A look at the Richard L. Duchossois Foundation’s priorities and goals.
At the core of the RLD Foundation’s work is the belief that some of the most persistent issues facing our communities can be addressed through innovation, diligence, and collaboration. A reflection of Richard L. Duchossois’ life, the foundation’s primary giving areas are entrepreneurs, veterans, and strong families.
Like Mr. Duchossois, the team at RLD sees these as pathways to build community strength and expand access to opportunity. Here’s a closer look at the Foundation’s giving areas, their importance, and how the Foundation aspires to leverage the power of data to accelerate positive outcomes for communities across Chicagoland.
Entrepreneurs
When Mr. Duchossois returned home from World War II, he joined his father-in-law’s modest South Side railcar repair company and over the ensuing decades, through his entrepreneurial talents, transformed it into an industry-leading global company.
Entrepreneurship has long been a catalyst for economic mobility, but its full potential is only realized when everyone equally is afforded the opportunities and tools to succeed. The RLD Foundation sees entrepreneurship as a path to creating wealth and long-term stability for families and communities alike. RLD’s approach focuses on expanding access to capital, building the talent of emerging entrepreneurs, and investing in the kind of local infrastructure that helps businesses launch, grow, and thrive.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses generate 44% of all U.S. economic activity and create two-thirds of net new jobs each year. [i] Here in Chicago, small businesses make up 98% of the business landscape.
Black and Latino Chicagoans comprise nearly 60% of the city’s population, yet only 9% of businesses are Black-owned and 7% are Latino-owned. [ii] In 2022, just 5% of venture capital went to women entrepreneurs—market inequities with real economic consequences. RLD invests in people and organizations working to close these gaps and drive local business growth and economic resilience for all Chicagoans.
“Entrepreneurship is a powerful engine for economic empowerment and innovation.”
Niharika Hanglem, Program Director, Entrepreneurs
“Entrepreneurship is a powerful engine for economic empowerment and innovation,” says Niharika Hanglem, Director of RLD’s Entrepreneurs Program. “Our focus is on connecting founders to capital, technical assistance, and strong networks—essential ingredients for long-term success.”
Veterans
After serving in WWII and rising to the rank of Major, Mr. Duchossois’s experiences in the military impacted his life long after his service in the U.S. Army ended. Mr. Duchossois was keenly aware of the sacrifices made by our veterans and the unique challenges they face in their return to civilian life.
With over 136,000 residents having served in the military, Cook County is home to the 7th largest veteran population in the nation. [iii] More than half of Illinois’ veterans live in the greater Chicagoland area, deepening the Foundation’s opportunity and obligation to ensure they have the resources they need to thrive.
As a retired U.S. Army Major and the former Cook County Director of Veterans Affairs, Deanna Love brings a wealth of knowledge about the veteran landscape to her role as Program Director at RLD Foundation.
“Serving our veterans goes beyond simply creating a grants program,” she explains. “It involves identifying and defining their needs as individuals and as a community, strategizing ways to address those needs, building systems with community partners to create sustainable, replicable change.”
“Serving our veterans goes beyond simply creating a grants program.”
Deanna Love, Program Director, Veterans
RLD Foundation is dedicated to investing in innovative approaches among veteran-serving organizations across three priority areas including underemployment, underutilization of benefits, and housing instability among the veteran population.
Despite being highly trained, over 60% of veterans nationally are underemployed, working in roles that don’t reflect their full capabilities or ambitions. [iv] On top of this, housing instability impacts all veteran groups regardless of age or service term. Overlaying these issues is a disconnect between the availability of VA benefits and the actual awareness veterans have of those resources.
“The veteran community is inherently strong,” says Love, “but often faces systemic shortcomings. The Foundation’s goal is to identify and address the root causes, not just the symptoms.”
Strong Families
From growing up with three siblings in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, raising his own family, to leading his businesses with a people-centered approach through the years, the importance of families was a core value for Mr. Duchossois. He believed children, especially, deserved every opportunity to reach their full potential.
In the greater Chicago region today, a growing number of families are considered low income. Limited access to financial resources means too many families are forced to make difficult decisions in order to make ends meet and the impact of this extends across generations.
With a documented shortage of affordable housing in the city, over 56 percent of Chicago’s residents with low incomes spend more than half of their monthly earnings on housing. [v] Not only does this create a lack of stability – with families frequently falling behind on payments and having to move, but it also leaves less funding for other critical needs. Compounding this, Chicago has the highest unemployment rate among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. [vi] While these concerns seem to most impact adults, there are inevitably long-lasting effects on children in these families.
RLD Foundation’s approach to investing in Strong Families centers on multi-generational and interconnected support across three major areas, including education and employment pathways for parents, readily available access to reliable childcare, and stable and affordable housing options. Together, these levers are essential to promoting family stability, breaking cycles of economic hardship, and increasing upward mobility for the next generation.
The Foundation is committed to learning, partnering, and evolving alongside the communities it serves. “The inherent power imbalance between foundations and the organizations seeking resources can often hinder collaboration,” says Baltman-Leonard. “By openly addressing this dynamic, stronger partnerships can flourish, ultimately leading to more impactful outcomes.”
Data: An Instrument for Change
For the RLD Foundation, data is more than evaluation and measurement of output, it is a foundational strategy. From the outset, the Foundation is integrating a robust data practice across all areas of its work, with a twofold goal. The first is to leverage data to hone the Foundation’s giving strategies and optimize community change. Secondly, the Foundation aspires to improve the capacity of nonprofit organizations and their ecosystems to gather, analyze, and act on meaningful information.
“The best data we have is the lived experience of the communities our work is intended to benefit,” says Rich Carder, Director of Data Strategies and Insights. “There’s often a perceived tension between being data-driven and listening to what communities and grantees are telling us. I fundamentally disagree with that notion.” For Carder and the Foundation, success lies in creating inclusive, dynamic feedback loops that elevate community insight to the same level as traditional data sources.
The Foundation’s Data Accelerator Program is being designed to meet organizations where they are while also helping them build capacity to use data to inform their day-to-day work and long-term strategies. The goal is to help organizations use information to solve real problems, evaluate outcomes, and refine strategies.
“Everything is driven by the goal of creating tangible and durable benefits for the people and communities we serve.”
Rich Carder, Director of Data Strategies and Insights
“Everything is driven by the goal of creating tangible and durable benefits for the people and communities we serve,” Carder explains. “Listening is key. Data initiatives are best informed by community voices to ensure they’re actually moving us in the right direction.”
RLD Foundation also seeks to support stakeholders by bridging gaps within and across sectors. In Chicago, a great deal of valuable information remains siloed in academic, government, and nonprofit databases. By convening partners, establishing shared research questions, and fostering data-sharing agreements, the Foundation envisions of a more connected and responsive Chicago nonprofit landscape.
Ultimately, the Foundation’s data work is inseparable from its broader philanthropic goals. “We’re not just asking ‘what are the needs and how did we get here?’” says Carder. “The Foundation is using data to understand what’s happening now, and what we should do next.”
Honoring RLD’s Legacy
Like Mr. Duchossois himself, the RLD Foundation is committed to embodying perseverance in its pursuit of sustainable change that gives every family, entrepreneur and veteran the opportunity to realize their full potential.
i U.S. Small Business Association
ii Illinois Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau
iii U.S. Census Bureau
v Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University
vi Illinois Policy Institute
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