Concordia sees a future where all people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. So we created Concordia Day and Concordia Place as mission sisters, with interwoven missions:
And it started by responding to unmet need for child care.
There is a high demand for something Concordia does very well – world class early learning and care for children and families.*
Concordia Place leveraged this core competency, reverse-engineered the typical for-profit social enterprise model (think Newman’s Own or Toms Shoes), and launched Concordia Day early learning centers. Concordia Day not only helps address the child care desert in Chicago, it ensures that children, teens and families from all economic levels have access to growth and opportunity at Concordia Place.
Read more here in this April 2017 Social Innovations Journal article about how Concordia Place challenged itself to create a solution to the “long-term work with short-term funding” conundrum that plagues the missions of most nonprofits.
* A 2016 study by Rasheed Malik and Katie Hamm at the Center for American Progress maps the capacity of licensed child care centers and the populations of children under the age of five.
As a learning organization, Concordia Place is committed to continued improvement. We have learned that distinguishing between the Concordia Place and Concordia Day brands was not necessary.
Starting May 1, all visitors to concordiaday.org will be redirected to day.concordiaplace.org
By unifying around the sole use of the Concordia Place brand, we will provide clarity and focus on our mission to serve families and provide both care and education for their children.
