Attributed to: Cathy Belk, President and CEO, Deaconess Foundation
About the Deaconess Foundation
Deaconess Foundation is a private foundation located in Cleveland Ohio. The foundation was created from the proceeds of the sale of the Deaconess Hospital in the mid-90s, so the decision was made that all grantmaking will support the geographic region served by the hospital – thus, Cuyahoga County, Ohio (the County in which the city of Cleveland is located.)
Since 2015, the Foundation has been entirely focused on workforce development with the mission of “helping people impacted by poverty build careers which sustain themselves and their families.” Our focus has been on supporting workforce activities which enable people to gain the experiences and training needed to participate in jobs which offer advancement opportunities (and ultimately to earn to a living wage.) We’ve had a significant focus on those non-profits supporting people to enter career pathways, the creation of sector partnerships, and those providing youth career experiences such as internships.
The foundation has also partnered with many other public and private sector partners to address a variety of systems change initiatives and opportunities in our community. We support and participate in advocacy initiatives at the local, regional, and state levels.
In the last 5 years, the foundation’s work has led to over 3,000 people placed into good jobs in sectors in which career pathways exist (including healthcare, construction and manufacturing) and we’ve had over 100 employers participating in practice changes. Our workforce board has evolved into a non-profit due in part to our efforts, and in the last 5 years, we’ve helped attract 3x the financial resources of our own grants to initiatives we support.
Why does the Deaconess Foundation support Workforce Matters?
We cannot imagine working in this space without being a part of Workforce Matters! The increasing complexity of the work has made us ever more grateful for thoughtful, expert partners among the funders of Workforce Matters. Loh-Sze and Clair make the organization so valuable to us in every way, from making it so easy to participate, to creating such valuable learning and discussion opportunities, to hosting such valuable conferences. We find Workforce Matters to be the best opportunity for us to meet fellow workforce philanthropy professionals; the value of our fellow members can’t be overstated. It’s our primary learning channel for topics related to workforce philanthropy.
What is something the Deaconess Foundation is 2026 you’re excited about?
Even while knowing all the caution that must be exercised, we are excited about the opportunity to have AI support our non-profits and enable them to help their participants be even more successful in the workplace. For example, one of our non-profit partners has built an AI voice coaching app which enables its participants to practice answering questions before a job interview and receive high-quality coaching back. They’ve found that participants like practicing with a non-judgmental non-person and have had better performance and high offer rates when they’ve used the tool. And the non-profit itself is able to better support participants by offering this tool and having their job coaches focus on higher-value activities. This example offers the promise that could really make a difference for job seekers going forward, and we are excited about this and many other use cases.
What’s something in the Deaconess Foundation’s workforce grantmaking you’d like others to know about?
We are the largest philanthropic (non-public sector) grantmaker in our geography, and have been at this for a decade. We are really involved in our community and would be delighted to share it – a tour, our perspective, any learnings – with anyone who is interested and/or considering a partnership with organizations in greater Cleveland. We would love to learn from you, too!
