How do you get to the everyone economy?
Geographic, demographic and structural barriers stand between too many of our region’s residents, placing a prosperous future just out of reach. At the Fund for Our Economic Future, we are changing this reality for Northeast Ohio. We lead strategies designed to attract and create good-paying jobs in growing industries, improve pathways to opportunity and support more accessible, sustainable development that strengthens communities. Core to these strategies is attention to dismantling and reimagining the systems that exclude communities of color.
Here’s how we get there.
Our Approach
We test & amplify strategies to support lasting, large-scale change.
We lead research and analysis that define the issues affecting our region.
We fund ideas to inspire new ways of thinking and build evidence for what works.
We convene leadership, resources and influence to set a regional agenda for growing the everyone economy.
Active Initiatives
We organize our work to drive large-scale economic outcomes that make tangible difference in individual lives. In recent years, we’ve produced scalable solutions to get people to jobs through the Paradox Prize, shifted attitudes around development to bring jobs to people through the job hubs framework, produced nationally recognized insights into the post-pandemic workforce through Where Are the Workers and elevated critical issues for the region through The Two Tomorrows.
Bring Jobs to People
Make Workforce Systems Work
Build Generational Wealth
Grow Inclusive Clusters
Enable Emerging Opportunities
Investing in the Everyone Economy: How We Fund
As a member-led collaborative, we seek out partners to advance our work through grantmaking to nonprofits and engagements with firms with specific expertise. Small or large, the projects we fund are designed to produce actionable insights, replicable practices and agenda-setting influence that leads to lasting change. This focus enables us to inspire and catalyze transformative impact.
With rare exceptions, we don’t accept unsolicited proposals or support direct services.
Leading with Inclusion
How we work toward an everyone economy is just as important as what we work on—and we’re continually working to embed meaningful racial diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging throughout our operations, partnerships, leadership paths and grantmaking policies. With a vision rooted in the reality that systemic racial exclusion holds us all back, the Fund cannot be effective without leading—and living—a commitment to real inclusion.
In 2020, our board voted to restructure pathways to membership that intentionally extend power to leaders of color who have been historically excluded from influencing economic and philanthropic decision-making.
This change inspired other Northeast Ohio institutions to examine their own structural inequities, brought vital perspectives to our work and serves as an important step toward a stronger change agent for equity across the region.