June Grant Highlights

← Back to Blog July 10, 2018 by Arts & Culture, Economic Transformation, Education & Youth Development, Environment, Grantmaking, Nonprofit, Strengthening Cleveland
A young girl points to a wall of pictures taken by Cleveland Print Room students
Photo © Cleveland Print Room

We’re thrilled to announce $13.8 million in June grants to organizations serving residents of Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties. This latest round of grants brings our total support to $22.9 million in the second quarter of 2018. Our June grants align with a number of priority areas, including economic and workforce development, youth and social services, the environment, and arts and culture. Here are a few highlights:

  • $199,000 to Cleveland Print Room (CPR), continuing our support for CPR’s Teen Institute photography and visual literacy mastery program – now in its third year. Teen Institute offers middle and high school students in low-income neighborhoods high-quality mastery arts education in a structured, supportive environment. The after school program, which is aligned with our youth arts mastery investments  launched in 2016, is currently active in six neighborhoods and last year served more than 428 students in year-round classes. This grant supports the Teen Institute’s operations as it continues to develop and serve more young artists in Cleveland.
  • $130,000 to The Nature Conservancy’s Ohio Field Office for conservation and public access improvements to its Snow Lake property, a 272-acre property in Geauga County that includes pristine forested wetlands, marshes, sage meadows and a 20-acre natural lake. Formerly owned by a family for several generations, Snow Lake was acquired by TNC in 2017. Our grant will support plans to create new opportunities for public access and outreach at the property, including hiking trails, interpretive signage, a new boardwalk and educational programming. It will also support research partnerships and programming with local educational partners and ongoing conservation efforts at Snow Lake.
  • $200,000 to Boys Hope Girls Hope of Northeastern Ohio (BHGH of NEO), an affiliate of a national program that helps academically capable and motivated children-in-need to meet their full potential by providing a value-centered, family-life home environment that allows students to mature and succeed through guidance, education, financial support and encouragement. High demand for BHGH of NEO’s effective and time-tested programming has motivated the organization to expand its capacity to serve more students. Our grant will support an expansion of BHGB of NEO’s facilities to allow the organization to provide holistic, year-round programming to 200 scholars by 2020.
  • $615,000 to BioEnterprise supporting efforts to drive innovation, growth and equity in Cleveland’s biomedical industry. Over the past 14 years, BioEnterprise has worked with more than 400 companies and 2,300 entrepreneurs to attract $2.5 billion in new capital to Northeast Ohio. Today, Northeast Ohio’s biomedical industry creates roughly 1,000 well-paying new jobs each year. Our grant will continue support for BioEnterprise’s business formation and growth services, helping to launch new service offerings that aim to increase venture capital investment and marketability of local biomedical innovations. Our grant will also support BioEnterprise’s efforts to align the local talent pipeline with the needs of the region’s health IT sector and increase diversity in the field with a pilot “learn-and-earn” model matching first generation college students with local health IT partners, a pilot afterschool computer science class with curriculum developed by Hyland Software for students from Cleveland and eastside inner ring suburbs, and efforts to double the number of Cleveland Metropolitan School District students with access to Computer Science A courses.
  • $152,354 to Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI) to continue its work to provide loans and assistance to entrepreneurs and business owners in Cleveland neighborhoods, with a focus on serving low- to moderate-income individuals, as well as female, immigrant and minority individuals. Our grant will support ECDI staff working in core city neighborhoods as they provide one-on-one coaching and technical assistance, approve and award loans, and develop and expand community partnerships with organizations like Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, Hebrew Free Loan Association, Operation Hope, Hispanic Business Center and many others. This latest grant builds on our investment of more than $1.8 million since 2011 to support small business lending and the establishment of the women’s business center at ECDI.

These are just a few of our June grants; we’ll be sharing information about additional June grants on our social media pages in the coming weeks. Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter to get the latest on our grantmaking and other Cleveland Foundation news.