Neighborhood Economics - Chicago 2025

Below is a view of the home page for the Neighborhood Economics - Chicago2025 event, which will be held from September 29 through October 1. It's described as a "convergence of visionaries, doers, and funders working at the intersections of capital, faith, entrepreneurship, climate, health, and real estate."

This will be hosted at Venue SIX10, at 610 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60605. The registration fee is pretty steep, but scholarships are available.  See the schedule here. 

I connected with this group on LinkedIn through some network weaving discussions and I've been included in a Google Discussion Group that will run from early September (live now) through late October.  Kevin Doyle Jones is the event organizer. Visit his LinkedIn page and join the discussion.

The on-line group has been sharing introductions and inviting deeper discussions.  One example is this article titled, "The Power of Community Capital: Turning Local Dollars Into Local Impact", by Bill Huston, of Crowd-Max Publishing. 

Bill's article describes ways that "dollars raised in a community stay in that community, invested in local housing, small business and infrastructure."  He mentioned two crowdfunding sites. One was Wefunder. Another was Small Change, a real estate investing platform.  I encourage you to read the full article and do a web search to learn more about these, and other emerging platforms.  And dig through Bill's website to see all of the information he shares about crowdfunding.

This is just one resource that's been shared on the Google group in the past two weeks. I suspect there will be many more.  

I have written many articles over the past 20 years, focusing on the role hospitals could be taking to reduce inequality, improve public schools, lower health care costs and draw more young people into health care careers. Here's one article. Find others by clicking the #publichealth tag at the left.

In many of these I'm pointing to articles and research written by others to support my efforts to motivate hospital leaders to take on a broader set of goals (and to invite me into their conversations).

In this 2017 article I pointed an article titled The Often Overlooked Solution to Income Inequality, which shows that hospitals, as the major employer in many inner city neighborhoods, could take on a much broader set of goals "to help make cities truly livable".

In that article I shared a strategy plan template that was started by a team of DePaul University grad students in 2001. I've updated it a few times since then.

Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection: A Vision by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

Here's another article, titled "Supporting Growth of Tutor/Mentor Programs around Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago", posted in 2008, with a map of the area surrounding Mt. Sinai Hospital, which is near Douglas Park. The map covers an area that is about 3/4 mile to the West, 1 mile to the North, 1 mile to the East and 1/2 mile to the South. Part of this area is in North Lawndale and part is in Lower West Side. You can see from the color coding that the area has high levels of poverty in this area. It also has several poorly performing schools.


The map shows that St. Anthony  Hospital and Schwab Rehab Hospital are also in the area. I'm not sure  how much this map overlays the focus area of the Neighborhood Economics conference, but it illustrates how I've used maps like this since 1994 to show where kids and families need help, and organizations in those areas who are trying to help, like tutor/mentor programs, but need help themselves.  

In my maps I've added layers for "assets" or businesses, hospitals, universities and faith groups who operate in or near the focus area, and thus should be more deeply involved in helping the community. Buy building a list of tutor/mentor programs in different parts of Chicago I enable the type of "crowdfunding" Bill has described, but not just for start-ups, but for on-going operations, too.

Below is an article I posted in 2019, sharing another article written in 2006. The topic of "Profit for a Purpose" relates directly to the goals of the Neighborhood Economics conference.

Here's one more article that I invite you to read. I wrote it in 2014. Its title is "CrowdFunding Tutor/Mentor Orgs in Chicago - Hive Chicago model".  

In this article I show a vision that I've had since the mid 2000s of creating a crowdfunding site that would draw donors/investors to volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs in Chicago. 

I concluded by saying:

Crowd funding sites that raise money for non profits AND for profits who are working to help improve the world are a step in the right direction.

I describe what I'm trying to build on this wiki page. By sharing this I realize I'm enabling others to borrow (steal) my ideas and move ahead of me on doing this work. I sure this would not be the first time. However, as the people in the Hive Chicago meeting said, this problem is too big for any one of us to solve. If my ideas inspire others to do work that needs to be done, I'll go to my grave a poor man, but knowing I've helped make the world a better place.

These articles show  how I've been interested in finding ways to support nonprofit tutor, mentor and learning programs for a long time.  During the 2000s I was able to find funding and volunteers to build interactive portals to do this work, but since 2011 I've not had the organizational structure or support to make these ideas a reality (or to even keep what was built in the 2000s still available in 2025).

However, if anyone wants to provide talent and/or dollars to help me do this work, I'm looking forward to hearing from you. This link shows social media pages where you can connect with me.

I hope many who attend the Neighborhood Economics conference in person will actively engage in the Google group, and that the discussions and idea-sharing will continue well beyond October 2025.

If you're involved in this type of work, please share an introduction and a link in the comment section of this blog.