Announcements

Jessica May, a former research analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University, has been selected as the 2020-2022 George Gund Foundation Fellow.

May is pursuing dual Master’s degrees in Social Administration and in Nonprofit Organizations from the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at CWRU.  A California native, May received her B.A. in economics from Occidental College in Los Angeles.  She joined the Federal Reserve in 2016 where she assisted with long-term research in fields such as the economics of education and urban economics.

While in graduate school she has worked at The Centers for Families and Children and Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.  She also is a member of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.  May resides in Cleveland Heights and will begin her work at the Foundation in early July.

The George Gund Foundation Fellows program, started in 2004, provides an opportunity for promising young professionals to work inside the Foundation, an organization that plays an active role in supporting the civic life of Greater Cleveland and in various national policy deliberations that impact our community. Each Fellow, selected from a nationwide pool of applicants, works at the Foundation for two years.

We mourn the passing of Llura Gund.
We grieve with family, with our extended Foundation community and with all of those who encountered her luminous spirit.

Lulie, as she was affectionately known, devoted more than 20 years to The George Gund Foundation as a member of the board of trustees, much of that time as vice president.  Lulie passed away on March 15.  She was the wife for more than 53 years of former trustee Gordon Gund, the mother of current trustee Zachary Gund, mother-in-law of trustee Lara Gund.  And, of course, her family ties extended to all of the Gunds who have served on the Foundation’s board since its beginning.

Throughout her tenure, Lulie was a smart, thoughtful, supportive, engaged, and deeply passionate trustee, wielding great influence across program areas with her trademark humor and caring. Her work at the Foundation was guided by her trust and respect for those people and agencies working to ensure dignity and justice for Cleveland’s most vulnerable citizens, particularly children and families. Her commitment to these principles extended beyond her time at the Foundation, and it informed all of her philanthropic investments. As Lulie and Gordon noted when they joined The Giving Pledge, dedicating the majority of their wealth to giving back:

“We each had parents who highly valued and lived the importance of providing the same opportunities that they had to those who were less fortunate.  Their generosity with their treasure and their time has inspired us in our philanthropic involvements.  Over the years we have provided meaningful financial support and, in some cases, significant volunteer time to organizations involved in healthcare, education, the environment and the arts.  We have made our philanthropic investments—just as we have made our for-profit investments—in capable people who have a dedicated commitment to a sensible and compelling vision.  Also, as with many of our business investments, we have invested a significant amount of our time, experience, and energy into the leadership and oversight of our most important philanthropic endeavors.”

As a trustee, Lulie was particularly devoted to the Foundation’s work in human services and education. Her support for women’s reproductive health and rights, children’s health and development, early childhood education, and the transformation of our public schools was essential in terms of guiding our Foundation’s work. Within all these interests—and others—her advocacy for high-quality early childhood stood out.  Lulie supported the Foundation’s work in Invest in Children, Cuyahoga County’s high-quality early childhood program, now regarded as a national model.  She supported Ohio’s Step Up To Quality initiative, now used across the state to catalyze early childhood programs receiving public funding to pursue the highest quality standards and through which Cuyahoga County now has the highest percentage of highly-rated programs in the state. And she supported Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools, which called for the expansion of high-quality preschool to all three- and four-year-old children in Cleveland.

Lulie’s special interest in children prompted the Foundation to make a $1 million grant in February to create The Llura Gund Early Learning Fund at PRE4CLE, which leads the preschool expansion campaign.

“The sadness of Lulie’s passing is felt deeply by all of the Gunds and the extended Foundation family,” noted Catherine Gund, president of the Board of Trustees.  “It is an especially poignant moment for me as one of our longest serving woman trustees leaves us and I begin my time as the first woman president.  Lulie’s enduring hopefulness will be one of my constant guideposts.”

Notable though her record of service was, Lulie’s shining personality always made her greatest
impression.  With good humor and an infectious laugh, she captivated people and made them feel comfortable and welcome in any setting.  Everyone felt her warmth and loved the stories she told.  The deep regard that she had for people was evident in her work with the Foundation and in her every interaction.

We will always miss Lulie.  Especially in these painfully uncertain times we miss her innate optimism and good cheer.  But we know she will remain with us.  The example of her service and the inspiration of her spirit will carry us forward.

Dear colleagues,

What a time this is.  We join many of you, I’m sure, from living rooms and kitchens, hunkering down to slow the spread of the coronavirus.  Others, responsible for the direct care and comfort of our fellow citizens, are dutifully fulfilling their roles in the community.  We are deeply grateful to everyone who is playing a part in holding our community together in this time of crisis.

The George Gund Foundation is responding to the pandemic in several ways.  Yesterday we joined a group of philanthropic partners to announce the Greater Cleveland COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund.  Nearly $4 million has been pooled so far to provide flexible resources to organizations serving many of those most affected by the outbreak.  For details on this Fund, please visit https://www.clevelandfoundation.org/news/covid-19/response-fund/.

In addition to our commitment to that Fund we want to do all we can to help you during this extremely challenging time.  Consequently, please know that we have taken these steps:

 

• If you have a special purpose or project grant from us and it would be more helpful to use those funds for operations, feel free to do so.  We ask only that you let us know.

 

• We are extending grant report due dates until September 30 for those who have an earlier deadline.  And if greater flexibility is needed, we will work with you.  Please ignore any automated notices you may receive from our grants management system.

 

• We are waiving the March 15 grant application deadline for those who wish to have an application considered at our July 2 Trustees meeting.  We will certainly consider requests in July that come in by May 1 and we will be as flexible as we can beyond that date.  As always, we will consider requests of $10,000 or less on a rolling basis at any time.  If you rushed to submit an application by March 15, we will accept updates and changes to those applications until at least May 1 as well.  Just send an email to your program officer or to Cindy Gasparro.

And, of course, we want to stay in touch with you.  For the time being we are conducting most meetings by phone or Zoom.  If you have any questions about the matters discussed here or any concerns about your work, please let us know.  We are happy to answer your questions and we are eager to help you think through problems and strategize around solutions.  We all are available by email as we work remotely.  And if you leave a voicemail message at the office, please know that those messages are retrieved throughout the day.  Here is how you can reach us:

• Dave Abbott, Executive Director dabbott@gundfdn.org

• Jennifer Coleman, Senior Program Officer Arts jcoleman@gundfdn.org 

• Maya Curtis, Fellow mcurtis@gundfdn.org

• Marcia Egbert, Senior Program Officer Human Services megbert@gundfdn.org

• Cindy Gasparro, Grants and Office Administrator cgasparro@gundfdn.org

• Travis Howard, Fellow thoward@gundfdn.org

• Bob Jaquay, Associate Director rjaquay@gundfdn.org

• John Mitterholzer, Senior Program Officer Environment jmitterholzer@gundfdn.org

• Ann Mullin, Senior Program Officer Education amullin@gundfdn.org

• Alesha Washington, Senior Program Officer Economic Development and Community Revitalization awashington@gundfdn.org

While the pandemic naturally commands a great deal of our attention, we must also continue to fulfill other vital obligations, including those of citizenship.  In that regard, the most pressing immediate duty is to complete the census.  I am sure you all know how important it is to get a complete count, especially of populations that traditionally have been undercounted.  Here is a link to useful information from the Census Bureau related to the census and the pandemic:  https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/statement-coronavirus.html.  And here is a link to the Ohio Census Advocacy Coalition with information on how you and your organization can help:  https://www.ohiocensus.org/.  Please do everything you can to urge everyone in your circle – employees, clients, family and friends, associates – to get out the count.  And if you have not yet voted, don’t forget to vote in the Ohio primary election – whenever it is!

Please take care of yourselves and others as we all weather this crisis.  Stay healthy.

Sincerely,

 

 

We, like the rest of the world, are concerned about the coronavirus and as a measure of caution have
decided to work remotely while we closely watch and evaluate the situation. Our staff continues moving our work forward, including talking and meeting with grant partners, although those meetings may primarily be by teleconference.  If you are trying to reach a program officer, the best way is through email.  Phone messages left in the office also will be monitored and passed along on a regular basis. Please stay healthy.

 

The George Gund Foundation has elected Margaret Bernstein, director of advocacy and community initiatives at WKYC Channel 3, as one of its two Cleveland trustees. A champion of literacy, she earned a 2016 Emmy for her #WeReadHere campaign at WKYC, which encouraged parents to read every day with their children.

Bernstein is a Los Angeles native and she earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California. She was a reporter, editor and columnist for The Plain Dealer from 1989 to 2013. She won the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists’ first place award for minority issues reporting in 2011 and 2012 for co-writing a series of profiles on the 11 Imperial Avenue serial killer victims and their families.

“Our Cleveland Trustees are such an important part of the Foundation,” noted Catherine Gund, president of the board. “The family no longer lives there and we value our Cleveland colleagues for their insights into local needs and opportunities. We’re very excited to have Margaret bring her knowledge and dedication to our board discussions.”

In addition to her professional work, Bernstein is a committed community volunteer. She was named National Big Sister of the Year in 2000 for her work with two Cleveland girls through the local Big Brother Big Sister agency. She was also a longtime volunteer with the Urban Journalism Workshop, an annual program organized by black journalists for high school students.

She wrote The Bond, a memoir on fatherlessness by the nationally recognized “three doctors” who made a pact in high school in New Jersey to escape poverty and become doctors. That experience led her to write a series of storybooks designed to tighten the bond between fathers and their young children.

“I’m a person who looks for hope and solutions so I’ve long been aware of the Gund Foundation’s outstanding work, particularly in the education arena,” said Bernstein. “I’m looking forward to learning from this team and sharing my expertise.”

Bernstein succeeds noted Cleveland civic leader Randell McShepard, whose term on the Foundation board expired. She joins Cleveland trustee Mark Joseph, associate professor in community development at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. Cleveland trustees can serve two three-year terms. The other seven trustees are members of the Gund family.

 

 

 

The George Gund Foundation tips its hat to the 25 Cleveland City Champions being heralded by a partnership of The Plain Dealer, ideastream and The Guardian between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We are fortunate to work with so many of these wonderful people and organizations; reading about them feels like a big family reunion.  Their dedication to making Cleveland a better community for everyone is simply inspiring.

If you’ve haven’t yet seen the list, you can find it here.

The introduction to the list aptly says, “All have done brilliant, brave things to lift up their communities.”  In this holiday season and as we head into a vitally important new year, we should be grateful for their work and for the examples they set.

 

To celebrate the career of retiring board president Geoffrey Gund, the George Gund Foundation awarded $2 million to The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland to launch the Geoffrey Gund Fund for Families and Children in his honor.  Gund worked at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland in the late 1960s. He served as a trustee of the Foundation for 43 years, 25 years as its president.

The grant was among nearly $11 million awarded by the Foundation at its fall meeting on November 14.

“We often talk about the importance of the ‘Legal Aid story’ our past clients, staff, interns and board members have,” said Colleen Cotter, Legal Aid’s executive director.  “The best Legal Aid narratives are those like Mr. Gund’s: where one sees a wrong or injustice, they act on it – not just for the moment they are at Legal Aid, but for a lifetime.  This generous gift in honor of Mr. Gund is special because it will extend the reach of justice to so many families and children in our community for years to come.  With this gift, Legal Aid can build more partnerships, remove barriers to opportunity and continue to be a catalyst for community change.”

Other grants of interest were:

 

• $200,000 to the Cleveland operations of Teach for America, a national organization committed to finding, developing and supporting talented teachers to become excellent leaders in today’s classrooms.
• $50,000 to the Northern Ohio office of the Economic and Community Development Institute, a community development financial institution with four offices statewide, which has disbursed more than $10 million through 464 loans to assist marginalized people with loans ranging from $750 to $350,000. The grant will support Set Up Shop, a pilot entrepreneurship program.
• $80,000 over two years to Community Legal Aid Services Inc., to support its medical-legal partnership, Health, Education, Advocacy and Law (HEAL) project. HEAL defends Medicaid and Affordable Care Act access coverage for low-income Ohioans and Greater Clevelanders, through policy advocacy and legal representation.
• $25,000 to Americans for the Arts to support the Cleveland participants in the national Arts and Culture Leaders of Color Fellowship, a one-year professional development program that combines leadership development training with a strong mentorship program for early and mid-career arts administrators of color to increase equitable leadership at arts institutions.
• $150,000 over two years to the FRONT Exhibition Company for a partnership with the Cleveland Public Library to create community outreach and educational programming. The Library will manage community-focused programs leading up to and during the 2021 edition of FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. The programming will occur across Cleveland Public Library branches throughout Cleveland.
• $300,000 to the Alliance for Climate Protection to support bringing the Climate Reality Project to Ohio in early 2020. The intensive training will involve up to 1,500 local climate activists over three days to organize citizens and organizations to demand action on climate change from multiple levels of government.
• $200,000 to the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC), an Ohio network of community, labor, faith and policy groups that fight for racial, social and economic justice, especially that affect communities of color. OOC has focused on bail reform policy, developing measures of prosecutor accountability, reclassification of nonviolent felony drug offenses and community organizer training.

The George Gund Foundation was established in 1952 by George Gund, former chairman of the Cleveland Trust Company. The Foundation funds programs that enhance our understanding of the physical and social environment in which we live and increase our ability to cope with its changing requirements. Grants are made three times a year in the areas of education, human services, economic and community development, environment and arts. Foundation commitments to date have totaled over $761 million.

Further details on the fall 2019 grant awardees can be found at www.gundfoundation.org.

Alesha Washington, who has been vice president of government advocacy at the Greater Cleveland Partnership for the past three years, will join The George Gund Foundation in January as the senior program officer for economic development and community revitalization. In this role, Washington will guide the Foundation’s work to build vibrant neighborhoods in Cleveland and a strong economy in Northeast Ohio. She also will serve as the Foundation’s lead on its multi-disciplinary grantmaking to address threats to democracy which have become increasingly evident in recent years.

Washington is rejoining the Foundation where she served from 2007 to 2009 as a Gund Foundation Fellow. In that position she worked as a member of the grantmaking staff, rotating among the various program areas. Since then she has led government and community relations efforts in roles of increasing responsibility at the Centers for Families and Children, Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and the Greater Cleveland Partnership. During her time at GCP, Washington has played a lead role in advancing the chamber of commerce’s civic portfolio of public policy issues, including federal and state advocacy efforts on Opportunity Zones, a financial analysis to guide the future of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, and the Cleveland Innovation Project.

Washington is a graduate of Oberlin College and has a master’s degree in nonprofit management from Case Western Reserve University.

“After an extensive search we are pleased to have Alesha join our team,” said Gund Foundation Executive Director David Abbott. “She brings a wealth of policy expertise and strong knowledge of Cleveland’s public and private sectors that will benefit the Foundation’s continued focus on the growth of our neighborhoods and strengthening our economy.”

Washington will assume the grantmaking responsibilities that previously have been performed by Robert Jaquay, the Foundation’s associate director. Jaquay will remain in that position with administrative and financial duties, including the Foundation’s growing role as an activist shareholder using its stock ownership to advance positions that are consistent with the Foundation’s grantmaking. An example of this work is the active role the Foundation has taken to urge action on climate change.

The George Gund Foundation is pleased to announce historic gifts of $15 million to
Say Yes to Education Cleveland to support and send students who graduate from the
Cleveland Metropolitan School District to college and other post-secondary
credentialed programs. The Foundation awarded a $10 million grant, with
additional gifts of $5 million from Gund family members who wanted to ensure
the program would be in place for the CMSD graduating class of 2019. Geoffrey
and Sarah Gund made a personal commitment of $4 million to Say Yes Cleveland,
and Gordon and Llura Gund pledged $1 million. The total investment of $15
million is a testament to the deep commitment of The George Gund Foundation and
the Gund family to the children of Cleveland.

For the next 25 years, Say Yes Cleveland will award a tuition scholarship to
Cleveland residents who attend and graduate from a CMSD or partnering charter high
school and pursue a postsecondary credential at any public university, college,
or Pell-eligible certificate program in Ohio, as well as at 100+ private
colleges in the Say Yes National Higher Education Compact. In addition to the
last-dollar college tuition scholarship, Say Yes also calls for PreK–12
services, supports, and extended learning opportunities to ensure students are
prepared to be successful in their post-secondary studies.

The George Gund Foundation has been working with school district and community
partners to improve college readiness, access, and persistence rates for CMSD
students for many years, particularly as a complement to the George Gund and
Cleveland foundations’ investments in a portfolio of new high schools in
Cleveland. Say Yes Cleveland builds on the momentum of the Cleveland Plan and
the groundwork laid by College Now and the Higher Education Compact, as well as
investments by city and county governments and other partners. The goals of Say
Yes Cleveland are very much aligned with key priorities of the Foundation: to
boost and retain population in the City of Cleveland, increase education level
of residents, improve college access for middle- and low-income families, and
spur economic growth and expansion.

Say Yes Cleveland has raised over $90 million out of a total goal of $125 million,
which will sustain the Say Yes Cleveland scholarship program for the next 25
years. The George Gund Foundation is pleased to be one of many funders of this
important initiative.

For more information about scholarship criteria, program implementation, or donations, please visit sayyescleveland.org.