Foundation of late Chicago entrepreneur Sue Gin announces $21 million donation for nonprofit to fight gun violence in the city
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Nine years after the death of Sue Gin, a pioneering Chicago entrepreneur, her newly active foundation is taking up the fight against gun violence in the city where she built her career.
The Sue Ling Gin Foundation announced its first major gift Tuesday, a $21 million, three-year donation to Chicago CRED, a nonprofit community intervention program that focuses on reducing gun violence in some of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods.
“It’s by far our largest Chicago-based donation,” said Arne Duncan, the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and CEO of Chicago Public Schools, who co-founded Chicago CRED. “It’s a transformational gift for us.”
Launched in 2016, Chicago CRED primarily invests its efforts on the South and West sides of the city, working with young people at high risk of being involved with gun violence. The program recruits participants through street outreach, offering therapy, life coaching, education and job training at eight sites across the city.
Its track record has been promising. A Northwestern study published earlier this month showed a 73% reduction in violence-related arrests for CRED participants who finished the two-year program.
With Chicago CRED’s annual budget of $20 million, the foundation’s gift of $7 million annually for three years will significantly boost the program’s resources, helping it expand into other neighborhoods, Duncan said.
“We have to scale now,” Duncan said. “Our goal is an 80% reduction in violence across the city over the next five years.”
Combating violence has become a high priority for the city’s business community. In June, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago announced a new initiative to reduce homicides and gun violence over the next decade, with influential business leaders getting behind the plan.
Like many large cities, Chicago saw a spike in crime during the pandemic, peaking at 804 homicides in 2021, mostly from gun violence. While the total declined to 695 last year, Chicago remained the city with the most homicides in the U.S., according to research from New Orleans-based AH Datalytics, which tracks crime statistics. On a per capita basis, Chicago’s homicide rate ranked 13th among the 85 largest U.S. cities, the data showed.
This year, there have been 562 homicides in the city through Nov. 19, down 11% from 2022, according to data from the Chicago Police Department.
“Public safety is still the No. 1 priority for the business community,” said Derek Douglas, who became president of the Civic Committee last year.
Douglas applauded the $21 million gift to CRED as dovetailing with the Civic Committee’s broader initiative. That it came from the foundation of Gin, a former Civic Committee member and a much-admired member of the Chicago business community, made it all the more meaningful, he said.
Gin, the Aurora-born daughter of immigrants, started working as a 10-year-old at her family’s suburban Chinese restaurant after the death of her father. In her late teens, Gin moved to the city, where she worked for several years as a Playboy bunny at the original Playboy Club in Chicago.
In 1983, she launched Flying Food Group with a single catering kitchen at Chicago’s Midway Airport and built it into a network of 20 catering kitchens from Honolulu to New York, servicing more than 70 airlines. Gin also managed and developed an extensive Chicago-area real estate portfolio.
When she died in 2014 at the age of 73 after suffering a stroke, Gin left a sizable estate. Its assets, now valued at about $400 million, are being liquidated to fund her foundation, according to Robert Hamada, former chairman of the Flying Food Group, and the estate’s trustee.
Taking a cue from the Civic Committee, Hamada said about half of the foundation’s assets will go toward programs aimed at reducing gun violence in the city.
“She was a major philanthropist and civic participant in Chicago,” Hamada said. “The mission that we wanted to focus on was to reduce gun violence in Chicago. If we could improve that, we could improve the image of Chicago across the country and the world, for that matter.”
Hamada met earlier this year with Jim Crown, a longtime Chicago business leader tapped to head up the Civic Committee’s crime-fighting initiative, to discuss funding opportunities. Crown, 70, died in June following a crash at a Colorado motor sports park. Mark Hoplamazian, CEO of Hyatt, and Eric Smith, vice chairman of BMO Harris, were named to succeed Crown as co-chairs of the public safety task force.
In addition to Crown, Hamada met with Duncan in January to learn more about Chicago CRED. In August, he called on Duncan again, asking him to submit a proposal.
“It was a bull’s-eye with respect to our mission,” Hamada said. “The goals match so perfectly that we had no trouble making a very quick decision.”
The Chicago CRED gift is the second for the foundation, which formed last year and is now in a position to begin making awards. This summer, it helped fund a series of nine broadcasts on WTTW focused on crime in Chicago, Hamada said.
For the Civic Committee, which is looking to raise $100 million over the next five years to support its public safety initiatives, the foundation’s gift to Chicago CRED is a major step in the right direction.
“This was a direct response to our call to action that we put out there,” Douglas said. “We’re hoping that more foundations and more donors will step up to fund and support these really critical organizations.”
