About us
The mission of LISC/Chicago is to organize capital and other resources to support initiatives that will stimulate the comprehensive development of healthy, stable neighborhoods and foster their connection to the socioeconomic mainstream of the metropolitan region. LISC created and manages the New Communities Program, the nation's largest demonstration of comprehensive community development.
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LISC/Chicago started with a 1980 phone call from Michael Svirdoff of the Ford Foundation in New York City, to a lawyer in Chicago named Allison S. Davis. Svirdoff asked if there would be a market in Chicago for loans and grants to help community development projects. “I said, ‘Sure,’” remembers Davis, who had witnessed the birth of non-profit developers in Chicago.
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It is not always easy to describe what LISC does and how.
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LISC/Chicago benefits from the generosity of a wide array of donors, from both the public and private sectors.
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Click here to view our "hot-off-the-presses" Winter 2008-09 issue of Working Capital, LISC/Chicago's newsletter, as well as annual Donor Reports for the past few years and profiles of community projects within our portfolio.
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LISC/Chicago operates through a staff of 15 experienced professionals and support staff.
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A Board of Advisors provides guidance and counsel to LISC/Chicago. The Board’s purview includes policy development and strategic planning; budget and finance; credit review and supervision; and fundraising.
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Links to articles in the press about LISC/Chicago and its programs.
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LISC operates in over 30 cities and a like number of rural communities throughout the United States. Founded in 1979 by the Ford Foundation, LISC helps both community-based and for-profit development organizations transform distressed neighborhoods
into healthy ones.
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