The Changemakers Network: Four Years of Coalition and Trust-Building

In 2020, The Chicago Community Trust launched the Changemakers Network to bolster grassroots organizations and groups organizing around issues that mattered most in their communities. As part of our strategic goal to close the Chicago region’s racial and ethnic wealth gap, building the capacity of organizations leading resident action is critical to ensuring they can influence policies and systems that affect their daily lives. To date, 22 organizations have received more than $6.2 million in multi-year, capacity-building grants. 

In addition to grant support, the program established a community of practice to provide Changemaker organizations with opportunities to learn from each other and collaborate. Participants also work together to identify tools and strategies that catalyze long-term systemic change in institutions like education, healthcare, and government.  

“We often ask them to see themselves in the way our current systems operate and how they can reimagine new ones,” said Gabriela Garcia, capacity building partnerships lead for BECOME, the firm that has served as the program’s evaluation partner.  

Four years in, three grant recipients – Working Family Solidarity, Arise Chicago, and Partnership for Resilience – reflect on how their participation in the Changemakers Network has impacted their work. 

Working Family Solidarity 

Working Family Solidarity (WFS) connects low and moderate-income Black and Latine families to work together for equitable development, with a particular focus on access to quality jobs and affordable housing. Some of the organization’s current priorities include getting residents from disinvested neighborhoods greater access to construction jobs and a “Message to the Mayor” campaign that urges the City of Chicago to give more weight to residents’ concerns about the developments being proposed under “We Will Chicago,” the City’s new comprehensive plan. 

According to WFS Founder and Executive Director Leone Jose Bicchieri, organizing work is about helping people understand their common interests, what their level of commitment is to fighting for these interests, and then devising a strategy to support them. A member of the Changemakers Network since the program launched, he says exposure and learning how other Changemakers approach organizing has been beneficial to WFS. 

“I believe it’s helped us do a better job at our work, think a little more strategically at times, maybe try to challenge ourselves a little more,” said Biccheri.  

Arise Chicago 

Formed in 2002, Arise Chicago is a workers’ rights organization that leverages education, organizing efforts, and public policy advocacy to fight against workplace injustices. Through a membership structure, Arise Chicago provides resources to native-born and immigrant workers to help them understand their rights and give them the necessary tools to organize around improving work-related conditions. Since its inception, the organization has helped thousands of workers recover more than $9 million in unpaid wages and compensation.  

According to Workplace Justice Campaigns Organizer Jose Uribe, the lack of funding opportunities for organizing work is often a challenge for workers’ rights groups and makes it especially harder to address root causes relating to the issues workers face. Through Arise Chicago’s participation in the Changemakers Network, he says the organization has not only been able to boost capacity for its organizing efforts but has also increased opportunities for bringing new partners into the fold.  

“We don’t do work around housing, education, or immigration, but now we can refer people to other Changemakers,” Uribe said. “It’s been beneficial to how we serve our members.”  

Partnership for Resilience 

Founded by a pair of siblings seeking to understand the negative effects of stress on childhood development, Partnership for Resilience works to improve academic, health, and social outcomes for children through education, advocacy, and collaboration with schools, parents, and community organizations. More specifically, it leverages cross-sectoral partnerships to address service gaps and alleviate the root causes of stress in children, particularly in underserved communities.  

Despite not focusing on grassroots organizing like other Changemakers, Southland Initiative Organizer Robert Powell says that the community of practice’s approach to understanding different perspectives, navigating conflict, and even sharing vulnerabilities have been invaluable to his approach to relationship-building in his work. Further, he believes this model is something others can learn from. 

“The Changemakers have created a universal and impactful framework for teaching organizations how to work together that I believe can be used for nonprofits and other sectors,” he said.  

Building Trust 

In the community of practice, the Changemakers have been meeting monthly to partake in exercises like circle work, learning how to decolonize self, and other trauma-informed practices that help them with their own introspection and build trust amongst each other. However, when it kicked off in early 2021, the ongoing pandemic meant meetings had to take place over Zoom. While this initially made relationship and trust-building more difficult, program facilitator Hilda Franco says the Changemakers were willing to meet that challenge.  

“Initially, it was difficult for folks to go back to relationship-building strategies that have always been done in movement spaces. They worked really hard to reestablish how to come together again,” she said. She notes that one method that helped create trust and respect was having Changemakers participants take turns hosting meetings in their own communities, exposing each other to different neighborhoods to understand both similarities and differences that everyone faced.  

Another challenge that has surfaced during the community of practice is the generational divide within the Changemakers Network, with participants ranging from their early 20s to late 70s. But despite gaps in how each generation prefers to organize, Franco says there were opportunities to learn from each other: younger generations shared how to leverage digital platforms in their organizing work, while older generations highlighted their successes via face-to-face organizing methods. 

“We try to offer intergenerational spaces to allow for open dialogue, learn respect, and ultimately, understand each other better,” Franco said.  

Creating a Unified Front for Organizing in Chicago 

To date, Changemakers organizations have been involved with more than 25 campaigns that address issues ranging from advocacy for more equitable transit-oriented development to how CPS students are treated by law enforcement in schools to preventing a car shredding operation from happening along the Calumet River. Some of these efforts have been in collaboration with each other, including the passage of the Chicago’s Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave ordinance.

One of the objectives of the community of practice, since the program launched, has been to break down silos between Chicago-based grassroots organizations. According to Garcia, by strengthening solidarity between Black and Latine-led organizations, the organizing sector in the city can become more unified, cohesive, and have a greater capacity towards bringing meaningful change to communities affected by issues like the wealth gap. 

“Throughout this journey, we’ve been asking the question of what it really means to be in unity as organizers in Chicago,” she said. “I think we are starting to see that come into fruition.”