Board of Directors

…the proof department. Two weeks later he was promoted to the tax division of the trust department. And 47 years later he would retire as the bank’s chairman and chief executive officer. Karch had come up the hard way—selling newspapers, scrubbing pharmacy floors, laying pipeline and working as a laborer in a steel mill. After graduating from West High School, he enrolled in St. Lawrence University but dropped out less than two years later when…

Indispensable Civic Roles

…and accidentally crushed to death a Presbyterian minister who had joined an on-site demonstration organized by a coalition of civil rights groups to protest the construction project’s reinforcement of school segregation. The news of the Reverend Bruce W. Klunder’s demise horrified James A. Norton, the director of the Cleveland Foundation’s affiliated philanthropy, Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation (GCAF), who had for months been trying to…

James A. Norton

…degrees from Louisiana State University and, despite a passion for politics, ultimately decided to go into teaching. He studied for his second master’s at Harvard University’s Littauer School of Public Administration. During World War II, Norton served as a radio operator in the U.S. Army Air Force. After the war ended, he became an instructor at the University of Texas and, in 1949, an assistant professor in the school of public administration…

Community Foundation Movement

…d distributed more than $4 billion in annual grants. But the intrinsic value of Goff’s concept goes beyond the amassing and awarding of financial resources. As evidenced by the spread of community philanthropy throughout the world, from Astrakhan, Russia, to Mozambique, to New Zealand, the concept’s universal appeal lies in a community foundation’s ability to bring people together around a common cause. From the asset-rich cities and towns of…

Grant Search

…00 Social Services 1988 National Puerto Rican Forum Comprehensiv Competncies Prog. $112,500 Education 1988 National Urban Fellows, Inc. National Urban Fellow $31,000 Education 1988 Neighborhood Health Care, Inc. Physician recruit. & org. dev. $5,000 Health 1988 Neighborhood Health Care, Inc. Physician recruitment $80,250 Health 1988 Neighborhood Progress Inc. Initial yr.of Neighbor.Progres $400,000 Civic Affairs 1988 New Organization for the…

Post-Goff Years

…projects, demonstrations of services or extension of services which are new or relatively untried in this community and which give promise of beneficial results.” This statement of a community trust’s central mission holds true today, but at the time the reaffirmation of Goff’s vision did not substantially change the objectives of the Cleveland Foundation’s grantmaking. The community foundation field had yet to discover the value of an…

Groundbreaking Strategy

…-commissioned recreation survey, completed in 1919, recommended improvements in the variety of wholesome leisure-time activities available to Clevelanders. Goff had already hired a survey director, Allen T. Burns, whom he recruited from Pittsburgh, where in 1907 the Russell Sage Foundation, a newly formed national philanthropy dedicated to supporting social science research, had commissioned an influential study of living and working conditions…

Everyone a Philanthropist

…simply… Read More in Timeline  Donald and Ruth Weber Goodman Perpetuating Life-Saving Medical Care In October 2000, Donald Goodman, a retired dentist, returned to his Pepper Pike home after his morning exercise and abruptly collapsed on the floor. After being rushed to University Hospitals of Cleveland, he was diagnosed with acute… Read More in Timeline  On January 3, 1914, the day after the board of the Cleveland Trust bank…

Homer C. Wadsworth

…ts, keen instincts for negotiation and his personal charm. He credited his accomplishments to “two-pants suits—because you have to out-sit people.” Born in Pittsburgh in 1913, Wadsworth was at heart a hard-eyed realist whose world view had been shaped by tragedy. When Homer was eight, his father, a tugboat captain, died from the lingering effects of an accident that had crushed his leg. Homer and his sister grew up in a tough Pittsburgh…

Introduction

…t of the common people. Goff had started his legal career as a solo practitioner and become the “super-troubleshooter” at one of Cleveland’s leading corporate law firms. Because of his specialized skills, Goff was appointed trustee of a bankrupt private streetcar company with which the City of Cleveland had battled for control of these critical transportation lines for seven years. In short order, Goff and Johnson negotiated a Solomonic…