CASE STUDIES
Our Work in Action
See how our work with partners translates into greater social impact to help leaders realize the full potential of their vision.
Operating Nonprofits
The Challenge
Background: The Annenberg Institute at Brown University had built a suite of research-based tools designed to bridge the gap between education research and practice: EdResearch for Action, EdWorkingPapers, and EdInstruments. These platforms reached thousands of educators, policymakers, and researchers nationwide.
Challenges: As their impact grew, so did a critical question: How could they sustain and scale this work over the long term? The Institute was ready to bring these three initiatives under one umbrella as the EdExchange, but they needed a clear roadmap for financial sustainability, operational efficiency, and organizational structure that would allow them to scale and sustain their work.
Annenberg Institute
Brown University
Building a Sustainable Future for Educational Research
Our Collaboration
ClearImpact Advisors partnered with the Annenberg Institute over five months to develop a comprehensive sustainability plan. Our team dove deep into understanding not just the current state of operations but the broader landscape of educational research dissemination. We conducted stakeholder interviews, analyzed market trends, and studied comparable organizations to identify sustainable business models.
Through collaborative working sessions, we explored revenue opportunities—from subscription models and consulting services to strategic partnerships—that aligned with the Institute's mission and values. Throughout the process, we worked hand-in-hand with the Annenberg team to develop financial models, define products and services, and design an organizational structure that could support the EdExchange's growth.
The Impact
The engagement resulted in an actionable sustainability plan that gave the Annenberg Institute confidence in their path forward. They now have a detailed understanding of their market position, potential revenue streams aligned with stakeholder needs, and a flexible financial model that can guide decision-making across different growth scenarios. Most importantly, the Institute gained clarity on how to structure their team and operations to support both sustainability and mission impact.
The work positioned the EdExchange to continue its vital role in making educational research accessible and actionable—ensuring that evidence-based strategies reach the educators and policymakers who can use them to create more equitable schools and stronger outcomes for students. With this foundation in place, the Institute is well-positioned to scale its impact while maintaining the financial health needed to serve the field for the long haul.
The Challenge
Background: Project Lead The Way (PLTW) Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a national leader in STEM education, wanted to explore how its high-quality, in-school curriculum could reach even more students—particularly those without access to enriching science and technology opportunities outside the classroom. While PLTW’s in-school programs already serve over 450,000 Indiana students, the organization recognized a major opportunity. Nearly 340,000 families in Indiana expressed interest in afterschool or summer STEM programs but lacked access to good options.
Challenge: The challenge was to determine whether PLTW’s curriculum and model could be effectively adapted to the out-of-school-time (OST) space—balancing academic rigor with flexibility for community settings.
Project Lead The Way
PLTW
Expanding STEM Learning Beyond the School Day
Our Collaboration
ClearImpact Advisors partnered with PLTW to design and execute a multi-phase feasibility study that blended data analysis, stakeholder research, and strategic planning. Across three phases, the ClearImpact team conducted a statewide market analysis, interviewed educators and OST providers, assessed curriculum adaptability, modeled financial and staffing implications, and identified best practices from leading national programs.
In partnership with PLTW, we mapped viable delivery models, pricing strategies, and evaluation frameworks for PLTW to pilot OST programs that maintain fidelity to its core mission while expanding access to students through schools and community partners.
The Impact
Through this collaboration, PLTW gained a clear roadmap for extending its impact beyond the school day. The study illuminated pathways to reach thousands of new students through afterschool and summer learning models, clarified how to adapt its curriculum for diverse settings, and defined success measures that resonate with educators, funders, and families alike. By grounding innovation in evidence and equity, PLTW emerged with a scalable framework to bring hands-on STEM learning to more communities.
The Challenge
Background: Hope Chicago (Hope) was launched with a bold mission to provide comprehensive support—including full tuition coverage, wraparound services, and family engagement—to help Chicago Public Schools students and their parents access and complete college. As the organization scaled its programs, leadership wanted to explore public policy and advocacy to increase Hope’s impact on families in Chicago and across Illinois.
Challenge: To amplify its on-the-ground insights and drive systems-level change in Illinois higher education, Hope Chicago needed a clear, evidence-informed policy agenda that reflected both their organizational values and the lived experiences of the students they serve.
Hope Chicago
Building a Policy Voice to Strengthen College Access and Success for Chicago Families.
Our Collaboration
ClearImpact Advisors partnered with Hope Chicago to develop a comprehensive policy framework grounded in research, best practices, and stakeholder input. The team conducted a landscape analysis of state and national higher education policies, reviewed case studies from peer programs, and synthesized lessons from model initiatives in college access, affordability, and persistence. ClearImpact also facilitated discussions with Hope Chicago’s leadership to ensure the recommendations aligned with the organization's priorities around affordability, persistence, and accountability.
The Impact
The result was a detailed policy report and a public-facing one-pager that distilled complex recommendations into clear, actionable priorities—tools Hope Chicago could use to engage policymakers, funders, and coalition partners across Illinois. With this new policy foundation in place, Hope Chicago is now positioned to advocate strategically for changes that benefit not only their scholars, but all students navigating Illinois' higher education system.
The recommendations helped Hope Chicago articulate where they can lead, where they can amplify others' efforts, and where collaborative advocacy will be most powerful. By translating their program insights into policy language, Hope Chicago is building bridges between lived experience and legislative change—ensuring the voices of students and families are centered in statewide conversations about college affordability and completion
The Challenge
Background: The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS) at Northwestern University was founded in 2021. CORNERS has built a strong reputation for community-engaged research on neighborhood safety and gun violence prevention in Chicago. However, as the team expanded and diversified its portfolio—from data analysis and policy briefs to capacity building and program evaluation—leadership recognized the need to take a strategic step back.
Challenge: To sustain growth, strengthen external partnerships, and distribute leadership more effectively, CORNERS needed clarity: clarity about its core business model, its value proposition, and how its organizational structure could better support its mission.
Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science
CORNERS
Clarifying Strategy and Structure to Amplify Community-Centered Research
Our Collaboration
ClearImpact Advisors with CORNERS to conduct a comprehensive growth and sustainability assessment. The engagement began with a business model analysis using a structured framework to articulate CORNERS' value proposition, target customers, services, cost drivers, and revenue streams. Through stakeholder interviews and collaborative workshops, we mapped out how CORNERS creates value—not just through rigorous research but through local insights that empower community organizations and inform policy.
We then worked closely with leadership to redesign the organizational structure—introducing clearer roles, distributed leadership, and a matrix reporting model that allows research staff to contribute flexibly across projects while maintaining accountability. Our team also updated job descriptions and provided implementation guidance to support the transition.
The Impact
With a clearer sense of its "core business" and a more intentional organizational structure, CORNERS is now better positioned to scale its impact, communicate its value to funders and partners, and support its staff in doing their best work. The realignment has clarified reporting lines, reduced silos between teams, and elevated key functions like communications, fundraising, and project management.
Leadership now has a roadmap for sustainable growth—one that honors CORNERS' community-centered values while building the infrastructure needed to meet growing demand for its research and technical assistance. By articulating what makes CORNERS unique and ensuring the internal structure reflects that mission, CORNERS is poised to deepen its influence on public safety policy and practice across Chicago and beyond.
Philanthropy
The Challenge
Background: The Illinois Children's Healthcare Foundation (ILCHF) stood at a crossroads after two decades of transformative grantmaking that invested over $136 million across Illinois to improve children's health outcomes. ILCHF sought not just data, but meaningful insights about how their investments had shaped the landscape of children's health services across the state, particularly in underserved communities.
Challenge: With 811 grants supporting 266 organizations—from expansive mental health initiatives to critical oral health services—ILCHF needed to deeply understand the true impact of its work and chart a strategic path forward.
Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation
Supporting a Legacy of Strategic Investments to Improve Children’s Health in Illinois
Our Collaboration
ClearImpact Advisors conducted a policy and ecosystem landscape scan of Illinois’ pubic health system and a comprehensive analysis of ILCHF’s grantmaking. Our team reviewed 20 years of grantmaking data while also engaging directly with the communities ILCHF serves. We conducted in-depth interviews with 14 grantees representing diverse geographic areas and program focus areas, surveyed 49 organizations covering 60 grants, and analyzed the broader funding ecosystem.
This wasn't just number-crunching—it was about understanding the human stories behind the data. We heard from mental health providers who shared how wraparound funding literally saved young lives, oral health clinics that transformed children's futures with comprehensive care, and food banks that reimagined themselves as "school markets" to reduce stigma while ensuring no child went hungry.
The Impact
Our analysis revealed that ILCHF's investments provided more than 1.3 million services to children across Illinois—with 90% of surveyed projects meeting or exceeding their goals. More importantly, we uncovered the deeper story: 97% of the services funded would not have existed at the same level—or at all—without ILCHF's support. The insights we gathered shaped actionable recommendations for ILCHF's 2026-2030 strategic plan.
By combining quantitative analysis with authentic community voices, we helped ILCHF see not just what they had accomplished but how leadership could build on two decades of trust and partnership to ensure every child in Illinois has the opportunity to grow up healthy.
The Challenge
Background: The Joyce Foundation's Education & Economic Mobility Program had reached a pivotal moment. After years of grantmaking informed by groundbreaking research on mobility drivers, the Foundation needed to refresh its understanding of what truly moves the needle for economic opportunity in the Great Lakes region.
Challenge: With the landscape rapidly shifting—from AI's impact on workforce needs to evolving pathways beyond traditional four-year degrees—Joyce sought clarity on where to focus its investments for maximum impact.
The Joyce Foundation
Charting a Data-Driven Path to Economic Mobility in the Great Lakes Region
Our Collaboration
ClearImpact Advisors partnered with Joyce to develop a comprehensive Economic Mobility Learning Agenda—diving deep into the questions that matter most for the communities Joyce serves. Our team analyzed workforce trends across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio. We examined everything from the real value of postsecondary credentials to the growing importance of social capital in creating pathways out of poverty.
We synthesized research from leading in workforce development and economic mobility while keeping our focus squarely on what these findings mean for real people who seek better economic opportunities in the Midwest region.
The Impact
The learning agenda revealed powerful insights that informed Joyce’s future grantmaking. We confirmed that while education remains the strongest driver of mobility, the pathways have diversified—healthcare emerges as the region's largest growth engine, requiring everything from certificates to advanced degrees. We uncovered how social capital and community connections rival credentials in importance, validating Joyce's holistic approach to mobility.
Perhaps most importantly, we provided Joyce with strategic guidance and data-driven insights to guide their next chapter of grantmaking. This work positions Joyce to make more targeted investments to help expand students’ access to all forms of postsecondary education—from high-quality technical credentials to graduate programs.
The Challenge
Background: The Arts Work Fund (AWF), a collaborative of Chicago-area foundations, built a strong track record supporting arts organizations through capacity-building grants. As the needs of the sector evolved—accelerated by the pandemic and ongoing economic uncertainty—leadership recognized that AWF’s existing model did not keep pace.
Challenge: Arts and culture organizations needed faster access to support, more flexible funding structures, and help navigating urgent challenges that couldn't wait for traditional grant cycles. The AWF steering committee faced a critical question: How could AWF maintain its commitment to community-centered grantmaking and become more responsive to the real-time needs of Chicago's arts ecosystem?
The Arts Work Fund
A Collective Philanthropic Response to Support Chicago’s Arts and Cultural Community
Our Collaboration
ClearImpact Advisors conducted an ecosystem landscape scan and engaged in a collaborative design process—listening deeply to the steering committee's aspirations and concerns, analyzing sector trends in responsive philanthropy, and mapping out what a sustainable transition could look like. Together, we developed a blueprint for a new rapid-response, grant-making model to eliminate lengthy panel review processes, establish rolling applications, and empower staff to make faster funding decisions with steering committee oversight.
We worked side-by-side with AWF leadership to clarify eligibility guidelines that centered community-rooted and artist-led organizations, designed governance protocols that balanced speed with collective wisdom, and created a phased implementation timeline that allowed for learning and adjustment. We also helped leadership think through the operational details—from budget projections to communications strategies—ensuring AWF was prepared for a successful launch in the final quarter of 2025.
The Impact
AWF fundamentally reimagined its approach to local grantmaking. The new rapid-response model launched in 2025 and resulted in a more equitable, accessible funding infrastructure. By moving to bimonthly decision-making, organizations could now receive support when they needed it most—whether facing a sudden leadership transition, navigating a financial crisis, or seizing an unexpected opportunity for growth. The shift also freed up staff capacity to provide deeper relationship-based support to grantees, strengthening AWF's role not just as a funder but as a true partner in organizational resilience.
The two-year pilot phase means that AWF is committed to learning, iterating, and ensuring this new model truly serves the diverse needs of Chicago's arts community. What began as a question about funding structures became a powerful example of how grantmakers can evolve together—choosing responsiveness over rigidity and trust over control.