Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland awards $345,000 in Q1

CLEVELAND – The board of directors of the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland this week approved $345,000 in grants for the first quarter of 2018.

Funding for this quarter is concentrated primarily around efforts to end homelessness, as well as to continue to strengthen the community’s resources through collaboration and partnerships. These grants support a wide range of essential organizations whose programs and initiatives serve to combat many of poverty’s root causes.

“As part of our current grant dockets, we are proud to be continuing our promise to provide ongoing funding to the Housing First initiative,” said Susanna Krey, president, Sisters of Charity Foundation. “There’s been incredible momentum toward our goal of ending chronic homelessness, and we are looking forward to continuing this journey and sustaining these results long-term.”

Approved grants for the first quarter of 2018 include the following:

• The foundation awarded $75,000 to Enterprise Community Partners toward the goal of ending chronic homelessness in Cuyahoga County. As the intermediary of the Housing First collaborative initiative since its formation in 2002, Enterprise plays a critical role in convening the partners, articulating the vision to end chronic homelessness, aligning work toward the shared vision, and leveraging funding and best practices to achieve the goal.

• The foundation has granted $75,000 to The YWCA of Greater Cleveland to continue to lead A Place 4 Me, the collaborative initiative to prevent and end homelessness among youth and young adults in Cuyahoga County. Now at the beginning of its fifth year, A Place 4 Me is a partnership of nearly 30 public and private agencies aligning resources and efforts to ensure stable housing for young people (ages 14 to 24).

• The foundation has granted Enterprise Community Partners $35,000 to support its efforts in building the collaborative movement to end homelessness among all families in Cuyahoga County. Enterprise will lead the effort to assess our community’s current status against the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness’s criteria and benchmarks for ending family homelessness. This effort is focused on effecting systems change to ensure that families’ experiences of homelessness are rare, brief and non-recurring in our community.

• The foundation has granted $35,000 to Funders Together to End Homelessness to support our ongoing membership in this national platform, which offers the opportunity to learn from our peers and to share our local work in building a systems approach to ending homelessness.

• Policy Matters Ohio has received $20,000 to monitor, respond to, and promote policies that address the root causes of poverty. Policy Matters Ohio is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on research, coalition building, strategic communications and policy advocacy toward an Ohio economy that works for all. This will include strategy to engage the foundation as appropriate on policies that defend and support Northeast Ohio families who are most in need.

• The foundation awarded $50,000 to Burten, Bell, Carr Development, Inc., the neighborhood development organization for Cleveland’s Central and Kinsman neighborhood and a key partner in the development and execution of the Opportunity Corridor. Funds will support an Opportunity Corridor Project Manager to secure 83.3 acres of land for development in Central and Kinsman that is currently more than 70 percent vacant.

• The foundation has granted $35,000 to The Partnership for a Safer Cleveland, which convenes public and private stakeholders to reduce crime and violence through evidence-based policies and collaborative prevention and intervention practices. Funding will go toward the Law Enforcement Collaboration for Community Safety strategy, which will link police with families living in Central in order to enhance community safety.

• The foundation has granted The Literacy Cooperative (TLC) $20,000 to expand the Dolly Parton Imagination Library (DPIL) to children residing in Central Neighborhood. DPIL mails a brand new, age-appropriate book to enrolled children monthly through their fifth birthday, at no cost to the recipient. TLC will partner with Promise Ambassadors, libraries, early learning and daycare providers, pediatricians and other medical providers to enroll families living in Central.

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Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland

Since 1996, the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland has partnered with residents, nonprofits and community leaders to change the trajectory of poverty in Cuyahoga County. Its nearly $100 million endowment includes the first health care conversion foundation and first foundation formed by a congregation of Catholic sisters in the United States.

Through grantmaking, collaboration, advocacy and more, the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland works to improve the lives of those most in need with special attention to families, women and children living in poverty. The foundation works to end homelessness in Cuyahoga County and to reduce health disparities and improve educational opportunities in Cleveland’s Central Neighborhood. As a Catholic organization, the foundation extends the values of Jesus Christ through the mission of its founders – the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine – and also works to sustain the ministries of women religious.

The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland is a ministry of the Sisters of Charity Health System – a family of Catholic health care, grantmaking and outreach ministries healing individuals, families and communities in Ohio and South Carolina.