A Better Chicago Delivers on Venture Philanthropy Mission
A Better Chicago is a venture philanthropy fund for the Chicago metropolitan area. The organization provides funding and management support to a portfolio of high-performing nonprofit organizations that are dramatically advancing opportunities for Chicago’s low-income population.
Industry: Non-profit
“Mekko Graphics provides a wide range of charts that can be easily customized to our needs. The software integrates seamlessly with PowerPoint and accepts data from Excel. It’s a stable and reliable platform that allows us to easily create and update presentations.
We can show our donors that what we do as a non-profit is similar to what for profit organizations do. The charts help us differentiate ourselves and help our audiences drive to better insights.”
--Liam Krehbiel, Founder and CEO.
Business needs:
- A Better Chicago needs to present and communicate information in an easy to understand manner to its key internal and external stakeholders, including its board of directors, team members, donors and grantees.
- This information must be easy for these stakeholders to grasp and must support strategic decision making.
Solutions:
- Team members use a wide variety of Mekko Graphics charts in their presentations.
- Waterfall charts monitor fundraising progress by quarter and revenue source, allowing for comparison of projected versus budgeted revenue.
- Bubble charts graph the strengths of potential grantees and their fit with A Better Chicago’s priorities along two dimensions and use the grantee’s relative size as the bubble size.
- Stacked and cluster bar charts present budget and actual revenue and expense data over time.
Success / Highlights:
- Mekko Graphics charts facilitate communication with key internal and external stakeholders.
- Team members create a one page dashboard containing Mekko Graphics charts to track how each grantee is doing with respect to both financial measures and program goals.
- A Better Chicago’s Board of Directors review Mekko Graphics charts as part of the due diligence presentations when considering prospective grantees
- Marketing materials, featuring Mekko Graphics charts, are used to share information about A Better Chicago with prospective donors.
