Timeline

1914-1954   |  1955-1979   |  1980-Present  

1914

Frederick Harris Goff and the Cleveland Trust Co. establish the Cleveland Foundation. Goff declares its first project to be “a great social and economic survey of Cleveland, to uncover the causes of poverty and crime and point out the cure.”

1915

The foundation abandons the single survey and conducts a series of specific studies on several social ills. The objectives are to target foundation resources and to stimulate public debate over reforms. Among the focus areas that emerge are public education, recreation, justice administration, lakefront development, and higher education. Copycat community foundations sprout in 11 other cities and Rhode Island.

1915-1923

The studies begin producing results. The education study sells 150,000 copies worldwide and leads to the creation of a citizen school board, equal education for girls, and other reforms. The recreation/leisure study spurs a wave of new playgrounds and a city recreation department, and provides the impetus for the creation of the Cleveland Metroparks system. Justice system reforms include new Cleveland Bar Association screening of judicial candidates, the establishment of court reporters, and the creation of probation and court psychiatric departments.

1923

Goff dies. Foundation assets stand at $367,000, and grants total $7,637.

1924-1930

Without Goff’s leadership, the foundation flounders. Cleveland Trust Co., which had heavily underwritten the “study decade,” drastically cuts its financial support to the foundation.

1930

Cleveland Trust Co. relinquishes its sole trusteeship, and the foundation opens the door for Cleveland’s other major banks to play a role in managing foundation assets. This move allows potential donors to do business with the foundation through the bank of their choice. It proves to be one of the two events that save the foundation from collapse.

1931

Industrialist Harry Coulby leaves $3 million, providing the foundation’s second saving grace by increasing its asset base and grantmaking ability nearly tenfold.

1935

Albert Convers, a former Cleveland industrialist who later became president and board chairman of Dow Chemical Co., leaves the foundation $3 million.

1936

The foundation again lashes out at the city’s woeful recreation facilities in a 148-page report declaring that play space is unavailable to “something like half of the city’s child population.” The report says adding 100 ball fields and 50 playgrounds would be a minimum.

1937

The foundation helps lead the slum-clearing and planning that spur the nation’s first public housing.

1939

The foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary with a record level of grants that collectively top $200,000.

1941

Foundation officials are stunned by what one called a “most remarkable” bequest. A retired German-immigrant laundress named Katherine Bohm leaves the foundation $6,454. Bohm was blind and had only one leg when she died at age 80, but had built her small fortune through thrift while working in the homes of some of Cleveland’s wealthy elites.

1944

The foundation creates its Combined Fund as a way for people of all income levels to contribute. Inspired in part by Bohm’s earlier bequests, the foundation begins soliciting smaller gifts and pooling them into one fund that can be administered inexpensively.

1946

Fund assets reach $10 million.

1954

The estate of “mystery man” George B. Wheeler leaves the foundation $360,000 – and no one, including the Cleveland Trust Co., knows who Wheeler was. Finally, after three months of sleuthing, foundation director J. Kimball Johnson learns Wheeler was a successful oil and railroad businessman who retired to Florida in 1919.