Blog Post 2

Today I was able to sit down and speak with Ronn Richard who is the CEO of the Cleveland Foundation. One of the first questions I asked him was what his job entails. His answer was fairly straightforward. He has financial oversight for the funds, in charge of hiring and firing, and oversee grant making and fundraising. However, the most interesting aspect is how he must be an ambassador and maintain great relationships with various government entities and organizations. He continued on to share how his day isn’t just meetings that directly relate to the Foundation. For example, today he met with the head of the Red Cross in the morning and the director of the Cleveland police department and FBI gang task force in the afternoon. These important people in our community were not coming to him for the hopes of receiving grant money, but rather to bounce ideas off. This may lead to grants given down the road, but that is the next step. Richard acts as a liaison, hearing the problems and coming up with a solution. Using this method, the Foundation funded a program for the Red Cross which has cut the death rate from house fires in half in Cleveland. Using the grant, the Red Cross installs smoke detectors free of charge in people’s homes. The police department currently does not have an digital system. If they want to search to see if they could possibly link cases or look through suspects, they have to go through every individual file. This is a big problem and digitalizing there system would probably solve many cases. He said he is going to work with them to try and find a solution to this issue. I was really impressed but how much he cares about his connections with people in the community and helping others. 

Comments

  1. Maria SteinerMay 18, 2022 at 12:58 PM

    I bet most of us don't realize what a great impact the Cleveland Foundation has and how wide their reach is. What an important organization!

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