History
The story of the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland truly begins in 1851 when the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine arrived in Cleveland from France to serve as the city’s first public health nurses.
Over the years, they established hospitals, orphanages, schools and other health and human service ministries in Ohio and South Carolina. In 1865, St. Vincent Charity Hospital is opened in Cleveland, in the same location that it remains today. In 1937, responding to a request from the Bishop of Columbia, South Carolina, sisters moved there and opened up Providence Hospital.
Their enduring mission is to continue the healing ministry of Jesus Christ by addressing unmet needs of the poor and underserved.
In 1996, the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland was founded by the Sisters of Charity Health System, the parent organization for Sisters of Charity ministries.
More than half of the Foundation’s initial assets were provided by Cleveland’s St. Vincent Charity Hospital through a 50/50 partnership existing at that time between Sisters of Charity Health System and a for-profit healthcare corporation.
Ambitious Goals
The establishment of the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland (and the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton and the Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina) resulted from comprehensive strategic planning. Four ambitious goals were set for research, grantmaking and collaboration:
- Understand the root causes of poverty
- Nurture the growth of healthy communities
- Emphasize youth and families
- Measure the outcomes of these efforts.
These objectives shaped a variety of grantmaking programs and focused initiatives in support of area non-profits demonstrating best practices for effective responses to community needs.
Saint Ann Foundation: A Historic Model
The model for the Sisters of Charity Foundation was the Saint Ann Foundation, the first hospital conversion foundation in the United States and the first foundation undertaken by a religious congregation in the United States.
The Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine formed Saint Ann Foundation in 1973 with an endowment from the sale of Saint Ann Hospital, a maternity hospital that served Cleveland’s women and babies for 100 years.
The specific vision of the Saint Ann Foundation was to improve the quality of life, especially for women, children, and youth. The Foundation also served as a resource for communities of women religious.
Two Become One
At the start of its 10th year, in January 2006 the Sisters of Charity Foundation joined with the Saint Ann Foundation to form a single organization. The merger provided an opportunity to simplify operational structure as the Foundations had shared offices, staff and a single Board for several years. The two Foundations also embraced a similar mission.
The decision to link the two organizations resulted from a recommendation by a Board-appointed task force and feedback that was solicited from grantees and key constituents.
The combined Foundation has awarded more than $55 million in grants through 2008 in support of non-profit organizations primarily focused on poverty, health and the Saint Ann legacy of caring for women and youth.
Notable Outcomes: The First 10 Years
• The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland may be most widely recognized for its eight-year effort to increase affordable housing options in Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties. More than $7 million was dedicated to enhancing the availability of affordable housing and promoting community decision-making to build stronger neighborhoods.
• Studies commissioned by the Foundation in 1998 found the number of Cuyahoga County children receiving full-time care from relatives other than their parents ranked slightly higher than the national average.
More than $1 million was invested over five years to increase public awareness of the issue of kinship care and expand services to caregiver relatives. Grants made to the Cuyahoga County Department of Senior & Adult Services were leveraged to attract a significant allocation of state dollars to the County program.
• A 2001 Saint Ann Foundation study found that diminishing resources and aging were seriously impacting the future operations of vital ministries sponsored by congregations of Catholic women religious in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee and South Carolina.
Subsequent grantmaking encouraged collaboration and capacity-building activities as pathways to sustainability. Today, the Sisters of Charity Foundation continues this work through the Collaboration for Ministry Initiative (CMI), which now includes a partnership with the Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina.
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the Sisters of Charity Foundation worked to identify eight Gulf Coast communities of women religious devastated by the storms and connected them to resources needed for rebuilding.