Woodruff Foundation

The Woodruff Foundation is a hyper-local, single-issue funder: every dollar is directed to behavioral health in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, defined broadly to include mental illness treatment, substance-use recovery, prevention/education, resource coordination, research, and advocacy. Its board is unusually clinically literate for a foundation this size — trustees include two MDs (Molly Wimbiscus, John Hertzer) and Habeebah Rasheed Grimes, a working behavioral-health nonprofit executive, alongside John Corlett, a well-known Cleveland health-policy figure serving as Secretary/Treasurer. President Steven Siemborski and Vice President Laurel Domanski Diaz round out the leadership. Practically, this means proposals are read by people who know the local service landscape cold — generic mental-health boilerplate will not clear the bar; applicants should write like they are briefing peers, with specific client populations, service gaps, and outcome metrics. The Foundation favors direct-service nonprofits already embedded in Cuyahoga County's behavioral-health ecosystem over research institutions or national organizations — of 70 tracked historical grants, 69 went to Ohio organizations and only 1 to Massachusetts. Typical grantees are mid-size, established human-service agencies (Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, Achievement Centers for Children, Journey Center for Safety and Healing) rather than large hospital systems or brand-new startups, though newer/smaller organizations like Village of Healing and Birthing Beautiful Communities have broken through with narrowly-scoped, culturally-specific programs. First-time applicants should expect a relationship-building step: call program contact Karen Thompson-Shaheen before drafting anything to confirm fit against the Foundation's five focus areas, since staff explicitly offer this pre-screening. The Foundation funds both capital and program expenses but pointedly excludes endowments, scholarships, fellowships, and general fundraising campaigns — a proposal framed as annual-fund support will be rejected regardless of mission alignment. Because the Foundation makes only one grant per organization per year (with an explicit carve-out for joint/partnership applications), returning grantees should consolidate needs into a single, well-justified ask rather than making sequential requests within the same cycle.

Grant sizes are consistently modest and tightly banded: the Foundation's own reported range for its 27 most recent classifiable grants is $1,500 to $50,000, with a median of $20,000 and an average of $19,481. The historical top-50 grantee list (70 grants, $1,528,314 total, $21,833 average) confirms this pattern over a longer window, with the largest cumulative relationship — Cleveland Christian Home at $95,000 across two grants — still averaging under $50,000 per award. Published annual totals show real but modest scale: $380,000 across 23 grants in 2025 (average $16,522) and $304,000 across 15 grants so far in 2026 (average $20,267, likely to grow before year-end with an October board meeting still to come). By category, 2026 giving splits roughly as Treatment 52% ($159,000 — including a $50,000 FrontLine Service Mobile Crisis Team grant and a $30,000 LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland award), Education & Prevention 23% ($70,000), Advocacy 10% ($30,000), Coordination of Resources 7% ($20,000), and Research 5% ($15,000). IRS Form 990 filings show a larger and more volatile figure for total giving — $833,676 in FY2023, up from $597,596 in FY2022 and $861,710 in FY2021 — that runs roughly double the amounts the Foundation lists as grants awarded on its public grants pages; this gap likely reflects multi-year pledges, administrative/programmatic disbursements, or timing differences between 990 accrual and website posting, and applicants should not assume the larger 990 figure represents available new-grant capacity. Total assets have held steady in the $11-14 million range for over a decade ($10.3M in 2011 to $12.2M in 2023), funded by investment income (net investment income of $1.18M in FY2023) rather than new contributions — the Foundation received zero new contributions in every year of available data, meaning its giving capacity is fixed by endowment performance, not fundraising. Geographically, funding is almost exclusively Cuyahoga County — 69 of 70 tracked grants — with essentially no giving outside Northeast Ohio.

Woodruff is by far the smallest and most narrowly focused funder in this set — its entire annual budget is roughly what Saint Luke's or Cleveland Foundation might commit to a single large grant. That narrowness is an advantage for behavioral-health-specific applicants: Woodruff's board reviews every proposal against one issue area rather than competing priorities, and its open, non-invitation application process (unlike the LOI gatekeeping at Saint Luke's and Sisters of Charity) makes it more accessible to first-time or smaller applicants. Organizations seeking six- or seven-figure grants should look to Cleveland Foundation or Saint Luke's instead; Woodruff is best suited as a reliable, renewable mid-five-figure funder within a diversified funding stack.

The Foundation's 2026 grants page (current through this research, published on woodruffgreatercle.org) shows $304,000 committed across 15 grants year-to-date, with an October board meeting still ahead. The largest 2026 award is $50,000 to FrontLine Service for its Mobile Crisis Team, followed by $30,000 each to the Mental Health & Addiction Advocacy Coalition (research and advocacy) and NAMI Greater Cleveland (program support). Notable new territory for 2026 includes a $15,000 grant to Cleveland State University Foundation to pilot equine therapy for youth with anxiety, a $19,000 grant to Signature Health to pilot home-based psychiatric stabilization for adults in crisis, and a $15,000 grant to The Art Therapy Studio for community-based art therapy targeting isolated adults — all first-time-appearing pilot concepts relative to the Foundation's historical grant list. In 2025, the Foundation awarded $380,000 across 23 grants, headlined by a $55,000 capital-campaign grant to Magnolia Clubhouse to expand services for individuals with mental illness — the largest single award found in either year. No leadership transitions, executive announcements, or major press coverage of the Foundation itself turned up in web search; the organization operates with minimal public-facing news beyond its own grants pages, consistent with a small, administratively lean foundation run through a third-party administrator, Foundation Management Services (FMS Cleveland), which also staffs the application process (Katie Brennan for technical support, Karen Thompson-Shaheen for programmatic fit).

Apply within one of three annual cycles rather than on a rolling basis: applications open November 15 (deadline December 15, reviewed at the February board meeting), April 1 (deadline May 1, reviewed in June), and August 1 (deadline September 1, reviewed in October) — the online portal only opens roughly one month before each deadline, so proposals cannot be pre-staged far in advance. Before writing anything, call or email Karen Thompson-Shaheen (216-621-2901, ktshaheen@fmscleveland.com) to confirm the project fits one of the five focus areas — treatment, education & prevention, coordination of resources, research, or advocacy — since staff explicitly offer this pre-screening and unsolicited proposals outside these lines are a common rejection reason. Size the ask realistically: the median recent grant is $20,000 and the largest award in either 2025 or 2026 was $55,000 — requests well above $50,000 are outliers and should be justified as capital campaigns with clear co-funding, not as sole-source asks. Do not request endowment funding, scholarships, fellowships, or general annual-fund/fundraising-campaign support — these are explicitly excluded regardless of mission alignment. Because the Foundation makes only one grant per organization per year, consolidate related needs into a single request, and consider a joint/partnership application with another agency if two distinct but related needs exist — this is explicitly permitted as an exception to the one-grant rule. If already a grantee, keep interim and final reports current: multi-year capital grant recipients can apply for second-year programmatic support only after submitting a satisfactory interim report, and missed reporting will jeopardize future eligibility. Write for a clinically informed board — trustees include two physicians and a sitting behavioral-health nonprofit CEO — so lead with specific population served, measurable service gaps, and outcome data rather than general mission language. The required proposal narrative (per the Foundation's own application instructions) must include: purpose of the request, brief organizational history, a client profile with service-area statistics, a specific objectives/timeframe/budget breakdown for the grant itself, a prior-year income and expense statement plus current budget, a board of trustees list, the most recent audited financial statements, and the most recent annual report — assemble all of these before opening the portal, since incomplete packets slow review.