Over the course of its 10 years, the University of Chicago’s Civic Leadership Academy has trained 300 emerging and high-potential leaders in Chicago-area nonprofit and local government agencies to help those organizations thrive.
Anecdotal feedback about the program, based at the Harris School of Public Policy, has been encouraging throughout the decade. Now, data from a new survey of CLA fellows is showing the Academy’s impact may be much more robust, extensive, and nuanced than the anecdotes suggest.
More than half of the fellows have participated in institutional reforms that contributed to serving the community and achieving structural change in Chicago, the survey shows. In addition, about 80 percent of fellows report that they feel more confident in their ability to design institutional reforms to tackle problems in Chicago. Fellows shared examples of institutional reforms they led in public health, economic development, infrastructure, law enforcement, immigration, and education, to name a few areas. Furthermore, fellows provided many examples of how they are working together to pool resources to address challenges as civic leaders in Chicago.
"I led the creation of the Utility Billing Relief Program, which provided reduced water rates and debt forgiveness to low-income homeowners in the City of Chicago,” a 2016 CLA fellow wrote in a survey response. “It reformed how the City interacted with low-income residents struggling to pay their bills."
Another 2016 fellow led a $25 million capital campaign for a nonprofit that helped launch new housing and programs supporting Latino and immigrant communities facing gentrification, immigration issues and other challenges.
“Many of those projects are built today,” the fellow wrote, “thanks to the dollars raised to support capacity, secure real estate, and launch programs.”
To read the rest of the story originally published by the Harris School of Public Policy, click here.
