Building the Foundation

Community leaders are often the foundation for mobilizing around a neighborhood vision, advocating for local resources and leading economic opportunities in communities.

LeadersForward (formerly the Neighborhood Developers Initiative) is a comprehensive approach to supporting neighborhood leaders advance their economic development goals through thought partnership, technical coaching and resource connections.

Program Objectives

Support local leaders establish a community vision and road map to their economic development goals

Build the development knowledge and skill set of local leaders

Scale neighborhood economic development organizations through increased development capacity and infrastructure support

Support the economic transformation of under-resourced neighborhoods

Program Approach

Identify the Vision

LeadersForward provides structured learning, coaching, and technical assistance focused on building knowledge around real estate development and creating the necessary plans to be successful. This includes calibrating existing operations to support development activities, creating a staffing plan and new legal structure(s), and outlining development strategies.

Assess the Need

The Desk assess the local leader’s financial capacity, development skills and existing infrastructure to determine the level of support required to execute.

Organize Resources

The Desk identifies both technical resources and capital to address gaps in the organization’s infrastructure and to support the various economic development initiatives.

Support the Plan

The Desk serves as a thought partner and resource connector for implementation efforts.

Our Work In Action

Teamwork Englewood (TWE) is the lead economic development agency in the Englewood community of Chicago. Since 2021, the Desk has supported TWE in building their infrastructure, development knowledge and capacity to advance their development goals.  A few key accomplishments through our program includes: 1) the Englewood Mixtape, a five-corridor reinvestment strategy for Englewood and 2) acquisition of a 24,000 SF vacant property and adjacent land to anchor the gateway of the 63rd Street commercial corridor.

Click here to read more about TWE’s Executive Director, Cecile DeMello.