The Burton D. Morgan Foundation awards nearly $1.2 million in grants.
06/30/2008
The Burton D. Morgan Foundation awarded nearly $1.2 million in grants in June, including more than $500,000 to promote entrepreneurship education among young people.
Grants will support an entrepreneurship badge program for Boy Scouts, financial literacy education for Girl Scouts, funding for Junior Achievement programs and will provide Camp Invention and Club Invention experiences for children in Akron and Wooster.
“The current economic crises that confront our nation underscore the need to engage students in entrepreneurship education to encourage economic independence,” Burton D. Morgan Foundation President Deborah D. Hoover said.
"It is the mission of The Burton D. Morgan Foundation to support entrepreneurship and the free enterprise system for young people, college students and adults. The Foundation also funds projects in the Hudson Community, which was the home of Burton D. Morgan."
The biggest single grant awarded by trustees at the June meeting went to BioEnterprise, which seeks to identify, evaluate and accelerate the most promising bioscience ventures in Northeast Ohio. That organization received $250,000.
“BioEnterprise’s accomplishments over the last year have burnished its reputation as a superstar among economic development organizations,” Hoover said.
Grants awarded in June are:
Ashland University -- $70,500 to support operations at the Morgan Center and cross-campus entrepreneurship programming enhancements for students and faculty.
BioEnterprise Inc. -- $250,000 to help fund business development and internship programs. The organization plans to provide business development services for at least 25 new companies, help its current companies attract at least $167 million in new funding and train at least five interns in bioscience entrepreneurship.
Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland -- $30,000 to support Money Matters: Make it Count, a financial literacy program.
Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy -- $50,000 to help support planning for a demonstration and training center to help farm entrepreneurs. Through workshops and seminars, farmers can learn entrepreneurial business solutions, including what to grow and why, production methods and technologies for organic gardening.
E CITY -- $32,500 to run two BizCamps this summer in the Cleveland area. The BizCamps strive to interrupt the cycle of poverty by teaching inner-city high school students entrepreneurship skills. The camps aim to help the students relate education to real life.
Entrepreneurship Education Consortium -- up to $45,000 to support a weeklong program at John Carroll University this summer. Teams of students from seven Northeast Ohio Colleges will attend the residential Entrepreneurship Immersion for Undergraduates program, which offers a boot-camp experience in learning how to develop business concepts and start a business.
Girl Scouts of Northeast Ohio -- $45,000 to support the planning and development of a comprehensive financial literacy program intended to reach 1,000 girls in an 18-county area.
Heart of Ohio Council, Boy Scouts of America -- $100,000 over three years to support the Entrepreneurship Merit Badge Program in a nine-county area including Lorain. The program will include assisting Scouts in starting and developing entrepreneurial businesses.
Hudson Community First -- $14,000 to fund three career panels and to expand the Intern for a Day program. The group intends to provide increased knowledge to students and parents about future career opportunities and initiate relationships between youths and business people in the community. The ultimate goal is to help peer-pressured adolescents set goals, gain confidence and feel valued – assets that will help them make the right behavior choices.
Hudson City School District -- $18,500 to send 10 teachers to the national Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education Forum in Texas this fall and to create an after-school program using the Junior Achievement curriculum to help middle school students struggling academically and socially. Sending the teachers to the forum is the first step in establishing an Entrepreneurship Academy, a center where projects can move from incubation to implementation.
Hudson Community Foundation -- $15,000 for legal work involved in developing guidelines to govern donor-advised funds.
Hudson Montessori School -- $7,900 to expand the Middle School’s micro-economy for developing, producing and marketing an annual literary magazine and a grant of $150,000 to enable the school to keep a house it owns at Middleton and Darrow roads. The school, which purchased the adjacent residential property in 2004 with the plan to use the land for fields or gardens, was considering selling the property for financial reasons.
Junior Achievement of Greater Cleveland -- $31,500 to support programs in elementary and middle school classrooms in Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties.
Junior Achievement of East Central Ohio -- $27,000 to provide economics programming to more than 600 students in Stark and Tuscarawas counties and a JA Economics Seminar for Stark County.
Junior Achievement of Lorain County-- $16,500 for a program that matches high school students with mentors to learn business creation and to support a business competition among high schools.
National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation -- $77,000 to support two Camp Invention sessions in 2009 – one in Akron and one in Wooster – and 20 Club Invention sites (14 in Akron and six in Wooster) during the 2008-2009 school year. Both programs attempt to pique the curiosity of students, teach them principles of math and science and encourage them to solve problems.
Northeastern Educational Television of Ohio (PBS Channels 45 & 49) -- $48,300 to continue supporting Nightly Business Report and to underwrite the production of Who’s Your Boss?, a half-hour documentary about Northeast Ohio’s successful youthful entrepreneurs. The show will be aired during Entrepreneurship Week in February.
Scholarship of Entrepreneurial Engagement -- up to $80,000 for program expenses and for two high school science/technology forums. The group develops short lessons on entrepreneurship that can easily be incorporated into high school classes.
University School -- $53,000 to improve and expand the school’s current entrepreneurship programs, develop new outreach programs and establish a summer camp for middle school students.
Westside Industrial Retention and Expansion Network (WIRE) -- $75,000 to support the Great Lakes Wind Network, which is working to develop a wind-industry supply chain for Ohio and educate actual and potential suppliers about opportunities in the wind industry.
