Nonprofits

To achieve our goals, we often work with other nonprofits that have expertise and experience in the complicated issues we work on. Over the years, Civic Consulting Alliance has collaborated with hundreds of nonprofits to understand key issues, develop the right solutions and implement those solutions to achieve impact.

Civic Consulting Alliance has also at times helped to create new nonprofits, such as Thrive Chicago, Chicago-Cook Workforce Partnership and Chicago Career Tech (today known as Skills for Chicagoland’s Future).

2014 Case Study:
Boosting Tourism through Focus, Inquiry and Action

Challenge
The recession that began in 2008 devastated tourism everywhere. But where other cities began to see their numbers move upward as the economy rebounded, Chicago’s numbers had stagnated. What had been 46 million visitors to Chicago in 2007 had fallen to 39 million visitors by 2010. Something wasn’t right.

Concerned about the trend lines, the city’s tourism leaders began a process of examination and reflection. Important questions were asked. What are other cities doing? Do we have the right message and marketing strategy? Are we investing enough money? How should we structure the organization responsible for promoting our city?

Action
To get the ball rolling, Don Welsh, then-CEO of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, asked Civic Consulting Alliance to analyze the tourism efforts of other cities around the country. Working with Griffin Strategic Advisors, Civic Consulting Alliance examined 11 U.S. cities and found that other cities were investing more resources in tourism. Trends were identified: for example, cities like New York City were making significant inroads with international visitors, by far the most lucrative traveler segment. The investigation also uncovered some of the advantages of having a unified tourism office, whereas Chicago tourism efforts had been managed by a few different organizations.

Next, the Mayor’s Office convened a steering committee of top leaders across all sections of the tourism industry, with staffing from Civic Consulting Alliance. The committee was charged with finding workable solutions to improve Chicago’s tourism performance. Among the group’s main recommendations was a call to unify the two principal tourism bodies under a single office. In early 2012, Mayor Emanuel announced that the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau and the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture would be consolidated into a newly branded organization called Choose Chicago. The consolidation was supported by Civic Consulting Alliance, McKinsey & Company, and Jones Day, and brought new strategic focus and increased funding to the City’s efforts to promote itself.

Other projects followed. Civic Consulting Alliance performed market analysis supporting the Mayor’s announcement of specific tourism goals to achieve by 2020. The Boston Consulting Group led a detailed benchmarking study of ten international cities to determine what type of attraction mix was needed. Adam Helman and Suzanne Campion helped the City reexamine its cultural tourism strategy and find ways to promote Chicago’s neighborhoods. McKinsey & Company examined long-range funding options to support continued investments.

Results
As a unified entity, Choose Chicago was a shot-in-the-arm to the city’s tourism mojo. There’s a new energy and focus in promoting our great city. More resources are being applied to a more strategic and social media-rich marketing effort. Significant tourism projects, such as the Chicago Riverwalk development and citywide lighting framework plan, were informed and inspired by the initial examinations into what kind of attractions would help bring people to the city.

Today, tourism numbers have rebounded. In 2013, tourism rose to 48 million visitors and the trend lines are heading north. Tens of thousands of jobs are being created. Millions of dollars in tax revenues are being generated and invested in services benefiting all Chicagoans.

A lot can be accomplished when a bit of focus, inquiry, and action are applied to a civic endeavor. Civic Consulting and our partners are proud to have played a part.

Click here to access the PDF of this case study.

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Civic Leadership Academy

For all of the great work they do, local governments and nonprofits are often hard-pressed to find the time and resources to invest in developing their leaders. That's why we collaborated with the University of Chicago and LISC to develop the Civic Leadership Academy (CLA), a new, interdisciplinary certification program founded to train Chicago's emerging leaders to be successful in their fields. The program provides cohorts of rising leaders from nonprofits and government offices with six months of classes led by business practitioners and University of Chicago faculty on topics such as leadership, strategy and management, human capital and civic innovation. We helped to design the program, recruited public-sector participants, provided feedback on fellows' capstone projects and taught a unit.

Thrive Chicago

While helping Thrive Chicago start up as its own nonprofit, we managed several of Thrive's Change Networks, each collaborating with a dozen or more nonprofits. We also oversaw the development of a data sharing infrastructure working with a coalition of nonprofits, service providers, city agencies and funding organizations to help youth in our region succeed in school and life.

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Chicago-Cook Workforce Partnership

Civic Consulting Alliance coordinated the program management office and developed the budget, hiring plan and role descriptions for the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, which was a merger of three separate workforce boards. In all, the Partnership has allowed residents to more easily receive training and apply for jobs across the reason. Businesses have benefited from consistent practices and access to a larger applicant pool. The merger has also reduced administrative costs, saving millions that can be redeployed into services.

Skills for Chicagoland’s Future

Civic Consulting Alliance worked with a number of partners to develop a three-year business plan to guide the formation of Chicago Career Tech. This new venture has operationalized a new kind of model for workforce training and job placement: one focused on partnering with employers. In 2011, we helped transform Chicago Career Tech into a new, demand-driven organization known as Skills for Chicagoland’s Future. Today, Skills for Chicagoland’s Future is a nationally recognized public-private partnership working to match businesses with qualified job seekers.

Thrive Chicago

As a new initiative following a national model, Thrive Chicago had small origins but big plans: to help improve the lives of Chicago’s youth from “cradle to career.” After over a year of incubation in the Mayor’s Office, we helped build Thrive into its own nonprofit housed in the McCormick Foundation, where it has been able to seek funding a build a larger team to achieve its mission.

My experience at Civic Consulting showed me that there is the opportunity to make a difference. And that no matter where you are operating in Chicago, you can have an impact.

Allison McHenry

former Managing Director,
A Better Chicago

Nonprofits

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Civic Leadership Academy

Thrive Chicago

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Chicago-Cook Workforce Partnership

Skills for Chicagoland’s Future

Thrive Chicago

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Forming
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