A Foundation of Growth – The Dramatic Work of Steven A. Minter and the Cleveland Foundation

A FOUNDATION FOR GROWTH

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W H ILE H E IS A CONSUM M ATE P R O F E S S IO N A L , A C A R E F U L C O N S U LT ER , A S U P ER B P O LITIC IA N IN TH E B ES T S E N S E O F T H E W ORD AND AN A C C O M P LIS H ED CO NSEN S U S B U IL D E R , T H E S E SKILLS ANO S TY LES HAVE B E EN A P P L IE D IN TH E S E R V IC E O F A H EAR T THAT IS PASSIONATE ABO UT JUSTIC E AND O P P O R T U N ITY , AND T H E Y HAVE B E EN M OTIVATED BY AN IN N ER S P IR IT THAT DREAM S AND PLA N S ON A LA R G E AND IM A G IN A T IV E S C A L E .

Peter C. Goldmark Jr. Former president o f The Rockefeller Foundation

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n the fall of 1964, Steven A. Minter attended a symposium on “Poverty and the Christian Response.” At age 26, he was not only an elder of the United Presbyterian Church in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood, but also on the rise in the Cuyahoga County welfare department. Having completed his master’s degree in social administration at Western Reserve University’s School of Applied Social Sciences in Cleveland, Minter was supervising five caseworkers in the welfare department’s district office in Hough, a declining East Side Cleveland neighborhood in which he had worked as a caseworker.

As he was still mastering the arts of diplomacy and consensus building that have made him an indispensable civic leader, Minter challenged the complacency of the older white suburbanites in his symposium discussion group. “ He talked about how people in the suburbs were disengaged from the needs of folks in the city and how people needed to invest in what was going on there, in programs and individuals. As a caseworker, he had seen so many needs,” remembered his wife, Dolly, who was also in the discussion group.

A week or so later, Steve Minter received a letter from a symposium participant named Henry Zetzer. The older gentleman advised the young African-American social worker not to be so skeptical of suburbanites, pointing out that many would like to be helpful to their inner-city brethren, but didn’t know how to reach out in a meaningful way. Enclosed with Zetzer’s letter was a check for $750 and instructions to use it responsibly. Minter’s first “grant” helped a troubled youth buy a respectable coat. With poverty, overcrowding and crime endemic in Hough, Minter discovered it was painful to decide which individuals and families should receive the benefit of an extra $10 or $15. Being a philanthropist “ isn’t so simple,” he learned. “ Yes, you have these resources, but how do you use them wisely?”

In mid-career, Steven A. Minter would be given the opportunity of a lifetime to shape definitive responses to this weighty question. As executive director and president of The Cleveland Foundation (TCF) from January 1,1984 to June 30, 2003, Minter engaged his staff and board in a 19-year process of continuous improvement aimed at modernizing the operation of the country’s original community foundation. Tapping his colleagues’ collective expertise and unleashing their leadership abilities, he positioned TCF to maintain its standing as the country’s premier community foundation in the rapidly changing philanthropic landscape of the 21st century.

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The organization Minter inherited was nationally regarded for its grantmaking innovations and civic leadership - the legacy of previous Foundation directors Homer C. Wadsworth and Jam es A. Norton. Minter deepened the Foundation’s involvement with what he came to call the “ enduring issues” of public education, jobs, housing and healthcare, sectors whose deficiencies and inefficiencies significantly affected the well-being of the region’s poor and minority citizens, from whose numbers he had risen. And he advanced the effort, begun by his predecessors, to ensure that the Foundation was always a nimble, resourceful and potent agent working to effect progressive socioeconomic change in Greater Cleveland.

Smart management practices were a key to his success. Within a year of his appointment, Minter initiated a formal strategic planning process to sharpen grantmaking objectives.

Roughly every five years, the staff and board re-evaluated the key challenges and opportunities facing Greater Cleveland, reconsidered the appropriate roles the Foundation could play in addressing challenges, and recalculated the resources that would be needed to make a measurable difference or, as TCF hands put it, “ to move the needle.”

Minter assembled a team of well-qualified senior program officers to carry out the Foundation’s strategic agenda and set high expectations for their performance. In his day, program officers spent most of their time writing grant recommendations, known internally as “ blue sheets” because of the color of the paper used. The Minter administration created the position of program associate to handle routine grantmaking, freeing senior staff members to become more engaged with the challenges facing their grantees and more active in national philanthropic circles. For Minter, staff development was an imperative. His willingness to conduct departmental audits and to invest in training by the Center for Creative Leadership (based in Greensboro, North Carolina) enhanced the capacities of the Foundation’s staff.

Also notable was Minter’s decision to place Susan Lajoie Eagan in charge of strategic planning and programmatic activities. Eagan came to the Foundation in 1980 with a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Her ascent to associate director and then executive vice president was propelled by a fine analytical mind. Eagan (now the executive director of the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University) and Minter evolved into the classic inside/outside program team. “ Steve 2

was big picture, connect the dots,” explained Leslie A. Dunford, the Foundation’s chief of staff. “ Susan worked out the nitty-gritty details with the program staff.”

The collaboration worked because it was fluid and based on absolute trust. “There was constant dialogue, constant back and forth,” Eagan elaborated. “ If something came across my desk that I saw had big implications, I’d pop my head into his office. When Steve would come back from a meeting, he would tell me what went on. Then it was my job to work with the program staff on thinking through the next steps and then we would loop back to Steve.”

In between formal strategy reviews, this continuous refinement of objectives and tactics moved grantmaking programs forward, abetted by Minter’s willingness to do whatever the program staff required of him. Often it was he who lined up local and national funding partners for an important project, recruited an eminent chairperson or a leading consultant for a TCF study commission, conversed with volunteer leadership to obtain a different perspective than that provided by a grantee’s staff, or made calls to clear a political roadblock. Minter was also lucky in that each of the six chairpersons under whom he served was willing to help at this high level. In addition, each brought a fresh perspective on the community’s pressing needs and new ideas of how to address them.

The Foundation’s president was quick to credit its accomplishments to the excellence of the board and staff. But his innate talent for leadership and statesmanship - tirelessly expended on behalf of the advancement of The Cleveland Foundation and the betterment of Greater Cleveland - was also a major factor. To illustrate: Mindful that generation after generation of Cleveland youngsters lacked basic necessities and proper parenting, Minter leveraged all the powers of The Cleveland Foundation to move the community closer to the day when every child born in Cuyahoga County receives the care necessary to thrive. Acting on the concerns of board members Doris A. Evans, M .D., and Catharine Monroe Lewis about new research showing the years from birth to five to be the most critical developmentally, Minter persuaded the county commissioners to collaborate with the Foundation on a major redesign of child welfare services. Rather than merely treating the problems presented by neglected or abused children, Minter encouraged county government to find a systematic way to prevent them.

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Minter assigned two of his senior program officers, Goldie K. Alvis and Jay Talbot, to assist county officials in designing a delivery system that would place parenting information in the hands of the families of all babies born within the county’s boundaries and, if need be, point them toward existing support services, such as health and child care. Diagnostic and followup visits to newborns’ homes by qualified nurses underpinned the resulting $40 million plan.

The county, state and federal government teamed to contribute $30 million to the launch of the Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative, and the Foundation authorized a start-up grant of $3.5 million. Minter took it upon himself to raise from private sources the remainder of the $10 million needed to sustain the program for its first three years, "Steve has been a leader diligently lining up 23 corporate to the greatest degree and foundation partners. you can im agine,” Minter’s involvement influenced -James L. Mason. at least one partner’s decision to support the initiative, which was launched in 1999. The Eaton Corporation had never before made a grant to a public venture other than the city schools. But Minter’s impassioned presentation persuaded Eaton’s vice president of public and community affairs to bend the guidelines. What you’re doing in the schools is terrific, Jam es L. Mason remembered Minter saying. “ But if we don’t help their mothers, by the time these kids get to school, they’ll be lost.” “ Steve has been a leader to the greatest degree you can imagine,” M ason added. “ Fie has advocated for a number of very important efforts and done so with class and distinction. Sure, he carries a big checkbook, but he also gives of his time and his talent. He doesn’t just sit over there at 14th and Euclid and make you come to him. He gets out and mixes it up and holds his own with all elements of the community.”

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While Minter excelled at external affairs, he also shone at administration. His professional experiences at the head of county, state and federal bureaucracies placed him in good stead at The Cleveland Foundation. When Minter became director, T C F’s grant records were still typed onto index cards; when he retired, grant seekers could go online to download grant applications, and donors could monitor fund activity on the Foundation’s Web site. In addition to overseeing the development of financial and record-keeping systems capable of handling the disbursement of more than $600 million during his tenure, he assembled a sixmember management team to whom he delegated responsibility for day-to-day administration and annual action plans for their departments. He built the capacity of his executive office by adding a chief of staff responsible for managing special projects and serving as corporate secretary and board liaison. (This position was new to the foundation field, but commonplace in the business world, whose “ best practices” Minter had observed as a director of such corporations as The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Dominion Resources, Inc.) Perhaps most importantly, Minter helped the Foundation conceive a new “ business” model with a finely calibrated balance of objectives.

Adopted in 1996, T C F’s expanded mission statement set forth a three-part raison d’etre: “To enhance the quality of life for all citizens of Greater Cleveland, now and for generations to come, by building community endowment, addressing needs through grantmaking, and providing leadership on key community issues.” Historically, the Foundation had little experience with building endowment and few dealings with its benefactors, as most were deceased when TCF became aware of their gifts. It signaled a dramatic change in corporate culture when, under Minter, the Foundation began to actively encourage partnerships with living donors, a modulation of mission that he recognized was essential to building the community endowment on which the rebuilders of Greater Cleveland have come to depend so heavily.

Addressing competition from commercial financial services firms selling the convenience of “ checkbook philanthropy” - i.e., tax-deductible charitable investment funds with checkwriting privileges - Minter made the Foundation’s program knowledge and administrative expertise increasingly available to individual donors, thus retaining philanthropic dollars that 5

might have gone elsewhere. He did so without undercutting the Foundation’s allegiance to community service, a historic mission that some community foundations pushed aside in their scramble to serve the recipients of the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in the nation’s history. Over the two decades of Minter’s directorship, one billion dollars was added to The Cleveland Foundation’s endowment from three sources: bequests, stock market appreciation and T C F’s affiliation with supporting organizations, donor advised funds and organizational endowments.

As a result of Minter’s determined focus on asset development and investment performance, grantmaking income increased by 450 percent during his tenure. In 2002, the Foundation distributed more than $75 million to community causes (compared with $17 million granted in 1983, the year Minter became director. In 1999, before the onset of the persistent bear market, the Foundation gave away a record-breaking $84 million). Because of this and his pacesetting leadership of the movement to establish national standards and accountability measures for community foundations, many in the field of philanthropy considered Minter to be the most successful of the country’s 700 chief executive officers of community foundations. On the eve of his retirement, the Council on Foundations honored Minter with the Distinguished Grantmaker Award for his lifetime achievement in philanthropy. “ Steve was the go-to guy for the community foundation movement,” affirmed Charles A. Ratner, president and chief operating officer of Forest City Enterprises in Cleveland and the Foundation’s chairperson from 1996 to 2000. At national philanthropic conferences, Ratner observed firsthand that Minter “was the man to whom his colleagues - many of them quite brilliant themselves - deferred on directions the industry should take.”

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THE C O M M U NITY’ S FOUNDATION

The fact that The Cleveland Foundation had given birth to the community foundation movement only enhanced Minter’s national stature. Established in 1914, TCF was the first embodiment of a powerful idea conceived in Cleveland. Looking to solve the problem of unbreakable bequeaths to charitable causes that had subsequently become outmoded, Cleveland banker Frederick H. Goff invented the concept of a permanently enduring philan­ thropic trust created for the benefit of a community by gifts from that community’s citizens.

The allocation of interest income by a living “committee to distribute” gave Goff’s community trust the ability to be responsive to ever-changing needs. Thus he vanquished the rule of the “ dead hand.”

Apart from commissioning landmark surveys of Cleveland’s socioeconomic problems in the teens, G off’s foundation functioned for much of its prewar and immediate postwar history as an impassive distributor of largesse to projects and organizations championed by the city’s elite. As it neared its 90th anniversary, however, TCF was no longer operating on one cylinder. From the reach and substance of its grantmaking to the diversity of its staff, board, donors and partners, The Cleveland Foundation of 2003 was more fully than ever before the community’s foundation. “ Steve took the flexibility that community foundations have,” said TCF senior program officer Michael J. Hoffmann, “ and pushed it to its limits.”

The Foundation’s resources could be felt in the revitalization of the Playhouse Square theaters and “ super block” in Cleveland’s downtown and in the creation of North Coast Harbor, a waterfront development that had sparked interest in the possibility of transforming Cleveland’s heavily industrial lakefront into a recreational asset. Its vision could be seen in the near-miraculous renewal of the Hough neighborhood and signature developments such as the Lee-Harvard Shopping Center on the city’s far eastern boundary and the restoration of Market Square in Ohio City. Additionally, the strengthened administration of the city’s public schools was the product of the Foundation’s steady, behind-the-scenes leadership. And the heightened civic awareness of the significant economic contributions of the region’s arts and cultural organizations had roots in the Foundation’s advocacy.

Clevelanders have long been proud of their city’s cultural assets, especially its world-class orchestra and art museum. However, this sector of the regional economy, which as of 2000 accounted for 3,700 jobs and $1.3 billion in annual economic impact, might have been unwittingly allowed to erode were it not for the enterprise of The Cleveland Foundation.

Aware of the impact of reductions in federal support and increased competition presented by other forms of entertainment, the Foundation moved to stabilize arts funding by creating the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, an umbrella organization that mobilized a concerted effort to have an arts levy placed on the county ballot. Securing local government support for nonprofit arts organizations had been a key recommendation of a Foundationinitiated study of the health of Greater Cleveland’s cultural community conducted in the mid-1990s.

The Cleveland Foundation had traditionally found it gratifying to invest in artistic programs. However, after being approached repeatedly by arts groups requesting emergency funding, the Foundation’s staff and board began to realize that “ we weren’t dealing with the basic issues,” as Steve Minter put it. While the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Art Museum were financially stable, most of the city’s mid-size and small arts organizations were struggling to survive. Kathleen Cerveny, an artist and arts reporter whom Minter had recruited in 1991 to be the program officer for arts and culture, helped the Foundation navigate a 180-degree change in strategy that led to the arts study and to the BASICs (Building the Arts’ 10

Strength In Cleveland) initiative, a five-year, $11 million program to provide mid-size local performing arts groups with operating support and technical assistance to strengthen their business administration, marketing practices and fund-raising prowess.

If taking action required more than analysis and perspective, if it demanded courage or moral fiber, under Minter, The Cleveland Foundation was often able to provide it. In the earliest days of his tenure, Minter brushed aside concern with public appearances and supported action to address AIDS, a disease many at the time dismissed as affecting only drug addicts and gays. Discovering that the city health department was too shorthanded to respond to the early signs of this epidemic, TCF organized a public awareness campaign (the first between New York and L.A.) to give the Cleveland public the facts about AIDS. The Foundation subsequently partnered with the Ford Foundation of New York and Cleveland’s George Gund Foundation to give community health providers the resources needed to plan a coordinated response.

In the late 1980s, a different sort of malaise threat­ ened Cleveland. If trends played out unabated, it appeared that poverty might overtake three-quarters of the city’s residents by the year 2000. Confronted with this evidence, Minter chose not to avert his eyes and hope for the best. Instead, he sized up the magnitude of the problem and, under the Foundation’s auspices and with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, convened a 30-member Commission on Persistent Poverty to plan a frontal assault. As a result, the Cleveland Community Building Initiative (CCBI) was launched in 1993 to coordinate existing social services in four demonstration “ villages” in order to address more comprehensively the interrelated causes of privation.

Though CCBI’s goal was too ambitious to be easily executed, Minter stood by his conviction that foundations should take the long-term view. Convinced that an interdisciplinary approach was “ the horse to ride” (as Senior Program Officer for Social Services Goldie Alvis termed it), TCF was patiently supporting a second generation of CCBI leadership as of 2003.

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“ I TH INK W E ’ R E AT TH E B EG IN N IN G OF AN O TH ER ER A FO R C L E V E L A N D ," SAID M IN T E R . “ A N D I TH INK IT’ S T E R R IF IC TO HAVE NEW LE A D E R S H IP .”

Even though Cleveland’s poverty rates remained high, the undertaking could be deemed a partial success for it had inspired a needed shift in the Foundation’s social services strategy. TCF had traditionally treated the symptoms of deprivation, but it learned to instead try to systemat­ ically root out the causes, favoring interventions that promoted strong families, economic self-sufficiency, hope and empowerment. The Cleveland Foundation’s Commission on Persistent Poverty had another positive side effect. To lend substance to the commission’s deliberations, TCF created and helped to sustain the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), a research and evaluation arm of the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences that developed the ability to measure socioeconomic indicators in discrete Cleveland neighborhoods. By giving Cleveland’s policy makers a means of replacing stereotypes and suppositions about the poor with disaggregated hard data, the Foundation made possible more highly informed and targeted social action.

The Foundation displayed its backbone again in the early 1990s, when it sought to bridge the nearly century-old rift between University Hospitals of Cleveland (UH) and the Cleveland Clinic. Today, it appears to be a given that these fierce clinical competitors could help to restructure Cleveland’s economic base by joining forces on biomedical research. Then, however, the Foundation opened itself to criticism when it asked, in Steve Minter’s words: “ Gee, isn’t there some way to get these two institutions to collaborate (on research efforts)?”

Foundation Chairperson and UH Trustee John J. Dwyer and then Senior Program Officer for Health Robert E. Eckardt urged Minter to use the Foundation’s convening powers to raise the issue publicly.

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we were just as quickly encouraged to stay out of it,” Minter remembered. “ It was seen as a no-win proposition. The relationship was so fractured, some people didn’t feel we could make a difference.”

That said, the Foundation decided to try. In 1991, TCF convened the Study Commission on Medical Research and Education, a panel of nationally prominent medical administrators and corporate executives whom it asked to recommend possible avenues of collaboration among UH, the Cleveland Clinic, CW RU’s School of Medicine and Metropolitan General Hospital, Cleveland’s public hospital. To emphasize its serious intent, the Foundation suspended grantmaking in the areas of medical research and education until the study commission released its findings.

Published in the summer of 1992, the commission’s final report did not produce changes in institutional relationships overnight. “ There was a sense that its recommendations were maybe pollyannaish in assuming that people of good will could make this happen in spite of long-standing tensions,” explained Bob Eckardt, today the Foundation’s vice president for programs and evaluation. Yet the study, which Eckardt and Minter continued to bring to the attention of new leaders at the concerned institutions over the next decade, planted a seed.

In 1995, CWRU’s School of Medicine, which had long been associated with UH, entered into a joint venture with the Cleveland Clinic to create a center of excellence in structural biology.1 Another important breakthrough occurred in 2002, when UH signed an affiliation agreement with CWRU’s School of Medicine after years of failed negotiations to renew their 100-year ties. The new 50-year agreement called for the creation of an independent board to govern the institutions’ academic medical center - a provision that seemed to pave the way for the center to pursue whatever collaborations and initiatives it deemed beneficial to medical education, research and patient care in Greater Cleveland. Independence for the center had been a key study commission recommendation 10 years earlier. “ Any major initiative that brought people together for the good of the community - The Cleveland Foundation has been at the front and center,” said Cleveland’s 53rd mayor, Jane Campbell. “ But Steve has never needed to be the headliner.”

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SURE, LOW -PROFILE LEADERSHIP

M ayor Campbell knew well the person of whom she spoke. She first encountered Steve Minter professionally as founding executive director of WomenSpace, an organization addressing issues affecting females that received a start-up grant in 1975 from The Cleveland Foundation. While serving as a county commissioner and the county’s point person for the Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative in the late 1990s, Campbell was afforded a close-up view of her longtime colleague. Minter impressed her as both visionary and patient. “ This is a rare combination,” she observed. “ M ost people who are visionary are impatient, so sometimes it’s hard for them to forge a consensus. But if you can’t get it done, it’s all for naught. Steve has the capacity to bring in the technical folks to get the vision clear, and then he has the patience and ability and credibility to get the political/giving/business community not only to buy into the vision, but to believe it was their idea.”

As Campbell pointed out, it wasn’t merely its financial resources that made The Cleveland Foundation a major player. It was also the character, capacities and connections of its president. Minter’s long history of community involvement and his political skills - an ability to see a path through the thorniest of issues and to forge agreement even among the deeply divided - were valued in their own right. “ Beyond the respect that his position affords him, Steve has personal leadership qualities that have allowed him to move in wide and deep 15

circles,” observed Jerry Sue Thornton, president of Cuyahoga Community College and a current TCF board member. “ That’s unusual in Cleveland - to have a not-for-profit leader who is perceived in the same light as a corporate leader. But Steve’s past experiences at the state and federal level, his thought-provoking analyses and his statesmanlike way of speaking have afforded him a seat at the table whenever there is important dialogue about this community.”

Because Minter was both astute and discreet, powerful people sought his advice. Ohio Governor George Voinovich periodically invited T C F’s president to Columbus to discuss public education. Former Cleveland M ayor Michael R. White consulted with Minter about his final three choices for chief executive officer of the city’s public schools. Barbara ByrdBennett, the former New York City schools administrator whom White appointed CEO in 1998, came to consider Minter “ another set of eyes, another set of ears, a critical friend, a mentor and a coach.” One afternoon in early January 2003, Minter received in the space of an hour telephone calls from Byrd-Bennett, the director of Cleveland Tomorrow (an association of chief executive officers of the city’s ranking businesses) and the mayor of Cleveland all seeking his advice about resolving a complicated political issue of mutual concern.

Community leaders aside, anyone could reach Steve: His home phone number was listed.

One evening, the phone rang, but there was only silence when Minter answered. A little while later, the phone rang again. Silence. On the third ring, the operator said, “ Mr. Minter, I have an elderly gentleman who is hard of hearing on the line.” “ Mr. Minter,” the old man said. “ Yes,” Minter answered. “ Mr. Minter?” “ Yes, yes.” “ You son of a bitch.”

Minter was not easily perturbed. During his tenure as county welfare director, a crowd of angry women showed up one morning at welfare headquarters. They were carrying metal bed frames - standard department issue. The frames had sharp corners that cut tender flesh, and the women intended to have them banished. When the receptionist informed Minter of the chaotic scene in the lobby, he said, “ Invite them up.”

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His imperturbability worked to his advantage on sensitive civic assignments. The most potentially explosive of these was the M ayoral Commission on School Governance, which Minter co-chaired in 1996 with David Bergholz, then executive director of the George Gund Foundation, at the request of then M ayor Michael R. White.

The assignment came as a result of a proposal floated by two Ohio General Assembly members recommending that control of the state’s failing public school systems be vested in the top elected official of the system’s home city. If adopted (as similar legislation had been in Chicago), Clevelanders would no longer elect school board members. The prospect of losing hard-won voting rights did not sit well with many of Cleveland’s African-American leaders, and the leaders of the Cleveland Teachers Union were bitterly opposed to ceding control of the schools to a politician with whom they had publicly wrangled over contract negotiations. Yet “ mayoral control” seemed to be making a difference in the performance of the Chicago schools. A nonpartisan study of the concept, White recognized, might help to ensure it a fair hearing in the General Assembly. To chair the study, he looked to civic leaders who could be counted on to do a thorough examination and who would be perceived as having no axes to grind: Steve Minter and Dave Bergholz. “ To say that they were magnificent is an understatement. Given the kind of political partisanship that is unfortunately the hallmark of the city, you can’t have enough honest brokers,” White said of Minter and Bergholz, who came to the task having already established a solid working relationship. The two foundation heads met regularly to discuss ongoing events and possible collaborations between their organizations. Partners and friends, they knew how to play to one another’s strengths and even on occasion used their contrasting personas - Minter, smart and charming; Bergholz, smart and often blunt - to great effect, as the latter readily acknowledged. “ Steve brings a very deliberative sense of how you get from one point to another in an argument,” Bergholz said. “ He has a great sense of how to staff an effort, what kind of communications pieces you need to roll out. He doesn’t panic; he’s a steady guy to work with. I got comfortable relatively quickly that the deliberations were due deliberations.”

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In addition to his feel for logistics and tactics, Minter brought to the commission an intimate understanding of challenges facing the Cleveland public schools. During the Wadsworth years, TCF made few grants directly to the city schools because of the impover­ ishment of their leadership. This course was reversed under Minter, who did not wish to see another generation of students denied a good education - “ the single greatest thing,” he believed, “ that determines whether you are going to have a chance to be in the middle class.”

In 1987, TCF stepped forward to make the lead commitment to a $16 million Cleveland Initiative for Education (CIE), a philanthropic-corporate partnership that sought to establish universal post-secondary scholarship and employment programs requested by the system’s superintendent as incentives for his students. Minter deemed the initiative so critical to the well-being of the city and its children that he joined the CIE board and helped to guide its evolution into a broad-based coalition working to effect education reform on multiple fronts.2

“ YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS GOING TO BE A LOT OF RHETORIC AND HEAT,” HE SAID OF THE PUBLIC Like all champions of public education, Minter had watched with increasing concern the comings and goings of 14 Cleveland schools superintendents and the devolution of the system’s elected board into a parade of grandstanders or innocents. As such, the board proved incapable of heading off state control, which the federal courts imposed on the system in 1995, and a state of “ fiscal emergency” declared by the state auditor in 1996.

Finding these developments intolerable, Minter had given considerable thought to the issue of school governance and believed that mayoral control might be a workable alternative. “ But neither Dave nor I had any preconceived notions about exactly what form and under what circumstances and how it should be done,” he asserted.

To inform its deliberations, the Mayoral Commission on School Governance conducted research, sought perspective from national experts and held public hearings that brought out contentious opposition to the concept of an appointed school board. Minter knew the hearings would change no minds, but believed them necessary to the integrity of the study process. He did not want it said that the commission had ignored vital issues. “ You understand that there 18

is going to be a lot of rhetoric and heat,” he said of the public forums, “ and you take your beating, and you don’t lose your control and you stick to your guns.” CWRU history professor David C. Hammack, who attended a commission hearing, expressed admiration for the steadiness of its co-chair. “ The entire justification for The Cleveland Foundation for the past 25 years has been Steve Minter,” said Hammack, alluding to the philosophical debate about whether philanthropy, with its limited resources, can be effective in reshaping the larger society. “ They gave him an important position, which he handled brilliantly. He has been able to take a community-wide perspective without losing sight of the needs of the African-American community. It’s a real asset to this region to have someone like Steve to exemplify solid, reliable, smart leadership by someone who happens to be AfricanAmerican.”

Astutely, Minter took special pains to solicit the feedback of then U.S. Congressman Louis Stokes, who had represented Cleveland’s 11th District since 1970 and whose opinions counted with both the public and the powers-that-be. “ I had the same reservations that many people had,” Congressman Stokes recalled. “When you deny people the right to vote, you are treading on almost sacred ground. Steve called me to ascertain any concerns I had, and he arranged to meet with me periodically to update me. We went over the final report together. I had never seen a chairman of a public body, busy as they are, painstakingly take the time to keep in touch.” The Congressman helped to shape a positive outcome by vetoing the idea of having suburban representatives on the appointed board and making his opposition to mayoral control known without mounting the barricades to do so.

The commission issued its final report in December 1996, arguing that “ those involved in governance must have the ability to make a variety of financial, policy and other strategic decisions that will effectively chart the correct course of the Cleveland Public Schools. ... We believe these types of skills can best be brought to bear through an appointed board structure.” The commission co-chairs succeeded in moving “ the debate beyond the political to considerations of management and education,” according to Mike White. The forftidt mayor added, “ I’ve never said it publicly, but I thought it was a dramatic act of leadership 20

on the part of both Steve and Dave to work together so closely over the years. We talk a lot about partnership, but they really achieved it. It speaks to their selfless mentality. “ Cleveland would be dramatically different without The Cleveland Foundation and, for that matter, the Gund Foundation,” White continued. “N ot just in giving money - any rich person can do that. They work to husband resources, not to direct them. They are a kind of sounding board. With a nudge, they can bring an organization back to its mission or expand the sense of what’s possible.”

In 1997, the Ohio General Assembly ushered in a new day for the Cleveland public schools by enacting legislation that enabled the city’s mayor to name a chief executive officer of the public schools and appoint a nine-member board of education. The legislation called for a referendum on mayoral control after four years. When the vote came on November 5, 2002, more than 70 percent of the city’s electorate said yes to the perpetuation of the untraditional governance model. Among the converts was the president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, Richard A. DeColibus, who applauded the stability of administrative leadership and the focus on academics that mayoral control had engendered. “Tell Steve he was right,” DeColibus said more than once to TCF program staff, who had initiated efforts to help Byrd-Bennett and the teachers union improve labor-management relationships. Other Foundation grants to the new administration supported leadership training and professional development, research and evaluation, and educational innovation. All in all, TCF invested $9.9 million to advance reform of the Cleveland public schools between 1999 and 2002.

Although the percentage of Cleveland students passing all portions of their assigned Ohio Proficiency Tests rose only a point or two during the same period, Cleveland parents and residents signaled their satisfaction with the schools’ direction by passing an operating levy, a bond levy and the governance referendum. As William Wendling, the district’s former chief information officer, averred on the eve of the later vote, “We’ve built the conditions for success.”

L STEVE HE WAS RIGHT.” 21

THINK G L O B A L L Y, ACT L O C A L L Y

The degree to which Minter opened the Foundation to the rough-and-tumble of civic engagement physically manifested itself in T C F’s new, airy, glass-fronted offices in the Hanna Building on Playhouse Square, headquarters of The Cleveland Foundation since 1984. Office renovations in 2001 did away with a forbidding, windowless reception area and added a hightech conference center that not-for-profits could use without charge. The new facility sent a subliminal message: The Cleveland Foundation recognized that affordable, state-of-the-art conferencing facilities are difficult to find and expensive to rent. Area not-for-profits needed to look no further than the corner of 14th and Euclid for such a facility, free of charge. Due to Minter’s recognition of the need for such space, the facility was named the Steven A. Minter Conference Center in tribute to his contributions to the Greater Cleveland community.

This position of TCF viewing all nonprofit organizations as valuable community assets was underscored in the last year of Minter’s tenure, when the Foundation launched Neighborhood Connections, an experimental small-grants program meant to give city residents a measure of control over their environments. The program planned to make $1.35 million in grants over three years to grass-roots groups judged to have the most compelling ideas for improving their particular sections of the city. Neighborhood Connections was conceived in part to build on the successes of Cleveland’s neighborhood 22

% W e ’s ; arf

“ THAT IS T H E MOST R EM AR K A B LE THING ABO UT S T E V E ,” SAID CATHY LEW IS , C H A IR P ER S O N O F TH E FO U N D A T IO N ’ S BOARD O F D IR EC TO R S FRO M 2000 TO 2003. " H E R E H E IS AT TH E END O F HIS C A R E E R , W HEN IT W OULD HAVE B EEN MUCH E A S IER TO COAST. BUT H E U N DERSTANDS THAT LEA D E R S AR E C H A N G E A G E N T S .”

redevelopment movement, which had gained critical mass as the result of one of the most successful Foundation initiatives of the Minter years.

Thanks to sustained private and public investment in the capacity of local community development corporations catalyzed by TCF, the city witnessed measurable gains in housing rehabilitation, construction and market value during the 1990s.

Neighborhood Connections aimed to expand the scope of revitaliza­ tion activities by tapping into the aspirations and creativity of block clubs, ad hoc bands of neighbors and concerned individuals. The program might also redefine the practice of philanthropy at The Cleveland Foundation and elsewhere. Foundations do not typically delegate grantmaking powers to non-board members. However, the Minter adminis­ tration, always on the lookout for ways to lessen the intimidation felt by grant seekers, decided to empower 18 city residents (selected by TCF from a citywide pool of nominations) to determine which improvement projects should receive grants of $500 to $5,000. By showing respect for the vision and capabilities of average citizens, Neighborhood Connections might well change the way things are done in Cleveland.

It was characteristic of Steve Minter to embrace new ideas, experimen­ tation and inquiry. He maintained an open mind right up to the moment of his retirement. “ That is the most remarkable thing about Steve,” said Cathy Lewis, chairperson of the Foundation’s board of directors from 2000 to 2003. “Here he is at the end of his career, when it would have been much easier to coast. But he understands that leaders are change agents.” It was Lewis who suggested to Minter only two years before his departure that the Foundation’s governance structure should be re-examined.

Having talked privately with each board member upon becoming chairperson, she had learned that many of her colleagues wished to put to more productive use the time they spent reading grant proposals, which 24

program officers had already assessed. In 2001, Minter green-lighted the formation of a board subcommittee to rethink the responsibilities of the board.

The governance review streamlined grantmaking procedures once regarded as sacrosanct.

Four program subcommittees - all board members served on at least two - were folded into a single “ grantmaking and community engagement” committee whose energies were focused as much on strategy formulation as on individual grants. In addition, the grantmaking and community engagement committee members could now approve some proposals on a monthly basis by ballot.

(The shorter timeframe was also a boon to anxious grantees.) Board members freed from duty on program subcommittees could now assume many of the Foundation’s policy-making functions, serving on new or expanded committees that dealt with asset development, investment management, human resources, information technology and marketing and communications.

To complete the governance restructuring, Minter and the Foundation’s longtime counsel, Thompson Hine LLP attorney Malvin E. Bank, won agreement from the Foundation’s trustee banks and public appointing authorities that historically selected the board to boost membership from 11 to 15 individuals. (The board, known since its inception as the “ distribution committee,” had last been increased in the late 1960s, from five to 11 members.) The Foundation also gained appointing authority over five positions, a power it had previously lacked. In concept, these changes would enable T C F to render the board even more broadly representative of the Greater Cleveland community in terms of members’ backgrounds, beliefs and perspectives. M ost observers believed that the move toward greater inclusiveness would enhance the credibility of the Foundation’s actions.

With its organizational chart reconfigured to make maximum use of staff and board talent, the Foundation could give meticulous attention to internal affairs without weakening its ability to respond to requests from Greater Cleveland’s nonprofit, business, political and grass-roots leaders, or hampering its pursuit of a strategic agenda of its own making. Indeed, during Minter’s last full year of office in 2002, the Foundation responded to a growing sense of urgency about the region’s stagnation by declaring economic development a board-directed priority.

25

T C F had been attempting to help stimulate job and business creation since the early 1980s.

One of its earliest grants in this arena created the Regional Economic Issues Program , a think tank now based at CW RU with the capability of monitoring local economic indicators and conducting local economic research. Under Minter, the Foundation moved on to respond to “ visible w ounds in the econom y,” according to Ja y Talbot, senior program officer for civic affairs, whom Minter entrusted with the economic development portfolio. Perhaps the m ost significant product o f this round of grantm aking w as the Cleveland Advanced M anufacturing Program (CAM P), a learning and resource center that provided technical assistance aimed at helping the area’s dwindling number of m anufacturers regain their competitive edge. However innovative, the various small-scale interventions funded by the Foundation throughout the 1980s and 1990s did not prove sufficient to stem Cleveland’s downward economic spiral. “ The second and third rounds o f grantm aking got trickier because w e’d lost our innocence,” T albot observed. “ We were beginning to appreciate the limits of what a city or county can do to counter global economic forces.”

During this time, the Foundation had also supported small-scale initiatives to prom ote biotechnology transfer - i.e., the com mercialization of bioscience research - and these efforts looked as if they might have a larger impact. In the m id-1990s, with assistance from TCF, the Edison BioTechnology Center, a state-created biosciences incubator, helped give birth to a new biopharm aceutical com pany that had the potential to become a m ajor regional employer and m agnet for related businesses. However, it w as not certain that Cleveland would be able to hang on to the skyrocketing firm, which needed ever more capital and space. Even with the presence of approxim ately 110 other biosciences businesses, the city still ranked 18th am ong U.S. m arkets in biotechnology. Only a few years into the millennium, there w as a nagging sense that N ortheast Ohio might never succeed in reinventing itself as a center of innovation and entrepreneurship in the biosciences, polymers and advanced materials, and NASA-Glenn Research Center technologies, among nascent economic clusters.

Urged by the board to respond to what the media w as calling Cleveland’s “ quiet crisis,” Minter recruited a senior fellow for economic development, only the second time in its history that the Foundation had done so. (Its first senior fellow spearheaded the poverty commission.)

26

In 2 0 0 2, Bradley W. Whitehead, a former senior partner of M cKinsey & Company, joined the Foundation and began discussions with business, political and academic leaders on strategies for promoting business formulation and economic growth. After only five months on the job, Whitehead recommended to the T C F board that, am ong other things, the Foundation should make a few “ big bets.” Agreeing, the board approved in June 2002 a $4 million grant and programrelated investment to BioEnterprise C orporation, a new state-supported incubator aimed at accelerating the growth of the biosciences sector in N ortheast Ohio.

A decade earlier, the Foundation’s Study Com m ission on M edical Research had called for Cleveland’s private sector to expand its efforts to help the city’s medical institutions form ulate strategies for biotechnology transfer. When University Flospitals, the Cleveland Clinic and CW RU joined forces to help found BioEnterprise, a plan to make Greater Cleveland a nationally recognized center of biotechnology transfer began to take shape. T C F ’s three-year commitment w as the first private funding the venture received. According to D orothy C. Baunach, Cleveland Tom orrow ’s deputy director for technology, this prompt, attention-getting investment in BioEnterprise “ set an exam ple for others to follow.”

Though its portfolio had dipped from a high of $ 1.6 billion in 2 0 0 0 to $1.4 billion in 2002, the Foundation could make this major new commitment because of a strategy developed 15 years earlier by Steve M inter and then Board Chairperson Richard W. Pogue. Wishing to give the Foundation the m eans to address the decline of its public schools and neighborhoods and step up its involvement with the redevelopment of Cleveland’s lakefront, M inter and Pogue made the case for a principal distribution. In 1987, $12 million was set aside from principal to

launch

an

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mentioned areas and to support other projects of scale. In 1998, a second Special Initiatives fund was created when the Minter adm inistration captured $30 million of the endowm ent’s appreciation by recommending another distribution of principal.

In addition to approving a “ Great A gain !” economic redevelopment initiative in the fall of 2 0 0 2 , the Foundation’s board decided to extend multimillion-dollar, multi-year commitments to initiatives in early childhood development, public school improvement, neighborhood redevelopment and arts organization stabilization. These large-scale investments came on the

27

heels o f T C F ’s announcement that it was launching a $4 million initiative to prom ote positive attitudes and behavior changes in the so-called “ em erging elderly.” The Successful A ging Initiative -

another

dem onstration of the Foundation’s ability to stay ahead of the curve envisioned the creation of elder-friendly communities, lifelong learning centers and increased opportunities for post-retirement volunteerism and employment. It was the board’s way of insuring the community against the day that Cuyahoga County’s extremely high per-capita population of senior citizens reached their trouble-prone late 7 0 s and 80s. “ It’s a very activist foundation,” marveled Dave Bergholz, who retired as executive director of the Gund Foundation in December 2 0 0 1 , “ given its size, com plex governance issues and the weight of com m unity exp ectatio n s.”

28

THE SCHOOL OF E X P E R I E N C E

Although his exceptional perform ance suggested otherwise, Steve M inter w as a relative latecom er to the field of philanthropy. He came to his leadership position with a w orld view shaped by his race, his faith and his training in social service. N early every other quality or skill that he would need to lead the Foundation, he had acquired years earlier - in the school o f hands-on experience. For this reason, the “ education” of Steven A. M inter is a story that bears exam ination.

The eldest of eight children of hard-working parents who m oved frequently in search of better job opportunities, M inter was born in Akron in 1938 and grew up in w hat he once described as “ moderately p oor” circumstances. Although he attended a number of elementary schools, he passed his middle teens in Kinsm an, O hio, a small farm ing com munity whose high school gave him multiple opportunities for personal enrichment. Despite having to rise early to clean the Kinsm an post office before school, Minter participated in sports, student government and the school orchestra. When the orchestra traveled to C olum bus for a music com petition, M inter became the target of racial prejudice. The m anager of the hotel at which the orchestra had booked room s refused to register young Steve upon seeing that he was black. Unwilling to further humiliate M inter by sending him to another hotel, the orchestra director moved the entire party elsewhere. This w as not M inter’s first encounter with racism,

31

nor would it be his last. However, each encounter w as counterbalanced by an act that reaffirmed the decency of white people, a premise that Steve Minter decided to embrace.

The fondest hope of M inter’s parents w as to see each o f their children earn a high school degree. It w as Kinsman H igh’s superintendent, who also headed M inter’s M ethodist Sunday School, who insisted that Steve apply to college. The superintendent arranged for Minter to tour BaldwinWallace College (B-W) in Berea, Ohio. The campus visit concluded with an appointment with the admissions officer, to whom Minter confided that he had no money for tuition. “ You aren’t the first,” the officer replied.

Minter supplemented a small B-W scholarship and a minor student loan by washing dishes in cam pus dining halls all four years. As a sophom ore, he met and socialized with a freshman waitress named Dolores Kreicher. “ D olly” had grown up in a Polish-Catholic family in Lakew ood, Ohio, an all-white suburb on Cleveland’s Westside. She had, however, an independent spirit. M inter’s intelligence, work ethic, drive and religious faith won her heart. In 1961, the year after Steve earned a bachelor’s degree in education, they were married in the B-W chapel.

32

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Upon graduation, Minter hoped to be a high school coach; but despite good grades and cam pus involvement, he was turned down by 30 area school systems. Hearing of his difficulties breaking into a segregated job m arket, an older white w om an who w as the secretary to B-W’s president put him in touch with her sister, who worked for the director o f the Cuyahoga County welfare departm ent. In 1960, M inter started with the departm ent as a caseworker.

Less than a decade later, at age 30, he became its director.

M inter knew the departm ent had systems problem s, and he w as sm art enough to recognize that he needed advice about remedying them. H aving learned of The Cleveland Foundation while participating in a Foundation-sponsored leadership development program , M inter made an appointm ent with then director Jam es (Dolph) N orton to discuss the welfare departm ent’s needs. N orton w as an authority on public adm inistration and had successfully made the case with his conservative board for grants to improve the quality of government. (This was a landmark accomplishment, as it freed T C F to work directly with and through Cleveland’s political leadership on the panoply of urban problem s.) After the meeting, the Foundation extended a grant that allowed the county welfare department to engage the services of a managementconsulting firm to address its issues. “ Avail yourself o f the best possible expertise” w as thereafter M inter’s m odus operandi whenever he w as confronted with an unfamiliar or daunting problem. “ D on’t m icrom anage” w as another lesson the managem ent consultants taught Steve Minter.

It had been his predecessor’s practice to read all referrals of possible welfare fraud prepared by the departm ent’s attorneys before they were sent on to the county prosecutor’s office. Once this needless duplication of effort had been pointed out to him as a bottleneck, Minter seldom had to be reminded again of the efficacy of delegation.

Some time after Minter became welfare director, a supervisor came by his office to congratulate him on the department’s improved operation. Then she offered him a piece of friendly advice. She had noticed that Minter frequently emerged from the elevator deep in thought and strode wordlessly past his employees’ desks and offices. “ M rs. Voloshin told me, ‘D on’t be so busy you can’t look people in the eye and say hello,” ’ he remembered 35 years later.

35

M inter’s colleague Earl Davis provided a corollary to the “ V oloshin” principle. Every six weeks, Davis and M inter had lunch together. On the appointed day, M inter would hear the gregarious Davis arrive on his floor around 11:40 a.m . Yet it w ould be noon before he showed up at M inter’s door. M inter finally asked his older friend why he felt com pelled to stop and speak to every person on the floor every time he dropped by welfare headquarters. “ Steve,” Davis responded, “ you never know who is going to m ake it to the to p .” Minter soon surpassed his m entor in his enthusiasm for networking and his skill at building lasting relationships.

In 1971, Steve M inter received a call from the governor of the Com m onw ealth of M assachusetts that resulted in his appointm ent as the com m issioner of public welfare for the state. M inter w alked into an organization with dozens o f local bureaus, 5 ,0 0 0 employees and a billion-dollar budget. Yet the bureaus had no uniform policies or com puters, and there w as no love lost between m anagem ent and the em ployee’s union leaders. By the time M inter left M assachusetts three years later, he considered technology a friend, understood the importance o f hiring the very best people and had become a skilled negotiator. His N o. 1 bargaining rule: Never paint people into a corner because the only way out is to fight.

In late 1974, Minter turned down the opportunity to be reappointed welfare commissioner o f M assachusetts. After 15 years in public welfare, he believed he m ust m ake a career change or risk being pigeonholed. Dolly and Steve agreed that they needed to relocate to a community in which they would be content to live for a minimum of 12 years, time enough to see their three daughters through high school. They returned to Cleveland and resettled in Shaker Heights.

M inter had all but signed a new job contract when the opportunity arose to have lunch

Our holiday letter is late this year plans to return to Cleveland in earl in public welfare, looks forward to associate of the Cleveland Foundatio ■home* and returning •home* with

with then Cleveland Foundation Director Flom er W adsworth. This serendipitous event changed the direction of M inter’s life. M inter’s conversation with the legendary “ people’s entrepreneur” proved so stim ulating that he accepted W adsw orth’s offer to join T C F ’s staff as a program officer for health and social services on the spot.

Wadsworth was an excellent judge of people. In 1979, he named Minter associate director, in recognition of his adm inistrative abilities and superior knowledge of the city, and placed him in charge o f civic affairs. Because Cleveland w as losing population and jobs, this w as perhaps the Foundation’s m ost challenging portfolio.

Minter distinguished himself as civic affairs program officer with his leadership o f a project that w ould dram atically change the then piecem eal approach to the redevelopment of Cleveland’s neighborhoods. In the early 1980s, the Fam icos Foundation, a not-for-profit developer of housing for low-income families, came to T C F with a proposal to build market-rate rental property in H ough, a predom inately black neighborhood which had never been rebuilt after being engulfed in riots in 1966. M inter cham pioned the quixotic project. He recognized its immediate benefits for a neighborhood of which he had become a dedicated cham pion during his casew orker days. He also saw the project’s im portance as a dem onstration that middle-class suburbanites, provided the proper inducements, could be persuaded to live in the inner city.

M arshalling these argum ents, M inter persuaded the board to invest $ 8 0 0 ,0 0 0 o f the Foundation’s principal in the project - only the second time to-date that the board had agreed to deploy the still unconventional tactic o f a program -related investment (PRI; a low -cost loan). Over the course o f tw o years, Minter assem bled

w a itin g on th e f i n a l i s i n g o f o r i n g 1975 S te v e , a fte r 14 ye a ri d im e n s io n s i n hum an s e r v i c e s a s a (We f e e l a s t h o w e * r e l e a v i n g

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a coalition o f 2 7 public and private lenders that provided the additional $13.3 million in w orking capital that Fam icos needed to build a housing development consisting of 183 attractive tow nhouses at East 79th Street and Lexington Avenue.

Lexington Village, the first m arket-rate rental property to be built in H ough in 50 years, bore several hallm arks o f M inter’s evolving philosophy o f philanthropy. It w as a “ project of scale” that had the potential to offer a system ic solution to a problem , not a sm all program that tinkered at its edges. And its success depended on values only the Foundation could bring to the table: sustained com mitment, innovative use o f resources and the ability to forge partnerships. “ Steve’s heart, his love, is in figuring out how to m ake one plus one equal three,” noted Henry L. M eyer III, chairm an of the board and chief executive officer of KeyBank, a T C F trustee bank. M eyer’s observations were also informed by his former service as a chairm an o f N eighborhood Progress, Incorporated (NPI), an intermediary that grew out of M inter’s experiences with Lexington Village.

H aving proceeded by trial and error to put together this physical redevelopment project, M inter wanted to figure out how to give the city’s embryonic com munity development corporations (C D C s) the expertise and resources he had lacked. In 1986, he convened the N eigh borhood Strategy G roup, an inform al coalition of private funders, Cleveland Tomorrow officials and neighborhood representatives. After two years of discussions, these partners joined forces to create a super-coordinating agency for neighborhood redevelopment, with T C F supplying the lead resources. By the time o f its 15th anniversary in 2 0 0 3 , NPI had become a one-stop source o f operating support, technical assistance and w orking capital for the city’s m ost active com m unity development organizations. Its real estate subsidiary could assist with projects too large for a single C D C to undertake, and its $15 million pool of project financing could be used to catalyze private investment. T C F remained N P I’s largest single source o f support and had even initiated discussions as o f 2 0 0 3 about w ays to increase the financing pool to $50 million.

38

Few other cities, if any, could boast of having this array of redevel­ opment resources under one um brella. “ They’ve given us enough resources to succeed, as opposed to giving us just enough resources to fail,” said Eric Flodderson, N P I’s executive director, referring to the public-private partnership that built and sustained his intermediary. “ You really don’t see that in other parts of the country. You see an offagain/on-again commitment, and the level o f resources going up and

"STEVE’S HEART, HIS LOVE,

down. The Cleveland Foundation has provided strong, consistent

TO MAKE ONE PLUS ONE

advocacy for neighborhoods and people who live in them. The interest begins with Steve M inter.”

Cleveland’s integrated community development system had produced m easurable results by the start o f the 2 1st century. Its accomplishments included more than 4,000 new housing units and more than 1.2 million square feet of new or rehabbed com mercial space. In 2 0 0 2 , the City of Cleveland surpassed every other municipality in Cuyahoga County in the number of new-home starts, according to real estate industry sources. An independent assessment of housing production commissioned by the Foundation showed that C D C s accounted for 80 percent of new-home starts in the city in 1999: 325 out of 4 1 7 , to be exact.3 And, since 1990, the value of the average single-family home in Cleveland had appreciated 30 percent more than in the rest of the county, a surge that the independent evaluators attributed to stronger housing m arkets in neighborhoods served by NPI-supported CD C s.

In short, the physical appearance and amenities o f many Cleveland neighborhoods were improving, and middle-class families who could choose otherwise were beginning to return to city living. Nowhere was this trend m ore visible than in the midtown neighborhoods o f Fairfax and Flough, where Lexington Village had set off a chain reaction of new development. In 1987, additional units were built at Lexington Village

39

IS IN FIGURING OUT HOW

EQUAL THR EE," -HEN RY L. MEYER III.

with the help o f a second Foundation program related investment (PRI) to satisfy the demand for such conveniently located and affordable rental property. A private developer, working with seed capital provided by NPI, subsequently built a 100,000-square-foot shopping center called Church Square at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 79th Street. The developer then began construction of Beacon Place, an adjoining â&#x20AC;&#x153; villageâ&#x20AC;? of m arket-rate townhouses and single hom es that em ployees of the nearby Cleveland Clinic found to be attractive buys.

Soon ,

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abandoned lots throughout H ough for $1 from the City o f Cleveland and building large, tax-abated homes. In 2 0 0 2 , construction began on another new subdivision located between Chester and Euclid Avenues and East 84th and 87th streets. H ousing prices at the Villas of W oodhaven started at $ 2 2 5 ,0 0 0 .

40

The phoenix-like rise of H ough w as still in the future when M inter took an unpaid leave from T C F in 1980. For eight m onths, he served as undersecretary - the N o . 2 person - in the C arter adm inistration’s newly created U.S. Departm ent o f Education. While in W ashington, Minter added depth to his understanding of the public sector and gained a global perspective on issues in public education, an arena in which he had yearned for a long time to have an im pact. Since settling in Shaker Heights, he had thought it unfair that his daughters went to good schools, while children who lived only blocks aw ay in Cleveland proper received an inferior education. M inter’s sense that there w as still much to accom plish in Cleveland m otivated his return to the Foundation after Ronald R eagan w as elected president.

With H om er W adsworth fast approaching age 70, it became known around T C F that the board expected the director to retire at the end of 1983. A ssociate Director Steve M inter seemed the obvious successor, said colleagues who were contacted by the Foundation’s internal search committee. After being interviewed in spring 1983, M inter heard nothing officially about the position until three weeks before W adsw orth’s expected retirement. In early December 1983, he w as w orking in his office when Board Chairperson Stanley C. Pace cam e through the door and said, “ It’s yours.” Minutes earlier, at its quarterly meeting, the board had form ally named M inter as the seventh director o f The Cleveland Foundation, m aking him the first African-American to hold such a position within a com m unity foundation.

42

A P U R P O S E F U L STEWARD

Minter’s excitement at being given the chance to help reverse the slow decline of a community to which he had m ade a lifetime com mitment overshadow ed his chagrin at the length of the process that resulted in his appointm ent. An unanswerable question lay behind the search com m ittee’s deliberations. Would Cleveland’s wealthiest fam ilies - w hose generous bequests had been the primary source of the Foundation’s growth to date - feel com fortable entrusting their charitable dollars to the stew ardship o f a ground-breaking new leader? Only time w ould show the 45-year-old M inter to be an ideal and energetic am bassado r for The Cleveland Foundation. “ When you ask why donors in Greater Cleveland deeply respect and trust the Foun dation ,” counsel M ai Bank said, “ you have to talk abou t the people involved.

If you don’t trust the people who run an institution, pretty soon you don’t trust that institution.

Steve has met the test.”

Although the Foundation’s endowment surpassed $300 million when Minter became director, he immediately m oved asset development to the front burner. The day he received w ord of his appointm ent, he placed a call to M ary Louise H ahn, a m ember o f the Ju nior League of Cleveland, with whom he had w orked before on issues o f crim inal justice reform . In early 1984, H ahn becam e the Foundation’s first development director.

44

Until then, T C F had no form al plan for “ grow ing” the endowment to increase the income available for grantm aking. With unsolicited gifts

T £

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and bequests com ing in “ over the tran som ,” previous directors had counted on the Foundation’s good w orks to attract support. Minter assigned H ahn to work with m anagem ent consultants M cKinsey & Com pany on a scan o f the national philanthropic landscape. Between 1984 and early 1986, she made a series of presentations to the board and staff that described the growing competition for charitable dollars from not-for-profit agencies and financial-service organizations, documented the 10-year decline in the value of annual charitable gifts to the Foundation due to inflation, and tracked the growth of community foundations that accepted donor advised funds. With some trepidation, board and staff agreed that The Cleveland Foundation m ust begin to accom m odate younger donors who wanted the option of giving

through the Foundation to their preferred charities and causes. They recognized that a new breed of activist donor might prefer that choice to the traditional option of giving monies to the Foundation.

In 1987, the Foundation made another im portant move to secure future growth by creating the Lake-G eauga Fund, which extended T C F ’s services to Greater Clevelanders living in the two affluent, far-eastern counties who wished to practice philanthropy in their home communities. That sam e year, The Cleveland Foundation regained its historic standing as the country’s second-largest community foundation, only sm aller in asset size than the N ew York Com munity Trust. During M inter’s tenure, the Foundation maintained its N o . 2 ranking, as asset development evolved from a two-day-per-week effort into a full-blown departm ent of gift planning and donor relations.

46

To better support the stepped-up development effort, in 2 001, M inter had approved the restructuring of the communications department and recruited Richard J. Batyko from the corporate world to become the Foundation’s first vice president of marketing and communications.

Within a year, The Cleveland Foundation boasted a new logo: a tree whose trunk is a fluted column, simultaneously suggesting stability and flexibility. M ore compelling than the retired m ark, which had been suggestive only of “ crossed candy canes” (according to feedback from focus groups and other solicited opinion), the new logo w as no mere cosmetic change.

Its unveiling m arked the kickoff of an intensive brand and marketing strategy based on commissioned research showing that, while m ost potential donors in Greater Cleveland knew and respected The Cleveland Foundation, few understood that T C F had the capacity to help them carry out their philanthropic goals. The cam paign’s purpose w as to reposition the Foundation in the regional marketplace as a trusted provider of philanthropic services.

Ongoing m arket research tracked the progress of T C F ’s efforts to encourage philanthropic partnerships with all segments of Greater Cleveland, including the African-American community.

Equally committed to improving the Foundation’s financial performance, the Minter administration also worked diligently with the trustee banks. From 1914 to 1996, the trustee banks controlled investment management, independent of Foundation input. Flowever, sensitive negotiations, guided by M inter’s patience and tact, resulted in a new agreement and under­ standing of the joint roles of the Foundation and the trustee banks in regard to investment management. The kid-glove approach Minter undertook stood in vivid contrast to the extreme measure employed by other community foundations seeking to gain control over asset management: the severing of relationships with their trustee banks. “ Steve would rather work hard at developing a good relationship and find w ays for all parties to be successful,” observed J. T. Mullen, the Foundation’s long-time chief financial officer and senior vice president.

47

With the banks and the Foundation’s investment subcom mittee repositioned to w ork collaboratively, it w as now possible to effect needed innovations, such as the adoption o f a more flexible spending policy in 1996. Historically, T C F ’s annual income had been based solely on interest and dividends, and the ability to disperse grants w as highly dependent on interest rates. The new form ulation calculated annual income based upon the Foundation’s investment perform ance over time. In addition to cushioning grantm aking from the ups and dow ns of the stock m arket, the new spending policy freed T C F to place a higher percentage of assets in equities, a position that over time promised to generate higher returns than fixed-income investments. Under the new spending policy, higher returns would boost annual income and thus increase disbursements to the community.

The M inter adm inistration found other ways to m axim ize the utility of the Foundation’s assets. To ensure the continuing availability of land needed for the reconstruction of the State Theatre stage house when the leaders of the Playhouse Square restoration project could not m uster the funds to secure it, the W adsworth adm inistration applied $3.6 million of principal in the form of a program -related investment (PRI), a com munity foundation first, tow ard the purchase of the Bulkley and Selzer buildings on Euclid Avenue near 14th Street. But it w as the M inter adm inistration that supplemented the proceeds from the 1987 sale of the Bulkley com plex to create a revolving PRI fund. During M inter’s tenure, PRI monies were invested in ventures aimed at stimulating business creation and lent at below-market rates to an array of neighborhood and downtown redevelopment projects. W ithout access to a source of “ patient money,” community assets such as the public spaces at the Gatew ay sports com plex - home to the Cleveland Indians baseball team and the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team - might never have been constructed.

Gatew ay capped a wave o f downtown revitalization efforts spurred by the successful restoration o f the Playhouse Square theaters. The Foundation’s involvement with the latter project dated to 1973, a year after the Junior League o f Cleveland teamed with the visionary R ay Shepardson to prevent two boarded-up Jazz Age theaters from being demolished to create additional downtown parking. A series of grants aw arded during W adsworth’s tenure supported the operation o f Playhouse Square Foundation (PSF), the public charity overseeing

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the restoration of the Ohio, State and Palace Theatres, and subsidized live perform ances intended to draw audiences back to Playhouse Square Center. The M inter adm inistration helped PSF save a fourth theater, the “ SINCE 1984,” MINTER SAID

Allen, which the new owner o f the Bulkley com plex had intended to

WITH JUSTIFIABLE PRIDE,

demolish. In 1997, PSF asked T C F for a capital grant; the Foundation

"PLAYHOUSE SQUARE

countered with the offer of a $4 million operating grant. The larger-

FOUNDATION HAD EMERGED AS

than-expected sum came with a quid pro quo: PSF must provide its

A STRONG, HEALTHY, VERY

resident opera, dance and theater companies - all T C F grantees - free rent

IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT

for 10 years. Upon closer inspection of these unusual terms, Playhouse

ORGANIZATION."

Square Foundation’s CEO could see that it was a win-win proposition.

At a time of great pessim ism about downtown Cleveland’s future, Minter embraced PSF’s vision of a theater district enlivened by restaurants, hotels, shops and office buildings. In 1986, the Foundation sold property it had acquired as part of an attempt to redevelop the Bulkley com plex as an enclosed shopping center. However, the sale to PSF provided the theater district with a much-needed parking lot, which ultimately became a profit center. Finding real estate development to be feasible, PSF went on to bootstrap the financing needed to build a 205-room Wyndham Hotel at Euclid Avenue and Huron Road.

It turned a profit after only 1 8 months.

In 1999, the H anna Building, located across from Playhouse Square Center, cam e on the m arket, presenting PSF with the opportunity to control one o f the m ost valuable properties in the theater district and to acquire another income stream. The Cleveland Foundation’s creative package of gap financing m ade it possible for the undercapitalized PSF to purchase the office building. (In addition to a loan o f $1,025 million, T C F agreed to buy two parking lots that were part of the Hanna complex from PSF. The Foundation gave PSF an option to buy back the parking lots at cost when their redevelopment became feasible.) Wanting to help

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PSF find new tenants for the H anna Building, w hose occupancy rates had been allowed to slip, T C F subsequently signed a new long-term lease and took over occupancy of an additional floor. According to the theaters’ CEO , the presence o f the Foundation as an anchor tenant helped PSF lure a Starbucks to the building and persuade Second City to establish a com edy troupe in the H anna Theatre, PSF’s fifth stage. In a tw ist of fate, two years later, the Foundation enabled Playhouse Square Foundation to acquire a long-sought prize: the Bulkley Building.

Again, the deal depended on the Foundation’s gap financing, consisting of another million-dollar-plus loan and an agreement to hold a second m ortgage of $ 8 50,000 (the sum T C F w as owed by the syndicate that purchased the Bulkley Building in 1987). “ Steve has been a very thoughtful supporter,” acknowledged Art J. Falco, PSF’s president and chief executive officer, “ and from day one, The Cleveland Foundation has been our N o . 1 contributor from the private sector.”

By any reckoning, the F ou n d atio n ’s sustained

investm ent in

Playhouse Square w as indeed a wise use o f scarce philanthropic resources. Playhouse Square Foundation saved five irreplaceable architectural gems from the wrecker’s ball. The theaters’ operation and maintenance had been secured with income from PSF’s real estate holdings as well as the box office. America’s second-largest perform ing arts facility cost only $55 million to create. (By contrast, the two theaters that com prise Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts cost $265 million to build in 2001.) Today, Playhouse Square Center draw s more than one million patrons each year, and the theater district spins off $60 million in annual economic activity. “ Since 1 9 8 4 ,” Minter said with justifiable pride, “ Playhouse Square Foundation had emerged as a strong, healthy, very im portant development organization.”

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At his first staff retreat in October 1984, Steven A. M inter had

outlined the accomplishments he

hoped would be highlighted during his tenure.

Envisioning the Cleveland o f the future, he saw middle-class fam ilies living in safe, attractive neigh­ borhoods with good schools and plentiful, wellcom pensated jobs for all. By the time of M inter’s retirement from the Foundation, he had come to appreciate that his envisioned “ city on a hill” would alw ays be a work in progress. “ In 20 years, this community will be dealing with the schools and a whole lot of work in the neighborhoods and probably will be re-examining the criminal justice system and discussing what the employment base is going to be,” he said. “ I finally realized these are enduring issues.”

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The writing of his epitaph w as far from his mind. A few months before Minter packed up his office overlooking the Playhouse Square theater district, a caller asked him about his retirement plans. “ I’m not going to m ake any decisions about w hat’s next for at least six m onths,” Minter replied. “ I want to take a real break, and then I’ll get back in the saddle.”

H is Foundation colleagues, on the other hand, were ready to pay him tribute. H aving worked intimately with Minter on addressing the city’s intractable problem s, form er Board Chairperson Dick Pogue offered his appreciation of the Minter years by way of a telling anecdote. “ I remember when George Voinovich was mayor,” Pogue said, “ he came to a meeting of the Cleveland Roundtable to say he w as worried about the summer com ing up and all these inner-city kids who w ouldn’t have anything to do. The m ayor said it w as too bad there w asn’t som e agency in place to help. Walking back to the Foundation with Steve, I said, ‘Why don ’t we put up $250,000 and see who else will join in?’ “ Steve said, ‘T hat’s a good idea.’ Within a week, he got the money, and we created Youth Opportunities Unlimited (a summer jobs program) on the spot. Steve didn’t say, ‘We’ll have to write up blue sheets and analyze this.’ He said, ‘This is an emergency.’ He w as willing to step up whenever he saw a com pelling need - th at’s Steve M inter’s legacy.”

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AUTHOR’S INTERVIEWS

G oldie K. Alvis September 23 and November 14, 2002 M alv in E. Bank October 8, 2002 R oldo Bartim ole November 20, 2002 Richard J. Batyko October 8, 2002 Dorothy C. Baunach December 17, 2002 D avid Bergholz December 17, 2002 Barbara Byrd-Bennett January 22, 2003 Jan e C am pbell December 20, 2002 Kathleen A. Cerveny October 1 and October 9, 2002 C laud ia J . C oulton December 2, 2002 R ichard A. D eC olib u s December 18, 2002 Barry D oggett December 23, 2002 Leslie A. D unford October 7, 2002 Susan Lajoie E agan October 22, 2002

R obert E. E ckardt September 26 and October 7, 2002 D oris A. E vans, M .D .

December 26, 2002 Art J. Falco December 6, 2002 R obert D. Gries December 11, 2002 D avid C. H am m ack December 4, 2002 Teri A. H ansen October 29, 2002 Eric H odderson December 10, 2002 M ichael J . H offm ann October 2, 2002 C atharine M on roe Lewis November 19, 2002 Jam es L. M ason December 5, 2002 W illiam S. M cK ersie September 26 and October 17, 2002 H enry L. M eyer III December 20, 2002 D olores (Dolly) M inter December 3, 2002; January 8, 2003 Steven A. M inter October 25, November 26 and December 23, 2002; January 29 and February 12, 2003

J . T. M ullen October 10, 2002 R ichard W. Pogue December 2, 2002 C harles A. Ratner November 25, 2002 Lynn M . Sargi January 6, 2003 Jeannette Sorrell December 2, 2002 Lou is Stokes December 10, 2002 Ja y T alb ot October 3 and November 1, 2002 Jerry Sue Thornton December 3, 2002 T h om as Vail November 19, 2002 W illiam Wendling November 26, 2002 M ichael R. White December 23, 2002 Bradley W. W hitehead November 15, 2002 V ictor C. Young November 8, 2002 Transcripts o f the au th or’s interviews have been preserved in The C leveland Foundation archives.

FOOTNOTES

1 T C F provided the Center for Structural Biology with $ 2 .2 5 m illion for faculty recruitm ent and $3 million tow ard the purchase o f needed research equipm ent. O ffering three-dim ensional views o f proteins - the building blocks o f genes - this high-tech tool gave the center’s researchers a better shot at understanding the cau ses o f disease.

2 When the Scholarship in E scrow (SIE) program w as disbanded as ineffectual, M inter took steps to ensure th at students w ho had earned scholarship credits by m aking go o d g rad es w ould still be assisted. In 2 0 0 0 , TC F, the repository o f m ore than $5 million in SIE funds, arranged for C leveland Scholarship Program s, Inc., to carry on the program in perpetuity and aw ard unclaim ed annual incom e from the SIE fund to w orthy C leveland public school gradu ates.

3 While not staggering, these num bers com pared favorably to statistics from the early 1980s, when building perm its for single-fam ily hom es in Cleveland fell to as low as 10 per year.

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