We’re thrilled to announce $4.3 million in May grants to organizations serving Lake, Geauga and Cuyahoga County residents! Many of our May grants support cultural and educational opportunities, as well as programs to help Greater Cleveland’s most underserved populations.

Cultural & Educational Programming:

• $23,000 to the Contemporary Youth Orchestra (CYO) to help grow organizational capacity and reach more Cleveland youth, including the expansion of their CYOrigins program with Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD). CYOrigins pairs elementary school students in underserved communities with a high school aged “mentor” from CYO. This grant represents our second year supporting CYO as the organization continues to grow.

• $35,000 to Scenarios USA, Inc. to support the pilot of a year-round Youth Media Corps (YMC) program for CMSD students to collaborate on writing, producing and editing short films. Scenarios USA is a national nonprofit using writing and film to engage young people on community issues, providing educational and career exploration opportunities to underserved Cleveland youth.

• $5,000 to Zygote Press Inc. in support of a pilot summer educational workshop for youth ages 14-18 in Cleveland this June. Our grant supports the collaboration between Zygote Press and Apollo Outreach, a year-round media literacy program associated with the Cinema Studies Program at Oberlin College. Ten students from the Cleveland area will be selected to collaborate on developing and executing a creative project over the course of the program. During the program, the students will be exposed to artists and techniques at Zygote Press, the Morgan Conservatory and Praxis Fiber Workshop, and will visit Cleveland cultural institutions. 


• $4,000 to Slowik Music Institute in support of Make Music Cleveland: Music All Around the City, an event aligned with Make Music Day on June 21, 2017. Make Music Day is an annual worldwide celebration of music on the Summer solstice, and Make Music Day Cleveland will celebrate musicians and music all around the city.

• $45,000 to the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes to support environmental education programming for underserved students in early learning and primary grade levels within CMSD, as well as at multiple Head Start sites through The Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland. The Nature Center educates people of all ages, especially children, including students across Greater Cleveland. We have supported The Nature Center’s environmental education programming since 2013, and this grant will allow stellar science programming to reach Cleveland’s children.

• $190,000 to the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning (CAL) to help the organization conduct outreach and establish community programming in its new University Circle facility. CAL serves more than 220,000 students in 250 Northeast Ohio schools, providing experiences in dance, drama, music, and literary, digital, and visual arts through trained professional teaching artists. In April, CAL relocated to a new home in University Circle, which will allow the organization to become a community-based center while continuing to deliver its regular programming. 

Support for Vulnerable Greater Clevelanders:

• $165,000 to Rose-Mary, The Johanna Grasselli Rehabilitation & Education Center, which provides residential treatment and rehabilitation services for children and young adults with various developmental disabilities, to create a dual-diagnosis day program with a new clinical director position. Our 2012 grant to Rose-Mary supported the creation of a day program serving individuals with severe to profound developmental disabilities, which continues to run successfully. This new grant will help create a dual-diagnosis day program following the same model, serving those diagnosed with both a disability and a mental illness, ultimately providing cutting-edge care to a critically vulnerable population.

• $50,000 to the Center for Community Solutions, supporting collaborative efforts to address criminal justice reform through the Ohio Transformation Fund (OTF), a group of local and national partners seeking to address mass incarceration and racial disparities in Ohio’s criminal justice system. The Center for Community Solutions engages in research, advocacy, and communications to explore solutions to health, social and economic issues impacting Northeast Ohio, and is a partner of the OTF. Our grant will specifically support outreach and community programming expenses, as well as support for capital improvements.

These are just a few of our May grants. Follow our grantmaking each month – and get the latest news from the Cleveland Foundation – by signing up for our monthly e-newsletter here.