Chicago Education Advocacy Cooperative
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 844211875
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2020–2025
- Official website data refreshed
- Aug 2026
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025
- Location
- Chicago, IL, USA
- Phone
- 7735990267
- Rating
- 89
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Alliance/Advocacy Organizations
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $18,882
- Expenses
- $18,499
- Assets
- $383
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
4 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Benjamin Drury (Executive Director)
People named in this filing
- Benjamin Drury (Executive Director)
- Merary Flores Galindo (Trustee)
- Connie Drury (Trustee)
Selected names, not a complete roster or a statement of current roles. Open leadership details for the complete filed list.
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
ChiEAC serves the needs of Chicago students and families con cariño, providing practical pathways to upward social mobility through two core programs: ELEVATE, which creates custom professional opportunities for rising scholars, and IMPACT, which serves as first-responder advocates to students and families in need.
What it reported doing in 2025
We provided bilingual enrollment support for 18 newly arrived CPS students in South Chicago, achieving 100% school placement within appropriate grade levels, while delivering weekly trauma-informed wellness workshops reaching over 45 youth to support their transition into CPS through culturally grounded care. We reduced access barriers by distributing free CTA passes to 32 students and securing laptops and mobile hotspots for 28 learners across City Colleges of Chicago, CPS night school, and alternative programs. We offered one-on-one college access support to 16 undocumented high school students, mentored 14 college students through the ELEVATE Fellowship, and supported an additional cohort of 12 South Side college students with stipends, mentorship, and wellness check-ins to promote persistence. We strengthened family and community engagement by providing Spanish-language literacy support to 15 parents, hosting weekly drop-in hours assisting over 60 CPS families, and convening five town halls with more than 120 participants. We delivered targeted tutoring to over 35 students, facilitated IEP advocacy for 11 CPS students, provided bilingual mental health referrals to 25 college students, and supported 18 youth with paid internships and community-based research opportunities. We also delivered job-readiness workshops to 22 adult learners and organized six educational field experiences to expand early college awareness. Through the ChiEAC Data Science Alliance, we engaged 30+ volunteers in applied, community-centered data science work, developed five public-facing tools translating complex data into decision-ready insights, conducted sentiment analysis on over 1,000 anonymized communications using BERT and VADER, built predictive models to identify student disengagement risks, trained fellows in Python and SQL for workforce-aligned skill development, implemented data pipelines for real-time program tracking, created bilingual reports for accessibility, and supported the development of AI-assisted emotional wellness tools as part of the ChiEAC CARES initiative.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 65% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
- Distribution model
- Grant intermediary. The nonprofit sent 64% of its reported program spending out as grants.
The verdict
STRONG - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Total assets are small relative to annual expenses; liquid coverage is unknown and expenses are high relative to revenue.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 99
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 39
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 98%; rating input score 98
- Program expense ratio: 100%; rating input score 100
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 2%; rating input score 48; 48th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.02; rating input score 8; 8th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 66; 66th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 49.2% per year; rating input score 100; 92nd percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 33.8% per year; rating input score 100; 94th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 76.9% per year; rating input score 100; 97th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- What they do: 3 programs and campaigns described on the official site · 1 operating location identified
- Where the money goes: 98% of revenue deployed · 100% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $18K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 4 people listed
- Consistency: 9 of 9 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Filing history: 4 filing years from 2020 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: Resolved incoming and outgoing counterparties from filed money flows.
- Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
- People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 8/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 48/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.