Community Wealth Building Ecosystem
Community Wealth Building Ecosystem
The Chicago Community Wealth Building Initiative deployed an ecosystem approach to build sustainable local infrastructure for lasting community wealth development. This approach recognizes that isolated organizations cannot transform entrenched economic structures alone. Success requires an interconnected network of cooperative enterprises, technical assistance providers, advocates, funders, policymakers, and other stakeholders aligned around democratic participation and community control. The City of Chicago implemented the initiative in three phases, each concerned with strengthening the CWB ecosystem on the South and West Sides of Chicago: first, deepening local infrastructure and technical assistance capacities; second, strengthening the pipeline of CWB projects; and finally, investing in “proof of concept” projects. This staging of implementation demonstrates the power of coordinated strategy for breaking down traditional silos in economic development and building collective power exceeding what any single organization can achieve.
Through documentation and analysis, this report and related research help to decode processes of community-led development and incubation of models for equitable development. By tracking processes, outcomes, and challenges across diverse projects, the resulting insights can inform and improve future community wealth-building efforts.
Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem
The Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem (CCWBE) is the ‘hub’ for Research & Convening for worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, limited equity housing cooperatives, community investment vehicles, and other ecosystem partners. CCWBE aims to advance models of local, democratic, and shared ownership and control throughout Chicago but especially on the south and west sides of our city. The CCWBE hub does this by convening community wealth building (CWB) working groups, developing tools and other resources, connecting and building the capacity of ecosystem partners, conducting research and communicating the impact of community wealth building. CCWBE is currently being incubated at the Center for Urban Economic Development (CUED) at the University of Illinois Chicago.
The CCWBE Hub supports the broad CWB ecosystem (both grantees and non-grantees) in four primary ways:
- Convening & facilitating working groups for each CWB model
- Developing & disseminating tools and other resources
- Brokering relationships & making referrals that build the capacity of ecosystem partners
- Conducting research, disseminating reports & communicating the impact of CWB