At Chicago Scholars, we’re committed to the safety and privacy of all stakeholders. While we collect data like phone numbers, SMS permissions, and email addresses, we only use it for the purposes indicated when information is requested. We do not share phone numbers or SMS permissions with third parties. Messaging and data rates may apply when texting with Chicago Scholars representatives.

Chicago Scholars stores all Scholar data within our encrypted CRM. We will never sell a student’s data to third parties. Data collected are used to support individual Scholars and inform our programming. Aggregated data are shared with funders and established community partners as needed. Sensitive data and files are deleted annually once no longer required for program operations.

The Chicago Scholars Foundation Gift Acceptance

The Chicago Scholars Foundation (“Chicago Scholars”) solicits and accepts current and deferred gifts from individuals, partnerships, corporations, foundations, government agencies, and others for purposes that will help Chicago Scholars further and fulfill its mission of uniquely selecting, training, and mentoring academically ambitious students from under-resourced communities to complete college and become the next generation of leaders who will transform their neighborhoods and our city.

The Chicago Scholars Gift Acceptance Policy (the “Policy”) provides guidance for the governing Board of Directors, officers, staff and others with respect to their responsibilities concerning gifts to Chicago Scholars; and guidance to prospective donors and their professional advisors when making gifts to Chicago Scholars.

Donations will generally be accepted from individuals, partnerships, corporations, foundations, government agencies, or other entities. In the course of its fundraising activities, Chicago Scholars will accept donations of money, real property, tangible personal property, securities, and in-kind services. Certain types of gifts must be reviewed prior to acceptance due to the special liabilities they may pose for Chicago Scholars. Please see the full Gift Acceptance Policy for more details. The provisions of the Policy apply to all gifts received by Chicago Scholars. Chicago Scholars reserves the right to revise or revoke this Policy at any time, and to make exceptions to this Policy. Chicago Scholars does not provide legal, tax, financial, or other advice to donors in connection with gifts. Donors are encouraged to consult with their own legal, tax, financial, and other advisors. For more information, please review Chicago Scholars’ Gift Acceptance Policy. 

Donor Privacy Policy: Our Commitment to our Donors

Chicago Scholars is committed to respecting the privacy of its financial and in-kind donors, whether the donation is made online, by mail, or any other method. When you make a financial or in-kind donation, you provide your name and contact information. Financial donors provide standard payment information including, in many circumstances, credit card data. We protect the security of credit card transactions using a number of measures such as encryption and access controls. These measures make it extremely difficult for anyone to intercept the credit card information you send to us. When we work with other companies to process credit card transactions, those companies also use encryption and other appropriate security measures. 

We will not sell, share or trade our donors’ personally identifiable information with any other entity, except as described below. In addition, we will not send mailings to our donors on behalf of other organizations, unless a donor has given us specific permission to do so. Secure transactions for Chicago Scholars are done via Classy, Inc. (classy.com), which is powered by Stripe to process donations and payments. Classy Pay powered by Stripe uses Stripe Radar to automatically detect and block fraudulent payments in real-time. Unlike other monitoring methods, Stripe Radar learns from a global network of billions of payments across millions of businesses to detect fraudulent payments. This protects you more effectively and in 2017 Stripe Radar prevented more than $4 billion in attempted fraud.  Classy, Inc is PCI Level 1 certified and use multiple security measures to protect sensitive data. You can learn more by viewing their security page.   

Continuous improvement is a core part of the Chicago Scholars culture, and we can’t maintain it without robust data and analysis. Read on to find out about how we protect our students and their data, how we assess our programming, and the randomized control trial we’re participating in with Chapin Hall.

Our impact metrics, released to the public on February 6, 2024, are our first look at the social impact of Chicago Scholars’ programming. In collaboration with McKinsey & Company and Chicago Community Consultants, we examined the impact of Chicago Scholars programming on our students’ lifetime earnings, financial social contributions, and more. 

Read the full methodology report from our partners here. 

Chicago Scholars is partnering with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago to conduct a randomized control to evaluate college enrollment and success for program participants. This research is supported by a $2 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) National Center for Education (NCER), U.S. Department of Education (Grant R305A210484). More than 1,700 students from under-resourced and underrepresented communities in Chicago are participating in the multi-year study.  About two thirds of the participants will undergo Chicago Scholars’ intensive seven-year college access and success programming. The other third will be referred to other college preparation and support programs in the area. The study is designed to measure (1) college enrollment and student persistence during college and (2) the quality of colleges that students enroll in and each college’s track record for graduating similar students. Additional data on study design is available here.  

Randomized Control Trials represent the gold standard of social research by operating with the same rigor as a medical trial. Because the treatment and control groups have been assigned at random, any difference between the two groups can be attributed to the intervention of the Chicago Scholars program. We are committed to using this highest burden of proof to ensure that our program meets our stated goals of improving college matriculation, persistence, and graduation for high achieving first generation and low-income students.