Building on Momentum: New America Chicago’s Impact for 2024 & Future Priorities

As we welcome the new year and prepare for the challenges ahead, we want to take this time to reflect and proudly share some New America Chicago’s achievements from 2024. We are thankful for our nonprofit partners, fellow advocates and thought leaders, generous donors, and of course the community members for trusting us with their stories and contributions to making this work possible.

CivicSpace Creating More Opportunities for Meaningful Engagement of Community Voices & Spaces for Connection

• Developed our first CivicSpace survey and collected responses from 515 Cook County residents earning under $60,000 per year about what they need to financially thrive in their communities. Overall, the respondents thought our areas of work were important, but they also indicated priorities we have not had the opportunity to work on, e.g. help paying for rent or a security deposit. Surprisingly, the most important topic to respondents, across all races and ethnicities, is protection from online fraud. We shared our findings with the CivicSpace Core Advisors during our fall meeting and hosted a virtual briefing in December with 64 RSVPS. We also plan to release a series of blogs on the New America Chicago and CivicSpace webpages. It is crucial for our work to both check-in with the community while also amplifying their feedback to our network of local and national partners.
• Collaborated with community partners Shermann “Dilla” Thomas and the Center for Changing Lives (CCL) to bring the Us@250 initiative to Chicago. Local historian Dilla hosted three tours through the culturally significant Bronzeville, North Lawndale, and Pilsen neighborhoods in November. CCL will host their workshop with southside residents on January 31st, 2025 to discuss what people need to achieve their version of the American Dream and financial prosperity. With the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States on July 4, 2026 and the recent election, CivicSpace aims to create spaces for Illinois residents to reckon with the past and aspire for the future while also fostering connection and understanding.

Moving the Needle on a Ground-Breaking Initiative to Get More Tax Dollars into the Hands of Families that Already Qualify

• Brought together the Illinois Department of Revenue (IDoR), the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), New America’s New Practice Lab, and COFI to work on a UX design sprint to map out a new time and money saving process for low-income households to file taxes and receive their tax credits with household information already obtained by IDoR and IDHS. A program like this would be the first of its kind making Illinois an innovator and model for the rest of the country. So far we’ve attended two COFI parent planning meetings, conducted 9 individual interviews with parents, and held a co-design session in East St. Louis with 14 parents and 4 state agency staff to learn about people’s experiences with applying for benefits and filing taxes, their knowledge of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and comfort with the idea of a simplified filing program run by IDoR and IDHS. We’re currently synthesizing the findings into actionable feedback for the state agencies to improve IDoR’s already innovative simplified filing program to include state tax returns for people who don’t typically file taxes.

Demonstrating the Importance and Need for Safe, Affordable Small Dollar Lending Products in LMI Communities

• Released our Designing Better Small Dollar Loans report and shared findings from our community design sessions with lenders and advocates in collaboration with Illinois Treasurer, Michael Frerichs. To raise what community members said they wanted to see in small dollar lending products, we shared the report with coalition partners, were featured on WGN radio, and held a briefing, Untapped Potential: Consumer Insights for Better Loans, with 28 lenders and stakeholders, in partnership with The Chicago Community Trust and BankOn Chicago. Treasurer Michael Frerichs was the keynote speaker and facilitated a panel discussion with responsible lenders and nonprofit organizations to discuss the importance of working with low- to moderate-income (LMI) communities. A total of 55 lenders and stakeholders RSVP’d for the event and received an email with the YouTube video, report, and other resources.
• Posted our scan of affordable financial products on the New America Chicago website to explore how many lending options were available to meet the primary small-dollar borrowing needs of LMI communities with advocates and policymakers. We also created a consumer-friendly version of the product scan on the WeProsper website that allows consumers to search for options more readily.

Advocating for Gig Workers’ Rights and the Future of Work

• Partnered with The Workers Lab to build financial stability and choices for gig workers. This included identifying simple WIOA policy changes with New America’s Center on Education & Labor (CELNA) and providing recommendations to Sen. Sanders’ and Sen. Murray’s offices to advocate for better working conditions. In collaboration with CELNA, we published two pieces on the New America website and an op-ed for the DC Journal that was picked up by over 96 newspapers nationwide.

As 2025 approaches, we are planning exciting projects to continue expanding New America Chicago’s CivicSpace initiative and contribute to innovative policy solutions that improve economic equity for low-income communities in Chicago and beyond. Our focus at New America Chicago is still on narrowing the city's racial and ethnic wealth gap and striving to ensure financial mobility for all Chicagoans. However, our vision is also beginning to evolve as we explore options for progress and growth.

• CivicSpace and New America’s Future of Land and Housing program will host a convening in March exploring how Chicago can position itself for climate-resilience, equitable economic growth, and housing security in the face of climate change. This will serve as a testing ground for expanding CivicSpace convenings, bringing together policymakers and community residents to design compelling new policy solutions. We hope to then support collaborative community solutions by developing materials reflecting on the session, including best practices, lessons learned, and sample tools for others.
• We will continue to build on Illinois’ ground-breaking simplified filing work with partners and state agency staff through user-testing and a technical sprint to explore the most effective communication and implementation options for lower income families. It’ll also be important to share findings from the sprint widely to a local, state, and national audience and garner support for the initiative to ensure its success.
• We will expand CivicSpace’s reach and impact with thoughtful community engagement and working with more nonprofit partners to provide resources and spaces for collaboration. After our Us@250 series, we plan to develop an interactive map of Illinois residents’ responses and boost the content to a national audience. Additionally, we aim to host an advocacy training for local nonprofits in June.
• Using lessons learned from our first CivicSpace community survey, we will continue to build and refine a body of policy initiatives attentive to the top priorities of the community.

We are grateful for the support of our donors that enables us to do this work, including The Chicago Community Trust, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Steans Family Foundation, The Field Foundation, and Associated Bank Foundation.