…d set about organizing and funding the Fair Housing Council, a professionally staffed coordinating agency for the more than 40 community and neighborhood groups the subcommittee had discovered were working on the issue, largely independently of one another. The council met with some success, conducting a campaign that saw 45 of Cuyahoga County’s 60 municipalities pass fair housing resolutions. It also helped to implement Operation Equality, a…
…n board (then called the Foundation Committee) by the mayor of Cleveland, John D. Marshall. Reappointed by Marshall and his two successors, she served on the board for nearly two decades, during which time she responded capably and wholeheartedly to the call to transform her late husband’s dreams and hopes for the usefulness of the Cleveland Foundation into reality. In contemporary terms, you might say she “got it,” writing in 1926 that the role…
…buy guns, the public-private partnership that the foundation helped to assemble around NOW! might have indeed jump-started Cleveland’s physical and socioeconomic revival. But the community’s hopes for a better day were brutally and quickly dashed when Evans and his followers engaged in a gun battle with police, during which three officers were slain. The so-called Glenville shootout in July 1968 also seriously wounded prospects for the success…
…bout $18 million to $65 million, an increase of more than 250 percent. Johnson had only his stalwart assistant, Dorothy Ruth, and a stenographer to help him process upward of 250 grants totaling in excess of $2 million annually. Buried under an ever-expanding mound of paperwork, he came to question the increasingly standardized nature of the foundation’s decision making about how best to distribute its undesignated income. With his extensive…
…ings Porter developed in Cleveland’s suburbs), and avidly supported the Cleveland Museum of Art. As Porter considered how to perpetuate the charitable and cultural interests that had enriched his and Nancy’s lives, he initially thought of setting up a private family foundation. Reflecting on his wife’s admiration and affection for Steve Minter, Porter also investigated the possibility of bequeathing the couple’s estate to the Cleveland…
…ugh energy to power up to 20 homes through a tie-in with Cleveland Public Power, the turbine served as an educational demonstration on the environmental benefits of alternative energy. Ronn persuaded British Petroleum (formerly Ohio’s Standard Oil Company) to allow him to use designated funds at the foundation to hire a senior fellow for economic and environmental advancement. With the recruitment of energy industry veteran Richard Stuebi to the…
…overnight. Yet the study’s recommendations, which Eckardt and foundation director Steve Minter continued to bring to the attention of new leaders at the concerned institutions over the next decade, planted seeds that ultimately bore fruit. In 1995, CWRU’s school of medicine, which had long been exclusively associated with UH, entered into a joint venture with the Cleveland Clinic to create a center of excellence in structural biology. With…
…s’s work, which demonstrates how sustained investment can pay real dividends for residents, their neighborhoods and the city as a whole. “Nowhere else in the United States,” Proscio stated, “is there a more extensive, carefully arranged, centrally coordinated and widely supported system of neighborhood investment than in Cleveland.” Proscio’s observation that Cleveland’s CDOs needed to consolidate their disparate gains into a larger, more…
…maintenance and utility costs, and the project must be central to the grantee’s mission and help to meet a compelling community need. A new requirement was added in 2007 with the goal of making Cleveland a more environmentally conscious community. Henceforth, capital grants would be awarded only to projects that had adopted “green building” principles and qualified for the U.S. Green Building Council’s “LEED Silver” certification, in the case…
…hropy Ohio, a statewide association of private funders. After extended negotiations in which the two foundations helpfully participated, the Transformation Plan gained the support of the Cleveland Teachers Union and, ultimately, the approval of the Ohio General Assembly. The foundation played a prominent role in winning passage of the enabling legislation, which was signed by Ohio governor John Kasich in June 2012. It also helped to finance the…