Practice - RW Ventures

Illinois: Driving the Manufacturing Renaissance

Ashley Bakelmun — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:42:47 +0000

Prepared for the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC), this report analyzes and identifies Illinois’ key manufacturing activities, highlighting the unique assets that Illinois should strengthen to continue to cultivate its manufacturing prowess. The report’s strategies focus on the tremendous opportunities to support Illinois metal fabrication and electrical component suppliers, in order to fuel growth in automated machinery, grid modernization, and several other legacy and emerging sectors.

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From Disparity to Prosperity: Addressing the Black Wealth Gap in Sacramento

Ashley Bakelmun — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 20:41:57 +0000

Completed for the City of Sacramento, From Disparity to Prosperity examines the Black wealth gap in Sacramento. The report outlines the historical events that led to today’s Black wealth gap; the current state of wealth disparities across housing, access to banking, and workforce development; and proposes strategies to address it, alongside sample initiatives for each. Initial strategy recommendations include expanding pathways for participation in high-growth industry sectors, providing targeted neighborhood investments, and expanding financial stability initiatives. These are meant to be a starting point – since closing the wealth gap will require a broad range of innovative and ambitious initiatives, focused on multiple pathways to wealth creation. For more information, see: https://ceteam.my.canva.site/citystart-sac-blueprint

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Kane County: Economic Development Strategic Plan

Ashley Bakelmun — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 15:34:01 +0000

Kane County’s diverse assets – its skilled workforce, industrial base, agricultural strength, good quality of life, natural beauty – provide tremendous opportunity for the county’s future economic growth. While the county has grown naturally over time, the next economy rewards deliberate, strategic growth planning.

The Kane County Economic Development Strategic Plan presents a path forward for the county’s economic future. It begins with a market analysis exploring the county’s industries, human capital, innovation activities, built environment and institutions. It then proposes a set of set of strategies to grow Kane County’s industrial base, alongside leading-edge agricultural practices and quality of life for residents. This includes developing the institutional capacity for economic development coordination, through launch of an Economic Development Organization (EDO) to set Kane County on a path towards a vibrant, prosperous 21st century economy.

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National Corporate Convening: Business Opportunities in Community and Economic Development

Ashley Bakelmun — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 03:17:45 +0000

As further described in Evolving Corporate Business Engagement in Community and Economic Development, changes in the economy are increasing the alignment between businesses’ bottom-line interests and the traditional goals of community and economic development (CED) to address economic and racial disparities and create more vibrant local economies. As a result, many businesses are investing in CED, not as charity or branding, but as strategic business development of products, markets and labor force.

However, few structured opportunities exist for businesses to discuss the opportunities and challenges in this emerging practice. The Corporate Coalition of Chicago and RW Ventures, LLC convened a group of 70 business leaders to explore the practice of business-aligned CED activities. This report summarizes key takeaways from the lively and highly productive convening, highlighting how companies can identify and tailor initiatives to capture opportunities for business-aligned CED and exploring how to scale and codify the emerging field of practice.

The convening was made possible with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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Upstream Illinois: Strategies to Boost Illinois’ Blue Economy

Ashley Bakelmun — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:06:36 +0000

Upstream Illinois, prepared for Current, lays out a roadmap for the Chicago region to grow and sustain a globally significant Inclusive Blue Economy. The report summarizes findings from an analysis of the water cluster and its related industries (the “blue economy”) and proposes cross-sector collaborative strategies to develop and manufacture water treatment and monitoring technology. Strategies emphasize launching industry-led programs, building partnerships with water technology testing and demonstration centers, growing water product/component manufacturing, and delivering tailored business scale-up support.

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Portland’s Inclusive Economic Growth Plan

Ashley Bakelmun — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:01:06 +0000

Portland’s Inclusive Economic Growth Plan presents an ambitious plan for Portland to develop into a next generation model for inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the emerging economy. The report includes a market analysis of Portland’s industries, human capital, innovation activities, built environment and institutions – followed by a set of mutually reinforcing strategies to realize a vision for Portland: aligning economic growth with equity and climate resiliency to provide a prosperous, vibrant, healthy place for all Portland residents and businesses. Strategies include growing “green” products and services, providing targeted scale-up support and financial products for small businesses, and inclusively growing the food and beverage manufacturing cluster. This Plan was prepared in collaboration with several partners (see Appendix) for Prosper Portland.

Prosper Portland has integrated the Inclusive Economic Growth Plan with several aligned studies/initiatives and publicized it at www.advanceportland.com. The full Inclusive Economic Growth Plan can either be downloaded here or at: https://www.advanceportland.com/additional-resources.

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The Roles of Financial Institutions in Economic Place-Making

Ashley Bakelmun — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 19:49:31 +0000

Leading ﬁnancial and development stakeholders in the United Kingdom are exploring how U.K. ﬁnancial institutions can expand their capacity to effectively make place-based impact investments. This paper synthesizes lessons from the United States, where ﬁnancial institutions have a longer history of engaging in economic place-making, in the hopes it can inform efforts to grow the practice in the U.K. The paper begins with a discussion of two frameworks – market-based development and development ﬁnance – which are the respective principles and specialized approaches that inform the roles of ﬁnancial institutions in place-based investment. It then dives into each of the three roles for ﬁnancial institutions in economic place-making: direct provision of ﬁnancial products, indirect investing through intermediaries, and capacity building. It concludes with an examination of governmental programs and policies to support community investments by ﬁnancial institutions, followed by a discussion of the key insights and potential implications for the U.K.

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Council on Foundations: Inclusive Growth Presentation

Ashley Bakelmun — Tue, 18 May 2021 16:53:35 +0000

This August 2018 presentation to a Council on Foundations conference describes the changing drivers of growth in the next economy, presents the data and analysis demonstrating why we must undertake economic growth differently moving forward and outlines, with examples, a new inclusive growth practice.

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SDA Metals Hub

Ashley Bakelmun — Tue, 18 May 2021 16:49:28 +0000

Following a detailed market analysis of the metals, machinery and equipment (MM&E) sector in the South Suburbs of Cook County (the “Southland”), this concept paper proposes an intervention to re-establish the Southland as an economic driver of MM&E growth in the Chicagoland region. The proposed Metals Hub (working title: Southland Metals, Inc.) is an industry-organization that aims to create new collaborative supply chains so that firms can enter new markets and increase their revenue generation – in addition to building technology-enabled competitiveness. In the next phase of work, which is underway, the project is engaging industry leaders, creating a detailed business and operational plan, and will be launching the Hub.

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Evolving Corporate Business Engagement in Community and Economic Development

Ashley Bakelmun — Tue, 18 May 2021 16:47:02 +0000

Researched and published with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this report from Mass Economics and RW Ventures offers insight on innovative and potentially more effective opportunities for corporate engagement in community and economic development. Corporations can learn of new possibilities for mobilizing their expertise, resources, activities, and investments to enhance their business success while also achieving community benefits. Communities can gain understanding of how to identify and design development opportunities best suited for corporate engagement, while philanthropy can better define its role in catalyzing and scaling more effective corporate-community collaboration.

The practice of business-aligned community and economic development (CED) was further explored in a 2024 convening of 70 business leaders. For a summary of proceedings, please visit: National Corporate Convening: Business Opportunities in Community and Economic Development.

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