Since Mayor Harold Washington asked the business community for pro bono help analyzing the City budget, we have proudly served the Mayor’s Office to advance its most important and timely initiatives. Beginning with supporting the Mayoral Transition in 2019, we have worked closely with Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Office to advance initiatives aligned with our mission, and to support projects where Civic Consulting Alliance was uniquely positioned to make an impact. 

Project Highlights

Over the past four years, Civic Consulting Alliance completed 127 projects in support of the City and its sister agencies, and engaged 41 pro bono corporate partners. Together, Civic Consulting Alliance staff and partners invested more than $34 million in pro bono consulting services to make Chicago a great place for everyone to live and work. Below, we’ve recapped just a few of the high-impact projects completed for the Lightfoot administration. Our list includes:

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American Rescue Plan Act Funding Initiatives

“Civic Consulting Alliance has been an invaluable partner in helping the City to develop the Chicago Recovery Plan, a transformative investment strategy that will create thriving communities and an equitable economic recovery from COVID-19. I am grateful for their continued commitment to making Chicago a better place for all.”

— Lori E. Lightfoot, Mayor, City of Chicago

The resources made available via the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a more equitable Chicago region by addressing challenges— including poverty, community disinvestment, and inequitable access to opportunity—that were exacerbated by the pandemic, and that must be rectified to build a better region. Civic Consulting Alliance and our partners Mayer Brown, EY, and Slalom committed significant resources to support the City of Chicago and Cook County in planning for the effective investment of these public funds into catalytic initiatives to make our region more just, equitable, and resilient.

Read on to see a timeline of our projects to support the City and Cook County in maximizing the impact of American Rescue Plan Act Funding.

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INVEST South/West 

“Civic Consulting Alliance has been instrumental to INVEST South/West’s progress. There is no other organization that has Civic Consulting Alliance’s depth of experience collaborating with the City, nor their breadth of visibility across major initiatives and sectors in Chicago.”

— Samir Mayekar, Deputy Mayor of Economic Development for the City of Chicago

For decades, Chicago’s South and West Sides experienced disinvestment as a result of policies and practices that exacerbate racial segregation. The COVID-19 crisis magnified the gaps in health and economic well-being that this disinvestment helped produce. In October 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched INVEST South/West, a groundbreaking initiative to rectify this inequity by aligning $750 million in public funds and drawing additional private and philanthropic investments to 12 key commercial corridors in 10 communities on the South and West Sides. Samir Mayekar, Deputy Mayor of Economic Development for the City of Chicago, turned to Civic Consulting Alliance to accelerate INVEST South/West’s implementation. 

Learn about the two phases of work that we completed with BCG in our 2020 Impact Report.

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Chicago Public Schools Student Re-Engagement Framework

“Thanks in part to the support of Civic Consulting Alliance, CPS continues to strengthen its foundation to effectively reach disengaged students this school year and beyond—paving the way for sustained, districtwide change and greater student success.”

— Maurice Swinney, Interim Chief Education Officer, Chicago Public Schools

The ripple effects of COVID-19 included a significant increase in student truancy and chronic absence. At the end of the 2021 school year, 26,000 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students had less than 60% attendance. This increase was particularly pronounced among Black and Latinx students, exacerbating the inequitable impact of COVID-19 on Chicago’s communities. As CPS neared the 2021 summer break, it sought to identify, contact, and re-engage students urgently and at a massive scale. At the same time, the district was undergoing a leadership transition, reducing its organizational capacity. CPS rapidly launched a centralized re-engagement effort, but it needed to step back and develop a cohesive approach to ensure that it reached all students in need.  Given our deep knowledge of CPS, expertise in operationalizing large-scale plans, and project management skills, CPS engaged Civic Consulting Alliance in May 2021 to support the development of its re-engagement framework, including an implementation plan and project management support to implement reengagement initiatives. That initiative helped CPS reach 85,459 students across its re-engagement efforts, leading to 91.2% of CPS students attending school on the first day of the 2021-2022 school year.

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Chicago Public Schools Three-Year Blueprint

“Chicago Public Schools is on track to have a strong school year. Civic Consulting Alliance has been a tremendous partner in helping CPS strategize how we can provide students with a great education while overcoming the challenges that were exacerbated by the pandemic.”

— Pedro Martinez, CEO, Chicago Public Schools

Civic Consulting Alliance supported CPS in the development of a three-year Blueprint for 2022-2025 that builds upon the five-year vision CPS originally adopted in 2019. We supported key fronts of the effort by establishing the project approach and infrastructure for execution – two components that were essential to ensuring CPS had the necessary internal collaboration functions needed to support the creation of the Blueprint. We worked with our pro bono partner Slalom to design a multi-layered stakeholder engagement process that reached over 1,000 stakeholders including parents, students, principals, district leaders, and community members. Additionally, we worked with district leaders to draft and refine Blueprint content, leveraging the latest data on student outcomes and stakeholder input. Long-term, the 3-Year Blueprint will put CPS on strong footing to address the widening post-pandemic racial gaps in academic outcomes, and will do so with extensive stakeholder engagement.

Learn about other engagement-focused projects that we have completed for CPS, including the Whole School Safety Planning project, which provided CPS high schools with a community-driven process for designing their school safety plans, including decisions on whether to retain School Resource Officers (SROs).

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Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability

“Building a new City department from scratch is an extraordinary undertaking and Civic Consulting Alliance is an extraordinary partner. The launch toolkit, onboarding plan, and training materials that Civic Consulting Alliance developed will be crucial for ensuring that commissioners have the knowledge and information that they need to effectively carry out their duties starting on day one. Civic Consulting Alliance has built an incredibly strong foundation for the Community Commission’s success.”

— Adam Gross, Executive Director, Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability

For many years, advocates called for reforms to strengthen police accountability, improve policing, and build greater trust between the police and Chicago residents. In 2019, the City Council adopted an ordinance to create the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (Community Commission). This new community-led Commission gives residents powerful new oversight tools, including playing a central role in selecting and removing the Police Superintendent. Civic Consulting Alliance and our pro bono partners from Protiviti and Northwestern University supported the Executive Director in developing the operational structures the Community Commission needs to provide effective and meaningful community oversight of the police and police accountability agencies. As a result of this foundational work, the Community Commission is equipped with the structure and strategies needed to immediately begin working toward its goals to improve policing, increase resident engagement, build greater trust between the police and Chicago residents, strengthen accountability, and make the city safer and more just. 

Learn more about our accountability and reform work in our 2022 Impact Report on Safety & Justice. 

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Community Safety Coordination Center 

“Civic Consulting Alliance helped us develop a structure for approaching community safety that is driven by the needs of Chicago residents, and that will ensure more effective and efficient use of City resources. I am deeply grateful to your team for providing us the capacity and expertise we needed to accelerate this critical work.”

— Tamara Mahal, Former Chief Coordination Officer, Community Safety Coordination Center

The Community Safety Coordination Center (CSCC), is a multi-agency coordination center to advance a whole of government, community-driven approach to violence prevention and reduction for the City of Chicago. The CSCC brings together City departments and agencies—ranging from the Chicago Police Department to those not traditionally considered part of the safety ecosystem, such as Chicago Public Libraries, Chicago Park District, and Chicago Public Schools—alongside community organizations and leaders to advance community safety initiatives aimed at addressing the root causes of violence.  The Mayor’s Office requested that we provide expertise to align CSCC stakeholders on a unified vision and roadmap to support City agencies and departments in evolving their initiatives and operations to align with the City’s vision for reducing and preventing violence. This systems-level approach represents a new way for the City to work to reduce violence in Chicago, focusing on the root causes of violence, and centering on community knowledge and expertise. In addition to supporting intergovernmental coordination, Civic Consulting Alliance also provides support to the individual entities’ strategies.

Read our full recap on the CSCC, and learn about our other collaborative projects that advance public safety, including the Intergovernmental Violence Prevention Partnership. 

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Racial Equity Rapid Response Team

“The crises of the past year and a half have demonstrated that our city’s greatest challenges are interconnected. The City of Chicago is making progress towards addressing these challenges through holistic, forward-looking solutions. This progress wouldn’t be possible without unprecedented collaboration with residents and leaders across the private, public, social, and philanthropic sectors—and Civic Consulting Alliance has been the linchpin to many of these collaborative efforts.”

— Lori E. Lightfoot, Mayor, City of Chicago

Three in four people in Chicago who died from COVID-19 were Black or Latinx. Chicago led the nation in calling attention to this racial disparity; in mid-April 2020, the City brought together West Side United, community leaders, and healthcare providers to form the Racial Equity Rapid Response (RERR) Team. Civic Consulting Alliance – with pro bono partners Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, and Slalom – supported the Team from the beginning, developing their collaborative structure, aiding implementation of immediate mitigation strategies, and enabling transparency of COVID-19 data at the zip code-level. 

Our work with the RERR Team sparked a series of projects with the City to sustainably address racial equity in health. Learn more about projects like Protect Chicago Plus that followed. 

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COVID-19 Recovery Task Force

“Civic Consulting Alliance’s leadership and collaboration has been an invaluable part of our citywide response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to their expertise and support, Chicago has been able to uniquely support our businesses and residents, and to seize the opportunities created by this unprecedented year and extend our vision for a city economy rooted in our values of inclusion and equitable growth. It’s that shared mission and sense of purpose that has guided us through the challenges we’ve faced, and as we move forward together, I am deeply excited to see what our partnership brings as we continue to embrace the many new opportunities and successes for our city that are sure to come.”

— Lori E. Lightfoot, Mayor, City of Chicago

Soon after the pandemic hit Chicago, Mayor Lightfoot launched the COVID-19 Recovery Task Force—a group of industry experts, regional government leaders, community-based partners, and policymakers—to provide recommendations for the recovery of the Chicago region. The Recovery Task Force released its advisory report, ‘Forward Together,’ outlining 17 recommendations to ensure an inclusive and equitable recovery. The recommendations covered a wide range of issues—from mental health to business attraction. In fall 2020, a joint Civic Consulting Alliance and EY pro bono team collaborated with the Mayor’s Office to execute the report’s recommendations. Over eight weeks, the team stood up and piloted a Project Management Office structure to help ensure progress, accountability and transparency. 

Read our Impact Report to learn more about the Recovery Task Force. 

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COVID-19 mitigation efforts for Chicago Public Schools

In January 2022, Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union reached an agreement to reopen classrooms for in-person learning based on additional COVID-19 mitigation efforts across the school district. However, CPS’ ability to manage, launch, and monitor the implementation of these efforts was limited by capacity following the recent CEO leadership transition. CPS and the Mayor’s Office requested that Civic Consulting Alliance provide implementation planning and management support during this critical period for public health and the CEO’s first 90 days. We developed a project management structure and launched teams to implement increased COVID-19 mitigation strategies, and identified recommendations for sustained operations. Our pro bono partner, Deloitte, supported the “Test-to-Stay” project that aimed to give unvaccinated students exposed to COVID-19 the option of regimented testing to stay on campus. 

Learn more about additional projects that Civic Consulting Alliance has completed recently for CPS.