Oct. 31, 2024
Cleveland Neighborhood Progress launched the Advancement & Resilience Initiative in 2023 to serve the central goal of our 2022-2027 strategic plan: ensure community development corporations (CDCs) have access to the financial resources, talent, industry expertise, and technical assistance they need to effectively serve their neighborhoods, continuously improve, and sustain operations over time.
The initiative has included a new, collaborative funding process for Cleveland’s CDCs built on trust and transparency. In their proposals for grant support, each nonprofit CDC shared its strengths, challenges, and greatest areas of concern. With this data, we created our Advancement & Resilience Initiative Year 1 report.
Supporting core functions of CDCs
In Fiscal Year 2025 (July 2024 through June 2025), CNP is investing $2.013 million in 17 CDCs, including seven nonprofits that are new to CNP’s highest level of grantmaking. Our financial and technical assistance to these CDCs is aligned with our CDC Advancement Model, which we developed during two years in partnership with CDC executive directors.
For the first time, the Advancement Model identified and defined six core functions of a CDC:
- Community Engagement
- Development
- Planning
- Marketing
- Partnering
- Operations
Our increased pool of funding for Fiscal Year 2025 grants to CDCs included support from The Cleveland Foundation; the George Gund Foundation; the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Foundation; Enterprise Community Partners; Rocket Community Fund; and KeyBank Foundation.
New data to evolve our strategies
The Year 1 report for our Advancement & Resilience Initiative includes unprecedented data on CDCs’ successes, struggles, and capacities.
The network of CDCs reported a wide range of achievements in 2023, including:
- 5,212 households engaged by Healthy Homes or code enforcement programs
- $2.3 million invested into home repairs through programs and partnerships
- 1,252 small businesses engaged for technical assistance
- $2.6 million distributed to small businessesÂ
- $47.1 million invested into public realm improvements, green spaces or tree canopies
- 136,000 non-residents engaged through marketing
- 466 community events produced or supported
- 103,000 print communications circulated
Key insights from the Year 1 baseline data are already informing our strategies for Year 2.
- Community engagement capacities and strategies vary widely across the network. CNP will provide additional professional development and platforms for CDCs’ engagement activities.
- The CDC network has weakness around primary and intermediate home repair. CNP will focus Year 2 investments and training on home repair staff.
- Commercial real estate and neighborhood planning are present at few CDCs. CNP will increase CDCs’ access to commercial projects and planning support.
- Main street development is a real estate issue more than a business attraction issue. CNP is attracting and administering funds for main street investments with CDCs through our Middle Neighborhoods Initiative and the City of Cleveland’s Southeast Side Promise.
- Some CDCs are not trained in market analysis for neither housing nor commercial. CNP will provide analysis tools and training to supplement CDCs’ understanding of their local economies and housing conditions.
Explore more details of our initiative and the CDC network’s achievements and capacity in the Year 1 report below.