The Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation (GCAF, or the Associated Foundation) was a community foundation established in 1961 in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States to assist other private and community foundations in and around Cleveland in establishing priorities and working to find solutions to pressing social needs. After its second round of funding, GCAF leaders merged the foundation with The Cleveland Foundation, an organization which GCAF had greatly influenced.
Creating GCAF
Idea for a new foundation The Cleveland Foundation was far and away Cleveland's largest community foundation in the 1960s. But many individuals felt that the organization had become staid and fusty. Among these were Kent Smith a chemical engineer and retired president of the Cleveland Graphite Oil Products Company (later renamed Lubrizol Corporation), and Harold Clark, a local Cleveland attorney who was executor of the estate of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. (a partner and director of Hanna Mining). Clark had also spent most of the 1940s and 1950s on The Cleveland Foundation's Distribution Committee, which approved grants to local organizations. By 1960, Smith had become a member of the Distribution Committee.
Both men believed that The Cleveland Foundation's grantmaking was too routinized and not responsive to the changing needs of people in the area. They also believed the foundation had lost sight of its original goal: Producing cutting-edge research designed to spark progressive social change.
Political scientist Paul N. Ylvisaker was head of the Public Affairs Program at the Ford Foundation. The program was committed to studying the problems of urban areas and financing pilot project to help solve them. In late 1960, Ylvisaker was in the process of finalizing a $1.25 million grant to the Kansas City Association of Trusts and Foundations (later renamed the Kansas City Community Foundation) to help that body revitalize its research and grant-making agenda. About the same time, Ylvisaker began talking to Harold Clark about how the Public Affairs Program might make a similarly sized grant to a Cleveland-area organization. Homer Wadsworth, head of the Kansas City foundation, urged Ylvisaker to make the grant, so that it would not appear as if the Ford Foundation were favoring Kansas City.
To lead the new foundation, Ylvisaker recommended Dr. James Adolphus "Dolph" Norton, his college roommate at Harvard University and by 1961 a political scientist at Case Institute of Technology. In February 1961, Ylvisaker contacted T. Keith Glennan, president of Case, to ask him to temporarily release Norton from his teaching duties so he could lead the new foundation. Glennan agreed. Glennan and Ylvisaker also decided to have Kent Smith work with Norton on developing the proposal further.
Norton's proposals On July 17, 1961, Norton met with The Cleveland Foundation's Distribution Committee to discuss his proposal for a new foundation. Clark convinced Thomas Patton, president of Republic Steel and chairman of the Cleveland Development Foundation, and Elmer Lindseth, president of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. and a director of the Cleveland Development Foundation, to accompany Norton to underscore the importance the business community gave to his plans. The Distribution Committee agreed to give Norton $5,000 from The Cleveland Foundation's Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Special Purpose Fund to allow him to write the proposal. By August 1, Norton had a draft proposal finished which proposed establishing a new program under The Cleveland Foundation. He had also won preliminary agreement from Clark that a major grant would be made to the new foundation by the Hanna estate. Norton and Lindseth both urged Kent Smith to become chairman of the board of the new organization.
On August 25, 1961, Norton presented a revised proposal to the Distribution Committee. His plan now conceived of a foundation separate and distinct from The Cleveland Foundation. Concluding that The Cleveland Foundation did not have the vision or funding mechanisms for carrying out the more activist program envisioned for the new foundation, Norton proposed establishing a separate entity. In order to avoid the appearance that the Hanna estate had control over the new foundation, Norton argued that the Hanna donation should be a matching grant. This required seeking the majority of the new foundation's funding from an outside source, like the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation's name would also provide the new organization with a great deal of cachet, which would be needed to win the support of the business community.
On November 8, 1961, the Distribution Committee, the Hanna estate, the Elizabeth Severance Prentiss Foundation, the Louis D. Beaumont Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, and the Elizabeth Ring Mather and William Gwynn Mather Fund jointly submitted the proposal for the new community fund to the Ford Foundation. Letters of recommendation also came from Anthony J. Celebrezze, Mayor of Cleveland; Michael DiSalle, Governor of Ohio; the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce; and Dr. Glennan, in his capacity as president of Case Institute of Technology. The new foundation was to be called the Greater Cleveland Association of Foundations.
On December 8, 1961, the Ford Foundation informally notified the Distribution Committee that it was giving the new foundation $1.25 million. Edgar A. Hahn, treasurer of the Louis D. Beaumont Foundation, subsequently urged a changed in the name of the new foundation to avoid the appearance that it wanted to become the sole source of charitable giving in Cuyahoga County. He suggested using the word "associated, and on December 12 the Distribution Committee notified the Ford Foundation that the new foundation would thenceforth be known as the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation.
Operational history On November 16, 1961, Harold Clark, Kent Smith, Elmer Lindseth, and Ellwood Fisher (president of Fisher Foods) organized themselves as the first Board of Trustees of the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation. Smith was elected chairman of the board, and Dolph Norton was appointed president. An 11-member Board of Directors was appointed by the Trustees, which included the four trustees, the president, three prominent local businessmen, and representatives from four of the sponsoring foundations. Seth Taft, a prominent local attorney and general counsel for The Cleveland Foundation, drew up the articles of incorporation. With the name change on December 12, the new foundation was established.
On December 15, 1961, the Ford Foundation formally notified GCAF that it had won its $1.25 million grant. The Ford Foundation grant went entirely to grantmaking, because operating expenses were paid for by a $1.25 million grant from the Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Special Purpose Fund.
Initial grantmaking GCAF made just $300,000 in grants to just seven organizations in its first year. About $200,000 went to the Welfare Federation of Cleveland, a coalition of groups which dominated anti-poverty efforts in Cleveland in the fields of income support, job training, education, and similar areas. Two grants—one for $7,000 to the Greater Cleveland Youth Services Planning Commission and one for $18,000 to a coalition of citizens' groups in education—augured the direction GCAF would take in the next nine years.
Grantmaking in GCAF's first year was not well-planned, as the board and President Norton struggled to find a common vision. In December 1961, Norton threatened to resign when the Board of Directors declined to give him a pay raise, a sign that the board had found extensive fault with his leadership of GCAF. A compromise was reached, in which the pay raise was granted and Norton given one year to prove his leadership of the organization.
Influential early grants In 1962, GCAF and The Cleveland Foundation provided a grant to help Cuyahoga County plan the creation of Cuyahoga Community College. GCAF also helped lobby local training schools and private colleges, which had opposed the community college on the grounds that it would be competitive with them. The college opened in 1963. Smith, originally an opponent of the effort, became its biggest booster. He aggressively and successfully solicited funds for the college from area businesses, successfully breaking a century-long Cleveland taboo on private donations to public endeavors.
In September 1963, GCAF created and funded a "program advisory committee", the Plan for Action by Citizens in Education (PACE)—one of many such committees the foundation sponsored to provide it with citizen and activist input on critical issues, including recommending and implementing solutions. PACE grew out of the $18,000 educational system study grant made in 1962, and GCAF funded the program advisory committee's work for three years with a $110,000 operating grant. GCAF also provided funding in the fall of 1963 to Community Action for Youth (CAY). GCAF's $7,000 grant to CAY permitted the organization, whose funding was running out, to search for new financing. In June 1963, CAY won a major $1 million grant to combat juvenile deliquency from the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime. GCAF made a $100,000 matching grant to CAY to allow CAY to win the federal monies. By the end of 1963, the GCAF board had fulsome praise for Norton's leadership.
During 1963, GCAF developed a grant decision-making process that later would become standard among community foundations. First, GCAF sought to build consensus around what the problem was and what the solutions should be. Second, grants focuses on coordinating efforts among existing groups, rather than a go-it-alone strategy. Third, the grants were often matching grants, or were used by the recipient organization to attract other resources. Fourth, the grants were used to attract existing high-quality talent to the recipient organization, or to develop such talent.
In 1966, GCAF, The Cleveland Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation jointly provided $400,000 to Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University to study whether the two colleges should merge. They did so in 1967, forming Case Western Reserve University. On November 3, 1966, GCAF and The Cleveland Foundation gave $180,000 to Operation Equality (a project to assist African American families in finding affordable housing outside slum areas) and $167,500 to the Fair Housing Council (an organization fighting housing discrimination). By 1973, the Fair Housing Council convinced 45 out of the county's 60 municipalities to pass fair housing resolutions, and Operation Equality had filed lawsuits and won fair housing consent agreements with landlords owning more than 10,000 units.
During the first five years of its Ford Foundation grant, GCAF disbursed more than $1.8 million in 52 separate grants, which included $160,000 to the Cuyahoga County Mayors and City Managers Association; $233,438 to Western Reserve University to establish a graduate program in public management science; $157,000 to the Welfare Federation of Cleveland; $45,000 to the Lake Erie Watershed Conservation Foundation; $100,000 Community Action for Youth; $50,000 to Cuyahoga Community College; $11,000 to the Governmental Research Institute; $24,000 to PACE; and $15,000 to Cleveland elementary school libraries.
Second grant-making round and merger In 1966, the Ford Foundation made a second $1.25 million grant to GCAF to support its grant-making abilities. The Hanna estate also made another $1.25 million for operational support. The Ford Foundation, however, indicated it was unlikely to make a second renewal of its grant and challenged GCAF to consider where its funding would come from in the future.