The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Headquartered in Chicago, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent grantmaking institution dedicated to helping groups and individuals foster lasting improvement in the human condition. Through the support it provides, the Foundation fosters the development of knowledge, nurtures individual creativity, strengthens institutions, helps improve public policy, and provides information to the public through support of public interest media. With assets of $5.5 billion and grants and program-related investments totaling $220 million annually, the Foundation is one of the nation's largest private foundations.

Jonathan Fanton, President of The MacArthur Foundation

Since 1981, the Foundation and LISC have worked together to provide innovative programs, secure core operations and expand the scope and scale of community development in communities in urban and rural areas across America. To date, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has contributed $47.2 million in grants and $22.7 million in loans to LISC for local LISC program offices such as Chicago and South Florida and national programs.

The Foundation has been an exemplary and important partner of LISC/Chicago since 1981 when it provided a $1 million grant to get LISC/Chicago off the ground. To date, the Foundation has provided close to $50 million in grants and loans LISC/Chicago. But more importantly, the Foundation's leadership has worked with LISC staff to create and implement some the most ambitious and innovative programs in the field.

In the mid-1980's the Foundation and LISC/Chicago worked together to create a Fund for Community Development, arguably the nation's largest CDC capacity-building effort that provided trainings, organizational assessments, technical assistance, and importantly, support for staff and operations. Building from this experience, the MacArthur Foundation and LISC/Chicago in 1997 convened a civic discussion called the Futures Forum, and later issued a report entitled “Changing the Way We Do Things,”� that urged the community development field to move beyond bricks and mortar into civic, social and economic realms. A healthy community, the report said, involves nurturing children, artistic expression, health care, safety, and public forums for conversation.

From this report grew the MacArthur Foundation's support of over $20 million for the first five years of LISC/Chicago's New Communities Program (NCP). NCP is a ten-year program that supports the physical, social and economic development of 16 targeted Chicago neighborhoods based on resident-driven quality of life plans that in four years of operation leveraged $255 million in investment in these communities. The intellectual capital the Foundation shared with LISC has been as important to the program's success as the financial resources it has provided. NCP's success has led to LISC's roll out of a new national strategy called Sustainable Communities, in which a select list of LISC sites will develop and implement similar strategies for comprehensive community development.

The Bethel New Life Center in Chicago

The MacArthur Foundation recently awarded a $3 million grant to LISC/Chicago to support the development and expansion of a network of Chicago neighborhood-based Centers for Working Families (CWF). CWFs, a model developed by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, combine job placement, financial counseling, and access to income supports such as public benefits and the Earned Income Tax Credit to build household and community wealth in low-income neighborhoods.

A $1 million loan to Rural LISC in 1993 from the MacArthur Foundation resulted in new multifamily homes in Minnesota and single-family homes in rural areas of California and Tennessee. In 2006, the Foundation provided LISC with $750,000 to acquire the operations of MetroEdge, a market research firm originally created by Shorebank to identify business trends in underserved neighborhoods. LISC MetroEdge helps fill the information gap in inner-city markets by providing market profiles for communities across the country, completing comprehensive retail scans, and analyzing community buying power.

In addition, the MacArthur Foundation has been a supporter of Living Cities—formerly the National Community Development Initiative (NCDI)—providing major and sustained support for community building activities in LISC sites across the country. To date, MacArthur support of Living Cities has generated $8.5 million in loans and grants to LISC.

LISC's partnership with The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has resulted in many of our boldest and most exciting initiatives. With innovative thinking, strategic and careful planning, and steady financial resources, LISC and the MacArthur Foundation have developed programs that have both led to tremendous improvements in Chicago's low-income neighborhoods, but have also advanced the community development field as a whole.

More information about The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is available at www.macfound.org.