The Power of Community Champions: Income Advance Grows to Chicago
Rhino Foods Foundation is a small team. Every market we've grown into, we've gotten there because local champions did the work of making the program fit. They know the community's needs, hold the relationships, and open doors so the program gets designed with intention rather than dropped in from outside. Chicago is the clearest example yet of that model at work.
The Corporate Coalition of Chicago came to us already on a mission: find a small dollar benefit for their members and for the wider Chicago area. Working with Woodstock Institute, they had explored several options, but each one fell short on long term impact. Access was there. Deeper impact wasn't.
Then they found the Income Advance Program and our Gold Standard. What set it apart was that it didn't stop at short term access. The Income Advance Program also helps people build emergency savings, improve their credit scores, and develop a safe, trusting relationship with a bank. Once they saw that, the question shifted from whether to move forward to how.
That "how" needed a lender willing to build the program out from the ground up. In Chicago, that's Great Lakes Credit Union, an institution with a long standing commitment to economic and community development in the area and a track record as the backbone of local initiatives focused on trust and equity. They said yes early, and they've been building steadily since. The program launched in April 2026 and is now piloting with employers.
None of this, the eight months of build-out, the willing lender, the fit between what Chicago needed and what Income Advance offers, happens without the Corporate Coalition of Chicago and Woodstock Institute doing the groundwork first. That's the pattern we lean on everywhere we grow: community champions who make sure the program gets built around what people actually need, not just planted in a new city. It's what's carrying the Income Advance Program toward reaching the greater Chicago workforce.
If you're reading this and want to bring the program to your own community or workplace, reach out. We'd love to work with you.
