Ronald B. Richard
President & CEO
The Cleveland Foundation
Living Cities Board of Directors

My personal philosophy on philanthropy has been dramatically shaped by my peers at Living Cities. Soon after I joined the Living Cities Board of Directors in 2004, Doug Nelson, who was then President of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and a member of the Living Cities Board of Directors, shared with me his thesis that a foundation’s most important role in community development is to lower the risk for the public and private sectors to become involved. At the Cleveland Foundation, we have embraced that philosophy wholeheartedly, and it is at the core of our efforts.

To be involved in Living Cities is to be informed and inspired. Leaders of the country’s most prominent and well-endowed philanthropic institutions, along with key financial institutions, share their successes and failures in a candid environment, dedicated to learning from each other and best serving our communities. It was in this spirit that the Cleveland Foundation was invited to be the first community foundation—indeed, the first purely local foundation—to be an affiliate member of Living Cities. We are honored by the chance to share our perspective and extensive hands-on experience at the local level. As a participant in the $85 million Integration Initiative, Cleveland currently receives one of Living Cities’ largest investments.

Living Cities has had a profound influence on our thinking about developing and implementing a place-based neighborhood revitalization strategy. In one of our most promising initiatives, we are leveraging the annual expenditures of Cleveland’s largest anchor institutions, along with our own grants and program-related investments, to launch new businesses that supply the needs of these institutions while creating employment and ownership opportunities for low-income residents. Our initiative also involves relocating or funding expansion of businesses in a new Health Tech Corridor that offers growing companies access to trained employees in close proximity to anchor institutions.

Our Living Cities experience has helped us complete our transformation from a grantor-grantee structure into a fully integrated partnership model with our anchor institutions. This partnership has enabled us to capitalize on the leadership qualities of CEOs and senior staffs, so we are able to benefit from their intellectual capital as well as their financial capital.