Informe CCWBE

Our first goal with this partnership is to help assess the opportunity for employee ownership as a strategy to build wealth in Chicago. Our key deliverable is a data visualization that analyzes over 24,000 Chicago businesses and outlines the small business retention risk and opportunity for employee ownership transitions in Chicago, which we have now completed. Our second goal is to build awareness of employee ownership as a business retention & succession, employee engagement, and community wealth building strategy among business owners and business-serving organizations in Chicago. From March to October, we engaged over 350 Chicago-based service providers and business serving organizations to share more about employee ownership. In August, we also served as a keynote presenter at the Unique CPA conference and presented to the Chicago Chapter of the Exit Planning Institute and the Black Construction Owners & Executives on employee ownership conversions. Our third goal is to demonstrate impact and build the case for employee ownership transitions as a community wealth building model in Chicago. Since launch, we've provided one-on-one employee ownership consultations with 3 businesses in Chicago. Our final goal is to build capacity in Chicago to support employee ownership long-term. Since launch, we've built and piloted a continuing professional education course on employee ownership, with Chicago-based service providers serving as advisory board members and content contributors.

We were delayed in signing our agreement with the City due to professional liability insurance requirements. We ended up needing to purchase additional insurance (an estimated $45,000 expense of which only 10% can be invoiced to the City) to meet the requirements of the agreement, which is higher than any other requirement we have within our existing federal, state, and city/county agreements. This is an approx. $40,500 unanticipated expense we're having to cover from core funds. We had to adjust our timeline and staffing given the change and delay in signing the agreement but are excited to fully launch all components of our project beginning in October.

We joined Working Group meetings and the CCWBE Launch Event 9/28

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We have built relationships with CWB Working Group members and are exploring opportunities to collaborate on an educational event on coops. We've also engaged &/or collaborated with World Business Chicago, the Illinois SBDC at Chinese Mutual Aid Association. the Illinois SBDC at Arab American Business & Professional Association, the Chicago Community Trust, Unique CPA, the Chicago Chapter of the Exit Planning Institute, and the Black Construction Owners & Executives to build awareness of employee ownership conversions with their clients/audience.

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