City Hall is getting ready to stir up the pot of nonprofits, known as community development corporations, that help out with home repairs, small business openings and neighborhood events across town.
Some CDCs, such as University Circle Inc. and Famicos Foundation, are large, with multimillion-dollar budgets. And then there’s Buckeye-Shaker Square Development Corp., which went belly-up after it was embroiled in the corruption case of former City Council Member Ken Johnson.
Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration is searching for a consultant to guide CDCs in a new direction.
According to the city, the “ecosystem” of CDCs is “at its weakest point in a generation,” and many neighborhoods aren’t receiving the services they need. The city wants CDCs to be “lean and resilient,” possibly by sharing staff.
“Uneven, uncertain, and hard to spend funds combined with several years of declining funding have led to staffing instability, misalignment of resources, and lack of clarity of purpose amongst the CDCs,” City Hall said in its request for qualifications from consultants.
Community development corporations are independent nonprofits. But City Hall has plenty of leverage. The city distributes around $9 million to CDCs each year.
The Bibb administration is working on the effort alongside local foundations and Cleveland City Council, according to the request for qualifications. At a recent council caucus meeting, Council President Blaine Griffin said that the CDC ecosystem was “broken.”
Last year, when it was uncertain how much federal community development money would come Cleveland’s way, City Hall warned CDCs to pinch pennies. (The city ended up receiving $28 million in block grants and other funds.) In City Hall’s view, the nonprofits will have to be resilient in the face of volatile federal funding.
“We recognize that philanthropy will not and cannot fill the gaps created by federal cuts,” the request for qualifications read. “The system must be restructured to sustain and adapt to changes in local, state, and federal priorities and funding levels.”
Once chosen, a consultant would have between six and nine months to come up with a final report and road map for Cleveland’s community development world.
