Philanthropy Front and Center-Cleveland

Watch This! Coffee and Conversation with a Grantmaker: The Cleveland Foundation

Introduced by Kathleen Hallissey, program director of community responsive grantmaking, program officers Kevin McDaniel, Jill Paulsen, Paul Putman, and Nelson Beckford discuss The Cleveland Foundation's interests, practices, giving priorities, and plans for the future. Watch>>

Watch This! Coffee and Conversation with a Grantmaker: Jennifer Thomas, Civic Innovation Lab

View the recording of our Coffee and Conversation with a Grantmaker program, presented May 30, 2008, featuring Jennifer Thomas, director of the Civic Innovation Lab, discussing how the lab supports and funds social enterprise in Greater Cleveland.

News Round-up: Fund for Our Economic Future, Civic Innovation Lab, George Gund Foundation

News about foundations and the organizations they fund crosses the desks at the Foundation Center on a regular basis. Here's the first in a series of occasional posts featuring a summary of the latest information and news about grantmakers and their grants.

Lakeland Community College has joined the Fund for Our Economic Future by committing $100,000 over a three-year period to become a voting member, reported Crain's Cleveland Business (5/12/08). Crain's writes: "The Fund expects that Lakeland will add expertise to the Fund’s talent development focus area because of their insight and experience working closely with employers training personnel, said the Fund's Mr. Thompson. Other institutions of higher education that are voting members of the Fund are Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, Cuyahoga County Community College, Kent State University, Lorain County Community College and University of Akron."

Civic Innovation Lab provided $60,000 to new projects that target talent attraction and high school athletes. $30,000 each went to BeyondMotherhood.com and World School Games. BeyondMotherhood.com is a niche job board that connects employers with educated, experienced, stay-at-home moms looking for flexible or part-time work opportunities, who are seen as an "untapped" highly educated workforce in northeast Ohio. World School Games will provide an Olympic-style athletic and cultural event for students enrolled in secondary schools around the world. Cleveland will host the first event and serve as the operating center for future global events.
**The Foundation Center will feature Jennifer Thomas from the Civic Innovation Lab at our 5/30/08 Coffee and Conversation with a Grantmaker program (9:30-10:30am).**

The George Gund Foundation made 2 announcements recently. It will now require a proposal cover sheet with all applications. On Friday, May 16, the Foundation is hosting an advocacy evaluation training at Trinity Commons, 2230 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115 featuring two new flexible, easy-to-use, web-based tools to assess a nonprofit’s capacity to engage in policy and advocacy work and to evaluate the results of its advocacy efforts.

Youth Development Initiative

I recently attended a briefing hosted by Ohio Grantmakers Forum about the Youth Development Initiative, a public/private partnership being championed by The Cleveland Foundation and program partners like Starting Point and Youth Opportunities Unlimited.  Building on the success of Invest in Children, a program with similar roots and service strategies for children, pre-natal through kindergarten, the Youth Development Initiative will pick up where Invest in Children leaves off, working across agencies and geography to provide coordinated services for school-age children and young adults. Lisa Bottoms, Program Director for Human Services and Child and Youth Development at The Cleveland Foundation and other presenters, Sam Piha, Billie Osborne-Fears, and Carol Rivchun, walked us through the initiative's theory of change, outlining the building blocks essential to ensuring successful outcomes for youth, beginning with strategies for building the community's capacity to embrace change on behalf of young people and ending with improved developmental outcomes for youth.

If you want to learn more about the Youth Development Initiative, remarks from Lisa Bottoms are featured in 3 podcasts at The Cleveland Foundation's web site. Use these links to listen:

Youth Development Initiative: Published 9/12/2007. Duration: 7:23

Youth Development Initiative , Part 2: Published 1031/2007. Duration: 8:38

Youth Development Initiative, Part 3: Published 2/18/2008. Duration: 9:40

--Cindy Bailie

Latching Onto the Affirmative: Cuyahoga Arts and Culture

We've all hummed along with the dirges lamenting the demise of Cleveland's economy. From our hunkered-down bunker positions, peeking up now and then to launch a believe in Cleveland balloon or to dodge another anti-Cleveland bullet, we've occasionally seen good things blip across the crash-and-burn news headlines, only to have them drowned out again in any one of a million mud-filled, Cleveland potholes. Well, I think it's time to forget the bad news, even if just for a few minutes. Slither out of the mud. Pave over that pothole. Go on now, take a deep breath.  There's nothing like clear lungs and a clear head to fuel the imagination!

And while yes, it's true that we are in the midst of an economic downturn (which way was the upturn? I can't quite remember now...) Yes, it's true that our community's economic engine needs a tune up. It's true, yes, there are never enough resources for everything that's possible. And yes, it's true that discretionary dollars are tight.  But wait, it's also true that good things are happening anyway. Ah, the humanity!

As Johnny Mercer wrote and Bing Crosby crooned, we've got to accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative; latch on to the affirmative; and don't mess with mister in-between.

A Sunday Plain Dealer article accentuated the positive. Let's join them in latching onto the residual affirmatives that will undoubtedly materialize as a result of the stabilizing financial support now being provided through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture to nonprofit organizations that diligently safeguard our arts and cultural assets. Give a nod to community of cigarette buyers (perish the thought, you say!?), largely banned from indulging in their flammable tobacco pleasures in public places, who's "tobacco sin tax" dollars are seeding the treasuries of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. (It makes me want to buy a pack of cigarettes and hold a tobacco-burning ritual in their honor!)

And while we are up and thinking clearly, let's challenge ourselves to participate in the rich variety of offerings from our community of arts and culture organizations. Go see a show; take in a concert; register for a class. Who better than us to demonstrate the value of these organizations to the world?  Will you take the challenge with me?

--Cindy Bailie

Inspiration for this blog entry: Cuyahoga County Cigarette Tax Money Helps Local Arts Groups Weather Economic Storms, Karen Sandstorm, Plain Dealer, April 20, 2008.

Foundation Center in the News-National City Bank and the $25 Million Question

Speculation about the future of National City Bank prompted some media attention about their charitable foundation and community involvement:

National City Tied Closely to the Community  "They're pretty dedicated to the community," said Cynthia Bailie, director of the Cleveland office of the Foundation Center, an organization tracking philanthropic giving. If National City were to merge or be sold, she said, "the community should expect a significant change in their giving."

Fox 8 News Sidebar Video  "They're a lifeline in the sense that they have $25 million to pump into the nonprofit economy on an annual basis."

The $25 million dollar question: If we lose National City Bank, how does the nonprofit community make up that support? 

Can your organization withstand a sudden loss of funding?  How diverse is your base of support and revenue?  If you haven't created a fundraising plan with that aim in mind, there's no time like the present to start. You might begin by taking our free class, Introduction to Fundraising Planning, or our full-day seminar, Developing a Fundraising Plan.

Foundations, Living Cities Look to Foreclosure Crisis

The Wall Street Journal reported February 28 that some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies are turning their attention to the growing foreclosure crisis, which some fear could usher in the type of urban blight that devastated pockets of American cities in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Ford Foundation, which has about $12.8 billion in assets, is looking to fund programs aimed at reducing the number of homes that wind up in foreclosure, perhaps by making it easier for homeowners to get mortgages modified.

Living Cities, a consortium of major foundations and financial institutions working to revive inner cities, is considering funding programs to keep borrowers in their homes and get abandoned properties back into use.

Among projects the consortium is considering funding is one proposed by nonprofits and local governments in Cleveland. It would aim to acquire 450 foreclosed properties in the area at a cost of roughly $21 million, and either rehabilitate them as homes or rental units, or demolish them to make way for parks and other uses. Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland and its suburbs, had nearly 15,000 foreclosures in 2007, according to Mark Wiseman, director of the Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Prevention Program.

Source:  Foundations Weigh How to Allay Foreclosures, Ruth Simon, Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2008

Speaking of Funding for Economic Development...

Have you taken our poll yet (look right!)? We want to know what you think grantmakers should invest in when it comes to economic development.

Here's one example of such an investment:

The Cleveland-based Minority Business Accelerator 2.5+ (MBAccelerator2.5+) recently opened for business. A new initiative of the Commission on Economic Inclusion, the Hispanic Business Association, JumpStart, Inc., and the Northern Ohio Minority Business Council, it is funded by a first-year grant of $1 million from the Fund for Our Economic Future. 

The MBAccelerator 2.5+ is focused on growing the size, scale and infrastructure of African American and Hispanic minority-owned enterprises with annual revenues of at least $2.5 million in a 16-county area of Northeast Ohio: Ashland, Ashtabula, Carroll, Columbiana, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Mahoning, Medina, Portage, Richland, Stark, Summit, Trumbull, and Wayne.

The Accelerator will work with the corporate community and the public sector to determine the demand for business-to-business opportunities. It will then use that demand to identify minority-owned enterprises for participation. Economic indicators suggest these opportunities are likely to be in  construction, manufacturing, IT, financial services, and health care.

What do you think? Is philanthropic investment in this type of business development and promotion good for the communities of Northeast Ohio? Is it good for philanthropy?

Do you want a more global take on capitalism, philanthropy, and economic development?  Excerpts from Bill Gates' speech at the World Economic Forum were recently posted at our big-sister blog, PhilanTopic.

First, Northeast Ohio, then the world!?!

--Cindy Bailie

2008's Most Important Causes - Cleveland+ Edition

Our big-sister blog, PhilanTopic, recently ran a post from Michael Seltzer called 2008's Most Important Causes. Michael is a respected name in NY nonprofit and global philanthropy circles, who incidentally, spent some time in the glorious Midwest working at one of those big Michigan foundations north of sunny Ohio. He's also the author of Securing Your Organization's Future, increasingly considered an executive bookshelf staple, and a satisfying read and handbook for any nonprofit that's in it for the long haul.

As Michael points out, the drum roll for 2008 has begun. So, let's applaud and celebrate the organizations that champion the most important Cleveland+ causes. Let's help to spread the word about their important work by creating a cumulative list of organization's that deserve our attention. 

Here's a start:

Center for Community Solutions - Diligently "helping the people who help people since 1913," Community Solutions functions as the region's "brain trust," providing useful research about the state of things that effect real people, and that publicly-purposed organizations have come to rely on for making sound policy and programmatic decisions.  And, their advocacy work is second to none.

East Side Organizing Project (ESOP) - Sprung from a grassroots base on Cleveland's southeast side (Union-Miles, Mt. Pleasant, Glenville, and Broadway) ESOP unites communities to take charge of making change. ESOP got out in front of the predatory lending issue long before others were paying attention, and it isn't afraid to take on any of the region's toughest issues.

Neighborhood Connections - What's not surprising is that Neighborhood Connections is the "small grants" program of The Cleveland Foundation, which is known for many innovations in the world of philanthropy. What is surprising is that groups requesting grants from Neighborhood Connections aren't required to have 501(c)(3) status, something that is often a barrier to funding success for many groups of organized and committed neighborhood changemakers.

Youth Philanthropy and Service (YPS) - You can bemoan the decline of civility among the youngest residents of Cleveland+ or you can promote organizations that connect them to a world of service, good work, and positive role models. A program of the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations, YPS quietly works with schools and organizations to infuse philanthropic values into the next generation of leaders.

Please don't hesitate to add your organizations to this list.  And, more importantly, let's commit our time, talent, and treasure in 2008 to making Cleveland+ the best location in the nation.

State of Greater Cleveland Philanthropy -- Overheard

U.S Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Ohio Grantmakers Forum convened a special program today with the help of Cleveland State University. The program featured remarks from Congresswoman Tubbs Jones from her position as co-chair of the Congressional Philanthropy Caucus.  The event also featured a panel of funders and George Espy, President of Ohio Grantmakers Forum, who shared information from the new report, "State of Homegrown Philanthropy."

Two Foundation Center staff members attended the event and report that 100 others also turned up to hear about topics ranging from nonprofit partnerships and sustainability to grantmaker proposal review.

On nonprofit partnerships:

• "The partnership should be ingrained, not just a means of obtaining funding." (Joe Gauntner, Employment and Family Services of Cuyahoga County)
• "With more than 1 million tax-exempt organizations [in existence], the federal government is increasingly partnering up with nonprofit organizations." (Stephanie Tubbs Jones, U.S. House of Representatives)
• "Collaboration is easy to talk about, but difficult to do." (Bob Eckardt, The Cleveland Foundation)

On nonprofit opportunity and sustainability:

• "Grantmakers want to know about earned income. What percentage of your budget are you earning now and what percentage will you be earning in the future?" (Joanne Clark, National City Bank)
• "I am working hard to get the Second Chance Act passed. This is important because close to 5,000 ex-offenders are coming back to Cleveland, providing opportunities for nonprofits in the Cleveland area." (Stephanie Tubbs Jones, U.S. House of Representatives)
• "Discussions of sustainability need to be grounded in reality. Foundations need to see that plans are feasible." (Bob Eckardt, The Cleveland Foundation)
• "The county is in the sustainability business. Though most contracts are issued on a 12-month basis, the county will be resistant to fund projects that will not outlast that year-long period."(Joe Gauntner, Employment and Family Services of Cuyahoga County)

On common mistakes made by grantseekers when writing proposals:

• "Proposals tend to leave a bad impression when there is no clear linking of money to mission." (Robert Jacquay, George Gund Foundation)
• "The key is understanding who your audience is. Give your proposal to a friend or a neighbor who doesn’t know your agency and see if they understand what you are trying to convey." (Bob Eckardt, The Cleveland Foundation)
• "Never assume that your organization is entitled to funding, even if the grantmaker has been a steady source [of support] over the years." (Joanne Clark, National City Bank)