Imagine a space where innovation and collaboration collided, creating ripples of excitement and inspiration. That was the atmosphere at the event UpMetrics recently held in Chicago to celebrate 5 years of supporting local funders and their nonprofit grantees through our Chicago Cohort program.

The Chicago Cohort is spearheaded by three Chicagoland foundations - the Foglia Family Foundation, IMC Chicago Charitable Foundation, and Christopher Family Foundation – and was launched to sponsor and support more than 25 nonprofit grantees through the process of leveraging UpMetrics technology to collect, analyze, and report on data that measures the impact of their social programs.

In addition to the celebration, which culminated in a lively networking happy hour where cohort participants and other individuals from local nonprofits and foundations across the community mingled and exchanged ideas in the name of social impact, this multi-part event also included a workshop for the nonprofit grantees that led them through the process of building an impact framework to define and operationalize their impact measurement and management strategy, as well as an insightful panel led by the Chicagoland funders where discussions centered around ways to leverage open communication, shared learning, and trust-based philanthropy practices to better collaborate with and empower local nonprofit organizations.

Attended by nearly 100 individuals and thought leaders from across the social impact community, the enormous success of this event tells us that the desire for conversations around how funders and grantees can work better together is evergreen, and that the social sector sees an opportunity to better leverage information, technology, and relationships to accelerate positive change. We look forward to replicating this event for our other cohorts across the nation! 

To read a case study on our work with Thrive Chicago, a local nonprofit that’s leveraging data to optimize the impact of their nonprofit network, please click here.

And for more information on the UpMetrics Cohort program, which provides nonprofit grantees and funders with access to the UpMetrics platform, professional services and training sessions to get up and running quickly, and UpMetrics-hosted shared learning sessions for 3 years, please click here.