Job and business creation has been a top priority of the Cleveland Foundation since 1985, when the foundation’s board responded to a growing sense of urgency about the region’s stagnation by elevating economic development grantmaking to a full-fledged program area. In 2002, the foundation recruited a senior fellow for economic development, who began meeting with business, political and academic leaders to formulate a comprehensive strategy. The foundation has since invested more than $85 million in helping to create a network of programs that support innovation and entrepreneurship, business attraction and growth, advancements in manufacturing, global competitiveness and the development of new high-growth industry clusters, including biotechnology and advanced energy.

These activities are carried out by a number of new intermediaries, such as BioEnterprise, Global Cleveland, JumpStart and MAGNET. All have received foundation grants to support their start-up, early-stage operation and programmatic expansion.

More recently, the Cleveland Foundation has sparked the creation of innovative programs specifically designed to create good jobs for city residents, including employee-owned business cooperatives and a microlending fund to seed the business ideas of grassroots entrepreneurs. Replacing the tens of thousands of manufacturing positions lost throughout the region since the 1970s remains a work in progress, but the intense focus on economic development has produced measurable results. One hopeful statistic: Manufacturing jobs were up by 1,000 between October and October 2013.