Cleveland Foundation Background

We are a community foundation created by Greater Clevelanders for Greater Clevelanders. For more than 90 years, the foundation has lived an ethic best summed up in our modern mission statement: To enhance the lives of all residents of Greater Cleveland, now and for generations to come, by building community endowment, addressing needs through grantmaking and providing leadership on key community issues.

We serve Cuyahoga, Lake, and Geauga counties by strategically sharing wealth – bequests and living trusts, as well as the richness of human capital. Our assets, around $1.8 billion in all, are the community’s in the form of more than 1,300 separate funds representing individuals, families, organizations, and corporations.

The foundation invests these funds in perpetuity, so that the resources remain in trust forever. Then we distribute the funds’ earnings to worthy organizations, mainly nonprofit organizations in Greater Cleveland (our grants totaled $82 million in 2009). In that way, we and our community partners leverage the wealth of yesterday, today, and tomorrow to create opportunities, answer needs, and fulfill dreams.

Our legacy surrounds – in our metropolitan parks, our cultural institutions, our neighborhoods, and our schools. Our outreach touches people through all of life’s stages, from prenatal months to elder years. We help give root to generations of new leaders through scholarships, internships, leadership academies, and mentor pairings.

We are the Cleveland Foundation. We build prosperity for the people in our community to thrive.