, provide life-saving services, support healing from trauma, and open doors to new opportunities. Since 2017, Civic Consulting Alliance has partnered with clients across the philanthropic, public, and private sectors to scale Chicago’s CVI ecosystem to reduce and prevent violence.
In 2021, CVI reached a pivotal point when the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the State of Illinois budgeted a significant increase of funding for evidence-based CVI strategies with funding from the America Rescue Plan Act. The County engaged Civic Consulting Alliance to develop an intergovernmental strategy to ensure that the collective $350 million in public violence prevention funding was deployed effectively.
Building on our years of work, in 2024 and 2025 a CCA team and BCG supported this intergovernmental collaboration, now called the Government Alliance for Safe Communities (GASC). GASC had several goals:
Align reporting requirements to spare grantees the administrative burden of tracking multiple funder metrics for the same program,
Build the organizational capacity of grassroots organizations to ensure they would be successful and effective in administering public funds/CVI programs
Align funding standards across the agencies to better communicate eligibility and assessment requirements to prospective grantees
Action
Building on close partnership since 2021, Civic Consulting Alliance continued to support GASC with the following initiatives:
Cross-sector coordination (“One Table”): Civic Consulting Alliance and BCG facilitated roundtable discussions, bringing together client stakeholders who are part of Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago (SC2), including GASC, private funders (Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities), the business community (Civic Committee); as well as citywide CVI providers (Chicago CRED, Metropolitan Peace Initiatives). These convenings aligned on budgets and funding needs, surfaced key challenges like organizational capacity building, metrics alignment and coordination, and reached consensus on moving forward with the “one table” approach to scaling CVI in Chicago.
Metrics alignment and tool development: Civic Consulting Alliance and BCG conducted working sessions with staff from GASC and SC2 to align on common grantee metrics, which reduced the administrative reporting burden on CBOs and enabled them to devote more time and resources to violence reduction efforts.
Build and adjust a capacity building model offering free customized support to local community-based organizations: CCA support focused on building out a long-term model for coordinated capacity building using a model that connects organizations to a diverse pool of subject matter experts through an anchor organization working with the GASC. The model, developed over a year ago, was updated in 2024 based on current conditions to ensure the County can effectively distribute funding for community violence reduction efforts. In 2025, GASC Capacity Building Network, or 'The Network,' launched with an inaugural cohort of 30 grassroots community-based organizations.
"Together, Civic Consulting Alliance and BCG are strong complementary partners working in the complex public safety ecosystem. We each have our strengths and areas of expertise that help us be force multipliers for each other and our clients. The growth of BCG’s work across CVI and CCA’s in policing and criminal justice systems, each with distinct but complementary stakeholders and goals, shows that we are powerful when we come together, play to our strengths, and support an ecosystem that works collaboratively."
– Cassandra N. Di Prizio, Director, Social Impact & Marketing at BCG
Impact
Through the “One Table” cross-sector convenings, funders and stakeholders in the CVI space through SC2— which includes Civic Consulting Alliance clients GASC, the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities, and the Civic Committee’s Public Safety Task Force—have a structured forum to clarify funding needs, align priorities, address challenges such as organizational capacity building, and coordinate efforts to scale CVI services across Chicago’s neighborhoods.
GASC and SC2 now have coordinated alignment to distribute resources for community violence intervention (CVI). By prioritizing supporting organizations through streamlined reporting requirements and supporting capacity-building, CVI service providers can spend more time on frontline violence reduction rather than on administrative tasks, thereby strengthening the overall impact of public funding.
The impact of a coordinated and sustained investment in public safety strategies like CVI is measurable: the city ended 2025 with 418 homicides, down from 587 in 2024, and the lowest annual total in the city since 1965.
This coordinated approach complements Civic Consulting Alliance’s work to support the Professional Understanding between the Chicago Police Department and CVI providers to stop retaliatory violence and support at-risk individuals.