Foundations, business interests raise $66 million to fight crime in Chicago

In a significant show of support from the city’s business and philanthropic communities, officials said Thursday that $66 million has been raised toward a goal of $100 million for crime-fighting initiatives in Chicago.

“Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago,” or SC2, was developed as a plan for ramping up the work of community violence intervention groups. A number of Chicago corporate interests and major foundations have chipped in including the Pritzker Foundation, Hyatt Hotel Foundation and Crown Family Philanthropies.

During an event at the South Shore Cultural Center, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, billionaire heir to the Hyatt fortune, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson were among those who spoke about the progress made to support youth across the city and ambitious goals for further improvement over the next decade.

“SC2 will carry this work much further. Scaling community violence
intervention for a safer Chicago is an unprecedented effort to gather
government stakeholders and community organizations, private
stakeholders to meet the needs of those most at risk of gun violence,”
Pritzker said. “This has been years in the making, and no other city
or state in the nation has a partnership as robust as this one.”

Community violence intervention groups also plan to seek additional public funding. At Thursday’s event, city, county and state officials expressed their support for SC2 and touted passing of laws such as the Reimagine Public Safety Act and founding of the State Office of Firearm Violence Prevention.

The city has seen two consecutive years of declines in the number of homicides, but Thursday’s announcement followed a shooting on the North Side Wednesday afternoon that left one Senn High School student dead and two others injured. The shooting came less than a week after two teens were fatally shot after leaving their high school in the Loop.

Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling wasn’t scheduled to speak in front of the crowd, but came onstage ahead of Johnson to express the importance of early intervention to prevent such shootings.

“As the police, we can’t arrest our way out of the situation, and we shouldn’t be trying to do that,” Snelling said. “What we should be trying to do is build our communities and build our children.”

According to organizers Thursday, 15% to 20% of those at highest risk of carrying out a shooting or being shot receive services from community violence intervention organizations. The SC2 initiative offered ambitious goals, with aims to increase that level of support to 50% of those at highest risk within the next five years and 75% over the next decade by zeroing in on specific neighborhoods. Details on how the money will be spent were not provided.

Vaughn Bryant, executive director of the Metropolitan Peace Initiative, and Arne Duncan, who founded the violence prevention group Chicago CRED, are on a steering committee for the SC2 effort. Duncan said neighborhood leadership is essential for the program’s success.

While a neighborhood collaboration has provided support within the North Lawndale community since 2022, SC2 will also target the high-need communities of East and West Garfield Park, Little Village, Humboldt Park, New City, Englewood and Austin.

The expansion is expected to cost as much as $400 million over the next five years, half of which is currently accounted for within philanthropic and public budgets.

Among other speakers Thursday were Hyatt Hotels President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian and BMO Harris Vice-Chair Eric Smith, who co-chair the Public Safety Task Force of the Civic Committee. The executives stressed an approach in which business, philanthropies and community groups work with government on public safety initiatives.