Dear Friends of Mt. Sinai:
As we conclude Mt. Sinai Health Foundation’s fiscal year and disseminate this report on stewardship of the Foundation’s assets, nearly every health and human services organization, local and state governmental entity, and medical research and educational institution, is facing unprecedented instability. We don’t yet know how recently enacted changes in federal policy will impact these time-honored institutions we all hold dear. Nor can we anticipate the effects on the people that we at Mt. Sinai care so much about, namely children, seniors and low-income Clevelanders. Yet it is against this backdrop that Mt. Sinai board and staff worked to develop a roadmap for the Foundation’s next five years of impact on the health of Greater Cleveland. As we near our 30th year of service to the community, we held up a mirror to ourselves to take stock of where we’ve succeeded and reflect on lessons learned in order to be a continuously more effective grantmaker.
We retained The Osgood Group to design and facilitate a strategic planning process that would reach deep into the Foundation and our community and also glean insights from a set of highly respected national experts. Ten months of work have resulted in a new Vision, clarified Mission and newly articulated set of Values and Beliefs that will guide our work, along with a set of focused Goals to advance our mission in the years to come. Another impetus for this strategic refinement process was to help the Foundation define its focus within the ever-broadening national conversation on the definition of health. As a result of this strategic refinement process, we created a new grantmaking area known as Equitable Health Outcomes, which we previously called the Health of the Urban Community. We invite you to read about this and other changes to our grantmaking strategies in the pages of this report.
In terms of grantmaking, many of Mt. Sinai’s signature programs received special attention during the last twelve months.
- We helped with capacity-building grants to ensure the success of the MedWish MedWorks merger.
- We provided leadership transition funds for Milestones Autism Organization when it tragically lost its co-founder.
- We provided $500,000 to MetroHealth to expand our highly successful Nurse-Family Partnership home-visiting program to include services for all parents, not just first-time moms.
- Most recently, we invested in United Way of Greater Cleveland as it navigates uncertain economic times for both Corporate Cleveland and workforce fund-raising campaigns.
- With regard to our multi-year effort to rid Cleveland of the scourge of lead poisoning, Mt. Sinai and its coalition partners are not where we want to be, even as we can report that 38,000 housing units, or more than one-third of all rental units in Cleveland, have been certified lead-safe. We have “miles to go before we sleep,” but we will not relent, we will not back down, until Cleveland’s lead poisoning rates are significantly reduced, and hopefully one day, eliminated entirely. Bringing City of Cleveland Department of Health Director Dr. David Margolius onto our Board is a statement of our commitment to resolving this issue once and for all.
Finally, while we don’t put our names on buildings or seek recognition, we are thrilled to report that the Foundation was the recipient of the Jewish Federation’s 2025 Charles Eisenman Award, the Federation’s highest honor. We are humbled to have Mt. Sinai’s name added to the list of past Eisenman Award recipients, without whom Cleveland would not be Cleveland.
With gratitude for your ongoing partnership and support.