A sad day for nonprofit unity

Cleveland Heights stands out in our region for its rich civic culture. The city is home to a treasure trove of nonprofit organizations that focus on the needs of our residents.

As a nearly all-white, elite suburb in the 1960s, Cleveland Heights’ civic life was limited to the League of Women Voters, garden clubs, a business group, and church service clubs. In 1964, things began to change. Community groups began mobilizing residents to take charge of the future and defend the community’s increasing racial diversity. Civic life was expanded with the addition of Heights Citizens for Human Rights, the Committee to Improve Community Relations, the Home Repair Resource Center, and the recently disbanded Heights Community Congress. These organizations helped to establish community-based leadership as a part of our identity.

In 1997, this hodgepodge of nonprofits created the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Nonprofit Network. At the time, I was the executive director of Reaching Heights, a nonprofit that supports our public schools, and I benefitted from the regular meetings with directors of 14 nonprofits, all of which shared a commitment to the Heights. We provided each other with professional development opportunities, moral support and invaluable relationships. We amplified each other’s work.

Another wave of nonprofits, including the Heights Parent Center (now Family Connections), the aforementioned Reaching Heights, FutureHeights, Heights Arts and Friends of Cain Park, came on the scene around the turn of the century. Property owners in the Big Three commercial districts created special improvement districts to provide enhancements within their boundaries, and help became available for nonprofits wanting to establish a presence on the Internet.

The former Coventry Elementary School became a locus for nonprofit cooperation in 2007 after the school district invited a handful of nonprofits to rent space in the then-vacant building. More nonprofits located in what became known as the Coventry PEACE Campus after Heights Libraries took possession of the building in 2018. The many notable tenants included Lake Erie Ink and Artful.

This month the unique period of nonprofits sharing space will come to an end. The Coventry building will close and the nonprofit tenants will be gone. The shared community will be erased.

Collaboration among nonprofits is powerful. The shared focus on our community breaks down silos that make groups compete, rather than collaborate, with each other. Seeing each other as allies creates economies of scale and access to know-how for under-resourced smaller operations. Collaboration fosters motivation and sends a strong message: Cleveland Heights is a vibrant community and wonderful place to live.

Daily interaction in a shared space is more powerful than the monthly meetings of our old nonprofit network. The PEACE Campus allowed for the development of a close-knit nonprofit community, not just a scattered network of individual organizations. These connections led to more programs involving more people than would have occurred if offered separately in a small, isolated space.

Once each group recovers from the disruption caused by the closure of the Coventry PEACE Campus, I hope there will be sufficient energy to re-establish a semblance of unity among these allies. Nonprofits add so much to our civic life. We want them to excel. As state and federal policy makers retreat from the common good, civic strength becomes more important than ever.

As a devotee of the common good, I value that our nonprofits sustain the social compact that unites us. We all should.