About

The Cleveland Foundation established Neighborhood Connections in 2003 to empower people in Cleveland’s neighborhoods and encourage them to become more engaged with each other and the city around them. Neighborhood Connections extends small grants that fund citizen-led neighborhood projects, events and activities that benefit Clevelanders. Through June 2012, Neighborhood Connections has made more than 1,600 grants totaling $5 million.

Those grants and the projects they fund are not the ending point, though. Instead, they are a beginning – a point of engagement. The grants invite “everyday people” – individuals and groups – to become genuine community leaders. Neighborhood Connections provides grantees the means to challenge their own assumptions about themselves, their neighborhoods and their neighbors, and to grow in confidence.

Neighborhood Connections provides its street-level partners with leadership training and connects them to powerful networks of mentors, peers and civic leaders at all levels. The goal: That one-time grants buy not just events and projects, but a richer citizenry – role models who can lead their neighbors and neighborhoods – and ultimately their city – to an urban renaissance of community, block by block.

Neighborhood Connections grants are intended as an investment in everyday people as active citizens, actively using their creativity, passion, ingenuity and connectedness to make life better, right where they live.