November Grant Highlights

← Back to Blog December 16, 2019 by Grantmaking, Nonprofit, Strengthening Cleveland
A teacher and her kindergarten students are playing with toy building blocks in their classroom.

We’re excited to share a few highlights from our recent grants to organizations serving residents of Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties. These November grants focus on expanding access to vital community resources, promoting quality programs for local students, and connecting adults who are in or nearing retirement to meaningful opportunities in the community.   

Community Resources

  • $66,000 to the Center for Employment Opportunities’ new Cleveland site to help the national organization grow its presence in the city and expand its employment services, which support men and women released from incarceration in successfully rejoining the workforce.
  • $86,000 to Jordan Community Resource Center to support the development of a strategic plan to guide the agency, which provides stable housing, workforce training and other services to women in crisis, toward long-term sustainability.
  • $75,000 to Front Steps Housing and Services to expand and refine the agency’s behavioral and mental health services to better address the needs of an aging homeless population, especially those struggling with mental illness and/or substance abuse.
  • $20,000 to the Northern Ohio Recovery Association to fund the creation of a computer lab and youth social space inside its new home in the former Goodrich-Gannet Neighborhood Center Building, where it is now the neighborhood’s sole licensed community-based provider of prevention, education and treatment services for young people dealing with substance abuse and their families.
  • $15,000 to the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation in support of the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition’s mission to protect families from lead exposure. The funding will help raise community-wide awareness of the serious physical and cognitive impacts of lead poisoning, as well as promote available resources to aid in compliance with new lead-safe regulations.

Quality Programs for Local Students

  • $200,000 to Starting Point, Northeast Ohio’s childcare, early education and out-of-school time resource and referral agency serving families, the community, early childhood organizations and professionals. Our grant supports Starting Point’s work to ensure all publicly funded child care programs in Cuyahoga County achieve Step Up To Quality ratings in order to meet Ohio’s 2020 targets.
  • $75,000 supporting Groundwork Ohio’s early childhood education and outreach work. Our grant will support Groundwork’s ongoing efforts to educate policymakers, stakeholders and the public about the importance of investing in quality early learning as well as the inequities that exist within the systems serving Ohio’s children. Our grant will also support the collection of data and information about Ohio’s early education workforce and the creation of professional development opportunities for the field.
  • $42,500 to ACE Mentor Program of Cleveland, a program that engages, excites and enlightens high school students in the architecture, construction and engineering industries. More than 70 local firms currently provide volunteer mentors for the program, which serves nearly 200 students each year across 12 public schools in Cleveland and Warrensville Heights. Our grant includes support for student projects and programming in Hough and MidTown, and it will help ACE align its curriculum to meet present-day industry needs.

In addition, our November grants include a total of $460,000 to partners in our Encore Cleveland network – including East End Neighborhood House, Business Volunteers Unlimited and Greater Cleveland Volunteers – that are providing meaningful paid and volunteer opportunities for adults in the community who in retirement or nearing retirement from their primary careers.

These are just a few of our November grants. Learn more about our grantmaking here.