NeighborScapes

The first in an occasional series of Blog entries about social entrepreneurship 

Jay Readey

August 1, 2009

Last week NeighborScapes reached a milestone: with 25 young people working in our County- and stimulus-funded summer jobs program, about 30 children enrolled in our Fun in the Sun Camp, and about five full-time staff and interns, we had 60 people who called NeighborScapes their primary daily affiliation for the summer.  This number has no special significance in the nonprofit world or the job training world or the youth development world, but coming as it did simultaneously with the closing of a six-figure cash flow loan from the Chicago Community Loan Fund to finance a Recovery Act summer jobs stimulus grant from Cook County POET, it represented a significant milestone in the stabilization of the organization and its operations.  Like the Velveteen rabbit, we are Real now.

And this is meaningful because NeighborScapes is a startup.  In this economy, successful startups are rare.  And with our strained social service system facing ever more pressure from the recessionary economy, successful nonprofit startups – matching social needs with innovative responses – are going to be ever more necessary.  What’s mind-blowing is the complexity of our 14-month path.

It started May 2008 with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal LLP, the AmLaw 100 law firm where I am a community development finance attorney.  Facing the need to lay off attorneys in the slowing market, Sonnenschein allowed me to reduce my practice to part time and open NeighborScapes as a pro bono client of the firm.  It is a continued blessing, and a testament to the firm’s foresight, that I have been able to remain affiliated with the firm and have begun to contribute in billable ways that will repay the firm’s generosity to NeighborScapes. 

Or maybe it started even earlier, in 1996 with the seed of a vision that became Urban Solutions from 1997 through 2000 and is documented in video on NeighborScapes’ blog.  The original principals of Urban Solutions have all been generous with their money and support to get NeighborScapes going.

But most recently it started last August, with Marshell, Mia, Jatashia, Raymond, Br’Yonna and Darius, referred to NeighborScapes’ Civic Leadership Corps from the Country Club Hills 2008 summer jobs program by right-thinking alderman Jim Ford, who has made it his personal mission to intercede in the lives of young people in his city.  These students participated through a school year of ups and downs in after-school jobs that were two parts civic engagement and one part neighborhood services.  Ted Rappatta was there, soon followed by another supervisor, Chavez Harris, and more Corps members like Marshell’s brother Ivan, and some of their friends, then more of their friends.  We had a working social network that was building something haltingly in the community with mostly personal funds from the board and a very few supporters.

At the same time NeighborScapes received the gift of GoodCity’s sponsorship.  GoodCity incubates neighborhood- and faith-based visions for change in Chicagoland. I had approached GoodCity board member Eric Weinheimer at the Cara Program he runs, which has a social enterprise, CleanSlate, that’s very similar to what Urban Solutions was.  He pointed me to GoodCity, which agreed to first become NeighborScapes’ fiscal agent and then make NeighborScapes a portfolio program of GoodCity.  The legitimacy and mentorship has been invaluable. 

Mid-winter, the support of several key individuals kept NeighborScapes going when resources were thin.  Five Southland residents and the Urban Solutions co-founder, Reverend David Lewicki, agreed to join the board, and two law school classmates of mine, John Noonan and David Silverman, agreed to kickstart a National Advisory Council with significant personal contributions. 

Then Comcast Cable, and its Southland Rep Brian Spangle, came along and believed in the trajectory of the organization, adopting NeighborScapes as the community partner for Comcast Cares Day in April 2009.  With something to plan around, the organization put meat on its skeletal structure and began to have reason to raise more funds from supporters.  Comcast also raised our profile in the community, making us Real among elected officials, other community partners, and even some of the Corps members.  Cares Day was the event that gave us the chutzpah to apply for the County summer jobs grant.

Comcast was followed by Nicor Gas inviting us to its volunteer day, and just as soon as that the County rewarded some late-night grantwriting sessions by making NeighborScapes a first-time grant awardee.  St. Mark United Church of Christ kicked in $3000 from the Illinois conference of the UCC to commence youth programming (and a later blog post will examine the nightmares in trying to reconcile a church partnership with the Federal stimulus funds), and NeighborScapes was off and running with a summer camp and a jobs program.  Finally, to finance the County jobs Program, which is reimbursable only, NeighborScapes closed on a cash flow line of credit with the Chicago Community Loan Fund, a respected nonprofit lender.  This loan gives us the stability to keep operating through the summer.

Last week NeighborScapes hit 60, but the real significance is in how many folks it took to get us there.  When you count the contributors to GoodCity and Chicago Community Loan Fund, the lawyers at Sonnenschein, and the churches in the United Church of Christ Illinois conference, you’re literally talking about a cast of thousands.  Some groups start with more resources, from a smaller number of sources, and can get from 0 to 60 faster, but most groups are going to have to travel the same circuitous route as NeighborScapes.  As the Obama White House seeks to grow creative nonprofits with a social innovation fund, our hope is that it can help facilitate casts of thousands pulling together to support important initiatives in many more local areas.