Chicago City Wire

As part of Chicago City Wire's new "Illinois DOGE" series, we will profile Illinois "non-profit" organizations that receive all or an overwhelming majority of their funding from government/taxpayers to provide services the state also provides.

See our first installment profile of Chicago's Indo-American Center on Chicago City Wire, our second installment on the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on our sister site, Prairie State Wire, and our third installment on "TMH Mancave."

Black Researchers Collective

Glenance Green celebrates her PhD in Philosophy, visiting Florence, Italy in March 2023. | Facebook

4925 S. Champlain Avenue, Chicago

Grand Boulevard neighborhood

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Highlights

• Non-Profit founded in 2020 and received Internal Revenue Service non-profit designation in 2022
• Total revenue was $286,245 in 2021, $585,171 in 2022 and $1,163,772 in 2023
• Since 2023, received $700,000 per year in State of Illinois taxpayer grants for "operating expenses"
• Per IRS filings, Executive Director Glenance Green made $173,600 and "deputy director" Shari Runner made $140,000 for 20 hours per week of work in 2023. 

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Author and poet Glenance Green and former Chicago Urban League CEO Shari Runner started the "Black Researchers Collective" in 2020 to "activate and mobilize communities to use research and data to create and sustain change across Chicago communities and beyond."

They applied for and received their Internal Revenue Service non-profit designation on Feb. 23, 2022.

Three months later, the Illinois General Assembly and Gov. J.B. Pritzker approved a $700,000 annual appropriation from State of Illinois taxpayers to fund the "operating expenses" of the Black Researchers Collective. 

It has been approved every year since.

The organization is scheduled to get $700,000 in 2025-26 proposed budget, according to an appropriations bill filed Feb. 25.

Black Researchers Collective employees purport to conduct interviews "on the street" with black Chicagoans, which have been compiled into "reports" that advocate against capitalism and for policies like slavery reparations, the mass release of black violent criminals from state jails, and free, housing, health care and college for black Chicagoans, funded by white, Asian and Hispanic taxpayers.

"Black people are not just asking for compensation—although they do want you to cut the check – they are also calling for a societal shift that dismantles policies that limit economic and social mobility and empowers communities to thrive," reads the conclusion of Community Listening Sessions with Black Chicagoans on Reparations, published in February. 

The organization was founded with private grants from the MacArthur Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Kellogg Foundation and Chicago Beyond, the foundation of Lincoln Park resident and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter. It attracted $286,245 in grant revenue in 2021 and had nearly quadrupled that total by 2023, the first year it received state taxpayer funding.

Green, 37, was paid $53,323 in 2021 and $163,600 in 2022.

Runner, 66, received $13,700 in 2021 and $59,800 in 2022.

Runner also works as executive director of the non-for-profit "Humanity Institute," which received a $4,000 grant from the Black Researchers Collective in 2021 and one for $26,000 in 2022. 

The group put out a press release in 2019, supporting former Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx for her handing of the Jussie Smollett "MAGA attack" case.

"The Mayor (Rahm Emanuel), the Police Chief and the FOP are all lathered up about States Attorney Foxx's 'mishanding' of this case," Runner said. "Our city looks like a third rate circus, while the outgoing Mayor takes a page from the book of Trump and uses media to further his personal goals for the future."

A Wesleyan University graduate, Runner worked at the non-for-profit Chicago Urban League from 2010-2018.

The Chicago Urban League receives about half of its annual budget from direct government grants, including $5.2 millon in 2023.

"I'm a black researcher, and your Karen methodologies are so 1990s"

The Black Researchers Collective has "research" in its name. But it actually operates as an advocacy organization for policies supported by the elected officials providing it funding, namely Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and democrat legislators.

In a 2024 Instagram post, Green said she was "trying to use data six ways from Sunday to get free."

In the sam post, fellow "black researcher" Fallon Wilson of Nashville added that "black research" is different than white research.

"I'm a black researcher, and your Karen methodologies are so 1990s," she said.

Last week, Green traveled to Springfield to rally the state legislature to increase funding to "black non-profits" on behalf of a new group called the "Illinois Black Non-for-Profit Coalition."

To be sure, they have hundreds of millions, even billions, of state grants to protect.

The Black Researchers Collective is one of 209 "legislative initiative" non-profit grant beneficiaries totaling $307 million requested by the Illinois Department of Human Services for the 2025-26 budget.

Green also writes poetry and released a poetry book, Resiliance in Rhyme, in 2023.

In 2024, she traveled to Los Angeles, San Diego and South Bend to do poetry readings and sell her book.

"We know that capitalism works against us. That its inextricably linked to the exploitation of Black and brown bodies," Green writes in a poem titled, Can I flex? Can I llve? "We know its rooted in anti-blackness. We know that wealth has been colonized and the lens through which we understand money is inherently flawed."

"Sometimes we just want some shit. Some shit for us," she wrote.

In 2023, Green took trips to Mexico, Atlanta and Florence, Italy, to celebrate her earning a PhD in philosophy from University of Illinois at Chicago.

"Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is now Dr. Glenance Green aka Doctah Bae," she wrote on Facebook.

Before starting the Black Researchers Collective, Green worked on campaigns for President Barack Obama, Foxx and 2019 Chicago Mayoral Candidate Amara Enyia as well as for the federal government-funded American Institutes for Research from 2013-2018.