Monumental Gift to Expand Center for Employment

Gift Will Help Expand Center for Employment

Whether it is a renovation at the Center for Employment & Business Opportunities, a donation to support an ambitious expansion into DuPage County or a Little City job seeker finally landing community employment – the Little City Project has been making life-changing differences for years. The Little City Project is unlike any support program in the organization’s history. It is not a Little City led project as the name may imply, but a widescale campaign of giving and support by the Chicago Club Managers Foundation. The Chicago Club Managers Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Greater Chicago Club Managers Association – which represents over 112 private city, yacht, athletic, riding, dining, golf and country clubs in the Chicagoland area. The Foundation’s Board of Directors, charged with engaging and giving back to the greater community, chose the unique approach of supporting a single community agency to the strongest level possible and that agency was Little City. “Little City is just very special to all of us,” said Gavin Speirs, Board President, during the 2019 Foundation Golf Outing this past September. “We are honored to support them and help create job opportunities those at Little City deserve.” The Foundation has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as their time and knowledge in support of Little City. The next step in the Foundation’s Little City Project comes courtesy of a groundbreaking $250,000 donation to establish a community employment training center in DuPage County. The center will provide training in life skills, experiences such as job shadowing and volunteering and practice in job interviews to prepare people with disabilities for a job in the community – similar to Little City’s Countryside Center in Schaumburg. And though the Chicago Club Managers Foundation has done so much for Little City already, board members do not expect the Little City Project to end any time soon.

Jeff Belting, Chief Operating Officer at Indian Hill Club and former Foundation Board President “It has been the most rewarding relationship I’ve had in my decade on the Foundation Board. A lot of it has really been a growth through a combination of us learning more about Little City firsthand through visits or meetings and learning about potential opportunities to do more. Everything Little

City does makes us want to build on the relationship to do more. For me, I spent the first few years on the Board talking about how we can be more relevant in our community. There had to be a way for us to do more. To have Gavin introduce us to Little City and have this grow has been incredible. We were on this quest to find more meaning for our Foundation and now we have this great story to tell our membership. For us to do something in the community directly, hopefully it helps us get a message out that we’re not just sitting behind our fences and golf courses blind to what is going on around us. It wasn’t about getting a platform to change those misconceptions, because the reality is our members do support charities all over the community, but it was important for us as a Foundation to do things on our own. To make the commitment we made to Little City, to be pretty much a sole partner as far as charity work goes, increasing our support ten-fold since we started with them, all of that really was driven by the fact we found a great partner and wanted to do everything we could to help it grow.”

Mark Jablonski, General Manager at Hinsdale Golf Club “While I am a relative newcomer to the Foundation Board, the partnership experience that I have been able to witness in the last year has been incredibly impactful. The Foundation made a significant commitment to Little City over the last few years beginning with an idea to assist in developing hospitality industry skills for participants. The full service kitchen build that was supported by the Foundation helped further this initiative and was instrumental in creating meaningful for job seekers. At Medinah Country Club we hired Andy, one of the first to go through the program, and a resident at Little City. Andy is not only an amazing part of the team showcasing his new skills, but his attitude and sense of humor are a morale booster for the entire kitchen staff every day. Seeing how Andy has continued to develop and succeed in this environment has been incredibly rewarding for me and the Foundation.”