Millstone Fund just turned 5 years old! While the roots of our mission go way back, our work in the community has only just begun. As we established initial priorities within each pillar (Health, Education, and Arts), our approach to philanthropic work and the corresponding grantmaking strategies and systems have grown to accommodate our goals. The most salient accomplishments internally have been implementing our strategic plan, creating new relationships and partnerships, learning from people and data, engaging in collaborative efforts such as a new regional youth mental health initiative, and of course, making important investments in the community. Since 2021, Millstone Fund has awarded nearly $6.4 million in grants to our partners. As a largely place-based private foundation, our time, energy, and funding (i.e., total investment) have been committed to work in our region. Our directors continue to deepen relationships, remain responsive, and consider new grant mechanisms to support wellness in our region. The board of directors would like to thank each of our non-profit partners who work every day to make this community a wonderful place to live and thrive. | |
- Millstone Fund wants to learn and hear about innovative approaches that organizations are using or envisioning to solve complex community challenges. Recently, Millstone Fund has partnered with both Strategies to End Homelessness and Best Point to advance important strategic innovative initiatives within their organizations.
- Millstone Fund has prioritized the health pillar investments on work with promise to address mental and behavioral health needs. This includes prevention and treatment at all levels. Areas of interest include innovative approaches to: (1) increase coordination across programs/organizations, (2) increase access to prevention and treatment services, and (3) prevent/treat mental illness and promote mental wellness.
- Millstone Fund has taken an active role in supporting a new community initiative to support youth mental health and wellness. The collaborative planning for this initiative began in 2023 and was recently named "HEY!" (Hopeful, Empowered, Youth) with input from a group of youth fellows. Millstone Fund has been a key supporter of planning efforts and the youth fellowship--integral for including youth voice and ensuring collaboration with youth in this community-wide effort.
- We view prevention as an integral aspect of addressing adverse health conditions and health disparities. Prevention strategies can be classified as universal (reaching all), selective (reaching those at higher risk due to life exposures or circumstances) and indicated (reaching those affected to prevent further disease progression). Millstone Fund will consider investments across this continuum.
- Millstone acknowledges and appreciates that measurement is difficult and demonstrating impact is not always possible. In fact, evidence from rigorous evaluations of effectiveness suggests that even reputable prevention programs and interventions can have mixed results across populations and over time. It's complicated. Still, goals should be measured, and ideally efforts should be undertaken to monitor progress towards outcomes and impact. We are open to questions from our applicants.
- At Millstone Fund, we would like to learn about both successes and opportunities for improvement. The latter is also an important learning for our community and can inspire improvement and future success. We view both quantitative (the numbers) and qualitative (the stories and perceptions) as valuable.
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Meet our Executive Director, Alonzo (Ted) Folger, V, PhD:
Ted works with the directors to develop, implement, and continuously improve the foundation’s strategy. The strategy, which is implemented by the executive team, is dynamic and a function of foundation priorities, community needs, and the potential to create opportunity and impact. Part of this work is examining grantmaking trends to ensure alignment with foundation strategy, while also investigating community trends and relevant research learnings that can inform future funding opportunities. In this role, Ted also oversees the administrative functions that facilitate the grantmaking of Millstone Fund. He and team members frequently meet and learn from community partners such as other funders, current/prospective grantees, public officials, and other experts. He works closely with the executive team, who make the important work happen each day through regular communication and guidance, careful review of new applications and past work, assessment of community needs, and promotion of our partners and initiatives in the region we call home.
Ted is also an epidemiologist with a background in public health and pediatric research. He has spent a large portion of his career evaluating prevention efforts and conducting research in areas such early life adversity and child development. On a personal note, Ted enjoys vacation adventures with his family, reading and playing soccer with his kids, gluten free menus, and very occasionally, defeating Ted Sr. in handball.
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Millstone Fund work in Greater Cincinnati | |
GRANTS
In March 2024 (Cycle 1), Millstone Fund awarded 35 grants totaling approximately $2.3M for work across Greater Cincinnati. This raised the total grantmaking for the foundation, including multi-year, to over $6M across 103 awards. These grant awards represent 84 separate organizations in the region.
The distribution of grantmaking by pillar is illustrated in the figures. Many grant awards represent work in more than one pillar: health, education, and art. The chart below demonstrates grant payments made so far in 2024 according to the primary pillar of the program/work that was supported. This excludes future payments to 3 multi-year grants. The pillar distribution is likely to change from cycle to cycle and year to year, but overlap is likely to be a persistent feature in investments.
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INNOVATION
In 2024, Millstone Fund launched the Strategic Innovation funding opportunities to support nonprofits with plans for better community outcomes through adapting procedures or creating tools that address inadequacies at a system and/or program level. Millstone Fund sees investing in collaboration, new or enhanced interventions, and improved efficiencies at a large scale as an investment in learning that has the potential to advance our community as a whole. Organizations with a strong history of success and those with the right support to carry out a large-scale plan were invited and considered for this award.
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Strategic Innovation Awardee: Millstone Fund invested $900,000 over three years to support a collaborative effort between Strategies to End Homelessness and their many community partners. This effort uses technology and analytics to look up-stream, identify risk factors for housing loss and intervene before the loss occurs. Millstone Fund was excited to support this type of prevention effort that can improve systems and support a social determinant of health for people in our community. | |
We are grateful for all of our grantee partners who enhance the lives of our neighbors in Greater Cincinnati. Please check out our Grants Awarded page to see a larger list of investments Millstone Fund has made in the areas of Health, Education, and Arts. It is with pleasure that we highlight a few grantee partners making our community stronger. | |
Springer School and Center, a leader in educational opportunities for children with learning disabilities and ADHD, recently opened up a comprehensive Diagnostic Services program seeking to provide every family in our community with the opportunity to fully understand the educational needs of their child. This is a service that historically excluded some or caused a financial burden for many families and met with extensive wait times for service. In partnership with Springer School and Center, Millstone Fund is committed to supporting increased access to understanding the needs of children - leading to educational success for all young learners in our community. | |  |
Millstone Fund is excited to invest in innovative approaches to solve complex problems. Findlay Market’s Shopping App brings greater access to healthy foods to people with limited opportunities to obtain it. Through reflection of early experiences and enhancement of creative partnerships, they plan to expand and improve this app to better serve our low-income community and advance the health of those who engage with it. | | |
Through strategic partnerships, ABC’s Equitable Arts and Enrichment programs support engagement with the arts, community connections and social emotional skills for children with limited access to these opportunities. Millstone Fund invested in their programming which provides art opportunities during the school day, after school Fine Arts enrichment, and supports the International Jazz Festival which is well known throughout the city for its cultural impact. At the intersection of education and art, the programs offered through Activities Beyond the Classroom improve our community. | | |
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Millstone Fund is committed to supporting youth mental health in our community. Jewish Family Services has prioritized optimizing the mental health and wellness of youth through community-based counseling.
Millstone Fund supported this effort by funding training and capacity building for their clinicians. We understand the connection between the capacity of providers and the outcomes of those they serve. We are proud to support their work to help young people and their families thrive.
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ArtWorks has embarked on a journey to foster a thriving arts community through their Painting the Future Together campaign. Their goals align with Millstone Fund’s priority of expanding educational and accessible art opportunities to our community. We are excited to support them as they build a new home. This campaign will allow them to expand their thriving and unique youth employment apprentice program to a year-round service, resulting in more youth served. To find out more about their active campaign visit www.artworkscincinnati.org | | |
Stepping Stones has long been known as a safe and enriching place for people with disabilities. In an effort to better serve the people in their Step Up and Adult Day programs, Stepping Stones wanted to invest in technology that would allow them to meet the needs of their clients – improving their experiences overall. Millstone Fund believes in advancing learning opportunities for everyone in our community and was happy to invest in a project that allows the staff at Stepping Stones to enhance the lives of the people they serve. | | |
Millstone Fund strives to secure a better future for Greater Cincinnati within the pillars of health, education, and the arts. We believe these areas are foundational to a healthy and vibrant community: the physical and mental health of people, the reach and quality of education, and the beauty and diversity of creative expression. An important theme across each pillar is a commitment to equity by addressing disparities in opportunities and outcomes in our community. | | | | |
