BY Brooke McPherson, TFN’s Senior Communications and Engagement Associate
Nearly 80 funders representing over 60 grantmaking organizations across the country gathered in Cleveland, Ohio last week for two days of learning from place and strategizing with peers at TFN’s 2026 Fall Convening, co-presented by our GREEN, Inclusive Economies and PPREP working groups.
During her opening remarks, Dion Cartwright, TFN’s President & CEO, told the room that this convening was a chance to actually stop, catch our breath, and think together. “The fix for a crisis in California might already exist in Oklahoma,” she said. “We just have to actually talk to each other to find it.”
That spirit of collaboration and curiosity ran through everything that followed.
Setting The Stage
Our first day opened with Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne grounding us in the issues and dynamics shaping Northeast Ohio, followed by a panel of NGO leaders working across energy, environmental justice and economic opportunity in Ohio and the Great Lakes region. He reminded us that challenges communities face don’t come pre-sorted by issue area, and neither should the funding that responds to them.
With that in mind, we moved into a funder fishbowl — a familiar favorite at TFN gatherings — where discussion leaders shared strategies for advancing resilient, sustainable and prosperous places, and then opened the circle to the room.
It gave newer voices in the room a chance to be heard, and gave the rest of us a real sense of who’s here and what strategies funders are actually testing right now.
Learning From Place
Site visits give us the chance to take these lessons outside the conference room. It matters to TFN that we learn from place, grounding our work in community initiatives that bring together diverse stakeholders to create more sustainable and equitable places for all.
Before heading out, we heard from community and philanthropic leaders who set the scene and provided context ahead of two separate site visits.
The first took us along the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie shoreline. With the Cleveland Browns relocating their stadium from the North Coast and development accelerating along both the lakefront and riverfront, decisions are now being made that will shape the city’s relationship with its waterfront for the next fifty years.
The North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation and Third Space Action Lab are working to make sure Cleveland residents are informed and engaged participants in what gets built there — not bystanders to it. We heard directly from city planning and parks leadership, plus new leadership at the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, about how climate resilience and community benefits are being built into the process and the economic development opportunities that will follow.
The second site visit brought us to the Midline: more than 350 acres of formerly industrial land on Cleveland’s East Side being redeveloped into a mixed-use employment and community district, part of Mayor Justin Bibb’s Cleveland ERA Initiative.
It’s the largest industrial redevelopment in the city’s history, poised to create job opportunities for Cleveland’s east side residents. The Midline Greenway alone will add more than two miles of trail and nearly 10 acres of new green space to one of the city’s most park-deficient corridors, connecting seven neighborhoods to regional destinations from Lake Erie to the Health Tech Corridor.
Philanthropy’s Stake in Local News
Our evening reception paired dinner with a conversation on philanthropy’s role in supporting local journalism, featuring Press Forward’s Dale Robinson Anglin and the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque’s Nancy Van Milligen.
The two made the case that philanthropy needs to get serious about investing in local journalism, which has been on the decline for several decades. You don’t have to be a journalism funder for this to be your problem. Every issue area, from economic opportunity to youth services to environmental justice, depends on information getting out. Local news is one of the most effective tools funders have in advancing their work.
And its business model is broken. The question isn’t whether funders should care. It’s how philanthropy needs to help rebuild it.
From Listening to Acting
Day two shifted from listening to acting. Our opening panel invited funders to share how they’re working in tandem across sectors instead of in isolation. We heard from James Hardy (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), Ben Passer (McKnight Foundation), Karla Twedt-Ball (Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation) and Paula Sammons (W.K. Kellogg Foundation) on how their work benefits from connecting with and learning from peers.
Next was a panel featuring Libia Bianibi (BEA Fund), Omar Carrillo Tinajero (Center for Community Investment), Gail Francis (RE-AMP Network), and moderator Alejandra Hernandez (The Kresge Foundation), examining funder strategies, initiatives and investments across three areas: narrative and storytelling, mobilizing around AI and data center development, and new financing and ownership models in the face of public funding reversals.
This set up an afternoon of funder-led small group deep dives on those same topics — another chance for funders in the room to have candid, frank conversations and get to the heart of issues without the pretext of formal presentations.
With Gratitude to Those Who Make This Work Possible
To our planning committee — Treye Johnson, Alejandra Hernandez, Dominique Mack, Joe Heitz and Paula Sammons — thank you for your time, energy and guidance in shaping this convening.
And to our sponsors — Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Just Communities / Partnership for Southern Equity, The Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, and William Penn Foundation — thank you for making this gathering possible.
A New Approach to Gathering & See You Soon!
We’ve heard from our members that smaller, issue-based and geographically focused gatherings create meaningful opportunities for deeper connection and learning, and that’s exactly what we set out to do with our Cleveland Fall Convening and gatherings earlier this year.
Whether you joined us in Sacramento, Houston or Cleveland, we hope you’ve valued TFN’s evolving approach to convenings — one that balances more intimate learning spaces throughout the year with larger moments to come together across the full network.
The next of those larger moments is TFN’s 2027 Conference in Oakland, CA, March 15-17, 2027. We hope you’ll join us there!