Supporting Innovation for Basic Needs
Client: The Chicago Community Trust | Partner: BCG
Opportunity
For nearly a century, the U.S. has relied on a partnership between government and nonprofits to form its social safety net. However, recent deep federal funding cuts and policy shifts have put significant strain on the organizations and people tasked with delivering food, health care, and other safety-net services.
When nonprofits delivering critical services become vulnerable, the consequences are felt first and most acutely by those who face the prospect of going without nutritious meals, medicine, or shelter.
The impact cascades across the social sector as providers face reduced hours or staff to manage operations with less funding. In short order, the impact reaches across our civic ecosystem and impacts the economic competitiveness of the Chicago region. When organizations can no longer provide care, the cost of delivery doesn’t disappear. It shifts. Hospitals see more uninsured and sicker patients. Public transportation and school systems absorb the effects of housing instability and food insecurity. Employers face a less stable workforce and a constrained consumer base. At the same time, this moment demands more than short-term survival. Many of our safety net systems were strained even before recent federal shifts.
The good news is that organizations meeting basic human needs today have the ideas, relationships, and trust to build better systems and approaches. These dual priorities—managing today’s urgent needs and developing better, more efficient ways of working for the future—require time and resources to reimagine, test, and pilot the best solutions. In partnership with frontline organizations, a group of funders led by The Chicago Community Trust and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation came together in 2025 to help meet these needs.
Given our work to support funder collaboratives like the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities, and We Rise Together: For an Equitable & Just Recovery, the CCA team was approached to help this group of funders design an initiative to support social-sector leaders in developing their ideas for responding to current funding and policy changes while creating more efficient, effective ways of working for the future.
Action
Our team and pro bono partners at BCG worked with this group of funders to help them develop a vision, governance structure, and grantmaking strategy for a future collaborative fund aimed at supporting innovation in human service delivery.
“Civic Consulting Alliance has an extraordinary ability to bring diverse stakeholders together to develop solutions to complex challenges that put people at the center. Their work with funders, government, and nonprofits in Cook County identified impactful ways to strengthen our region’s capacity to deliver essential services in the face of federal funding cuts.”
Impact
Chicago’s funders are not only providing immediate emergency relief for basic human services but also, through a new collaborative fund, will support nonprofits to develop their best ideas for innovative strategies to deliver essential services more effectively and sustainably.
In the Crain’s Chicago Business article, “Commentary: Washington's actions compel Chicago's philanthropic community to innovate”, philanthropic leaders from Polk Bros. Foundation, Steans Family Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Joyce Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, and Schreiber Philanthropy underscore how important it is, for today and the future, to lean into nonprofits’ burgeoning ideas and fresh thinking to deliver basic human needs more efficiently.