Volume 8, Issue 5 / May 31, 2017
OCDCA News
We Have a New Website - Check it Out!
If you have trouble with it or can't find an item, please contact David Foust for assistance.
Impact Investing Executive Education Program Scholarships Available
This cutting-edge three day course, led by the Tony R. Wells Foundation , enables nonprofit, foundation and social enterprise leaders to leverage the power of social enterprise and social impact investing together to increase impact, improve stability, and grow the sustainability of their organizations. OCDCA will be providing six scholarships to members for the June 13-15, 2017 training. Scholarship recipients will only pay $300 towards the $2,100 course. Apply by June 2nd.
Engaging with Elected Officials webinar
Whether you have a lot of experience or no experience with advocacy, this webinar will cover topics to keep us all fresh on the subject. Engaging with elected officials is something everyone can do! This webinar will cover:
  • What you can do legally as a 501(c)3
  • What is going on broadly with programs relevant to community development
  • How to best engage with elected officials
Please don't miss this important discussion with Andy Hardy, former Senior Legislative Staffer for Congressman Pat Tiberi (R - OH) and current project manager at Strategic Public Partners. Andy specializes in public affairs, advocacy, coalition building and grassroots outreach. Hardy has also held positions as a state and federal advocate for non-profit entities and served on the senior executive staff of Ohio's Director of the Department of Insurance/ Lt. Governor.

 

Event and Date Location Registration
Engaging with Elected Officials
June 6, 2017
10:00 - 11:30 AM
Webinar
Assets Ohio IDA Network Meeting 
Ohio CDC Association will be offering its first Assets Ohio IDA Network Meeting for 2017. This will be a great opportunity for you to engage in peer networking along with others in our consortium.

Come to find out what is new and more efficient when working with Individual Development Accounts. You will also be afforded methods to troubleshoot common challenges that you may be facing.

This technical assistance and training event will be provided by Assets for Independence (AFI) via support from Corporation For Enterprise Development (CFED) consultants and content area experts. 

Event and Date Location Registration
IDA Network Meeting
June 13, 2017
9:30 AM - 4 PM
Chase Building
100 E. Broad Street, 6th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Free to attend. 
Lunch on your own.
2017 OCDCA Member Meetings: Your Voice Matters
Please join Ohio CDC Association for industry updates and networking. We want to hear your thoughts on your successes, challenges, and ideas!

New this year, we will also focus on a specific community development tactic at each meeting: affordable housing; community economic development; financial empowerment; food access; and community engagement.

Choose either the location or the topic that speaks to you most!

Event and Date Location Registration
Central Ohio
Theme: Financial Empowerment
June 14, 2017
10 AM - 12 PM
ECDI
1655 Old Leonard Ave.
Columbus, OH 43219

Register Here!
Southwest Ohio
Theme: Community Economic Development
July 12, 2017
10 AM - 12 PM
Price Hill Will
3724 St. Lawrence Ave.
Cincinnati, OH 45205

Register Here!
Northwest Ohio
Theme: Community Engagement
August 16, 2017
10 AM - 12 PM
Nexus Health Care
1415 Jefferson Ave.
Toledo, OH 43604
Register Here!
Northeast Ohio
Theme: Affordable Housing
August 22, 2017
10 AM - 12 PM
The Dealership
3558 Lee Road
Shaker Heights, OH 44120
Register Here!

2017 Membership Meetings are proudly supported by:
Nutz & Boltz of IDAs 
Who Should Attend?
  • Organizations considering or developing an IDA Program
  • Organizations that have an IDA program but have new hires
  • New IDA subsites
Agenda: 
  • IDAs as a Strategy for Asset Building: Why and How do IDAs Work
  • The Building Blocks of Program Design
  • Assessing your Community's Needs: Defining your Target Population
  • Funding Resources and Opportunities Explained
  • IDA Program Management
  • Integration of IDAs into Other Agency Programs
Event and Date Location Registration
Nutz & Boltz of IDAs
June 22, 2017
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Columbus Main Library
96 S. Grant Avenue, Room A
Columbus, OH 43215
Register Here!
OCDCA Members: $35
Non Members: $45
OCDCA VISTAs: Free
Lunch is provided
3Cs Mapping Project Webinar
Loveland Technologies is very happy to share the public release of 3csmapping.com, featuring their next generation of city mapping and property dashboards. The 3Cs project is a partnership with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy and JPMorgan Chase to provide community mapping and surveying tools for Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus, Ohio. It is also a partnership with a growing number of local organizations who are using and contributing to the data. This webinar will contain an overview of this project, its features, and how organizations and individuals in the 3Cs can use it.
Event and Date
Location
Registration
The 3Cs Mapping Project
June 27, 2017
2:00 - 3:30 PM
Webinar
Scholarships Available for NDC Economic Development Training
This year, Ohio CDC Association is partnering with Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) to bring the National Development Council (NDC) Economic Development Finance Training to Ohio.  NDC offers this nationally renowned training program that builds the development finance capacity for professionals working at every level and for every sector of the economic, housing and community development profession.  NDC's courses are intense and rigorous, with as many classroom hours as an average college course, plus homework and, in certification courses, a final examination administered on the last day of each class.  Course instructors include community and economic development officials, former bankers, developers, entrepreneurs and government agency leaders. Instructors are members of NDC's team of development finance specialists who impart real-world knowledge in the classroom.

Normally, the price to attend an entire NDC series is $5,500. OCDCA will be giving out subsidized scholarships for 12 participants. With this scholarships, the participants will only pay $350 dollars for the entire class. Scholarship recipients must be current OCDCA members.  Members who are not selected for the scholarship can attend at the discounted price of $2,000 for the entire series or $500 for each training.  Scholarship applications are due on June 26, 2017. Scholarship recipients will be notified on June 30, 2017. 

Support is provided by PNC Bank:
Glass Half Full: Resilience in the Face of Adversity
Save the Date! #cdcOhio17 is in Toledo October 5-6, 2017!
Toledo has a lot of exciting news and collaborations in the community development world! Join us this October at the brand new Renaissance Downtown Toledo Hotel as we explore all of the work going on in the Glass City. Read more here. Follow the excitement on Twitter with #cdcohio17.

Thank you to our sponsors!  If you are interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at the conference, please contact Nate Coffman or Lisa Much at lmuch@ohiocdc.org .
Member News
Welcome New Member!
El Centro de Servicios Sociales, Inc. in Lorain  joins OCDCA as our newest 2017 member. Welcome!
Community Solutions seeks input on land west of Yellow Springs
On Saturday, May 20, Community Solutions invited the community to become a part of the planning for the future of the Arthur Morgan Institute's Center for Regenerative Agriculture, which is the group's newly purchased 128 acres of farmland on the western edge of Yellow Springs. The event followed a heady few months of new activity for the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, which purchased the farmland at auction in mid March.  "It feels like an organizational leap," Community Solutions Director Susan Jennings said in a recent interview. Read the whole article in the Yellow Springs News.
The Dealership partners with ECDI, expands a unique local resource
The Shaker Heights Development Corporation (SHDC) and Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI) operate The Dealership together at 3558 Lee Road in a new partnership that has boosted programming, membership and more since the year began. The new arrangement has ignited an array of new services for area businesses and the community at large, while the coworking space continues to be a unique resource for all Shaker Heights residents who need an office space that isn't called Starbucks. Read more in Freshwater Cleveland.
Share Your Stories
We love hearing about the awesome work you do throughout Ohio. If your organization is mentioned in the news, please share it with us. We love photos too! If you send it to Lisa Much , we can put it on our blog and in this newsletter. 
Partner News
Greater Ohio Policy Center Shrinking Cities Series
GOPC is excited to begin a new blog series exploring "shrinking cities" - communities that have experienced significant population decline and property abandonment over a period of decades. The series, written by GOPC's Manager of Research & Policy Torey Hollingsworth, reviews various books and articles that explore the question of how U.S. cities can manage population decline. Read the introduction to this important series.
AmeriCorps VISTA Spotlight
In 1995, OCDCA developed its legacy of capacity building by partnering with the Corporation of National and Community Service to have an AmeriCorps VISTA Program. In 2014, OCDCA's AmeriCorps VISTA Project received the Outstanding National and Community Service Program award by the Ohio Commission on Service and Volunteerism. We are very proud of our AmeriCorps VISTA program and every VISTA that has ever served through it.

We recently created a flyer that describes AmeriCorps VISTA and details statewide impact of all AmeriCorps VISTA programs as well as OCDCA's AmeriCorps program. 

Unfortunately, AmeriCorps is another program we must lend our voice to on a national level. Please use this flyer to help advocate for this important national service program. Thank you!
Events
Public Benefit from Publicly Owned Parcels
Communities across the country are facing a range of challenges to ensuring access to affordable homes, particularly for low- and moderate-income households. One innovative approach to confronting these challenges is the use of publicly owned parcels for affordable housing and other community benefits. In strong markets, creative use of these sites can expand opportunities for affordability, especially when mission-driven developers struggle to acquire sites against better-funded market-rate developers. In markets or neighborhoods with less competition for land, publicly owned parcels offer an important opportunity to catalyze development and seed revitalization. However, these parcels can present significant challenges in planning, solicitation and development. Learn more at the Enterprise webinar on June 6th.
Giving USA Report Announcements
There are many events throughout the state to share the results of the Giving USA report for 2016. Check out the report on philanthropic trends. There are events in Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Cleveland, and Columbus
Leasing & Marketing Training
Join the Council for Rural Housing & Development of Ohio on July 12 for a leasing and marketing training. Topics are Action Leasing: Lease Better, Faster, Higher, Further and Miserly Marketing: How to Get Superior Results on an Inferior Budget. Learn more.
Funding Opportunities
Bank of America Community Development Operational Grants
These funds support the efforts and programs of nonprofit organizations creating pathways to economic mobility as they work to preserve, and increase access to a mix of affordable housing options, connect individuals and families with tools, resources, to achieve their financial goals. Deadline is June 2.
NoVo Foundation Bringing Girls of Color to the Center
We believe that the best solutions to community challenges come from within those communities, and we support social movements that build the power of people to create lasting change. To learn more about the work happening across the country, NoVo is accepting letters of inquiry until June 8.
Enterprise Community-Based Collaborative Action Grants
Enterprise provides $5,000 grants for organizations to host a Collaborative Action. By design, Collaborative Actions allow conversations to emerge that shape the community and social context, and catalyze positive dynamics. These actions may be permanent or temporary, tangible or intangible, and may include creative placemaking, mapping, art installations or community events. They are typically small-scale, low-cost, and short in duration, but often fit into a larger community effort. Deadline is June 9.
United Way of Greater Cincinnati Call for Partners
The Call for Partners is their new investment process to determine all investments aligned with their new Opportunity Agenda starting in 2018. Deadline is June 9.
Tony Hawk Skatepark Grant
The primary mission of the Tony Hawk Foundation is to promote high quality, public skateparks in low-income areas throughout the United States, and to support International programs that enrich the lives of youth through skateboarding. Only organizations seeking to build free, public skateparks in low-income communities in the United States may apply for a grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation. Deadline is June 14.
Home Depot Veteran Housing Grants
The Home Depot Foundation's (THDF) Veteran Housing Grants Program awards grants only to nonprofit organizations for the development and repair of veterans housing. Awards typically range from $100,000 to $500,000. Deadline is June 23.
Wells Fargo Homeownership Counseling Small Grants
The Homeownership Counseling Grant Program (HCGP) provides financial resources to local nonprofit housing organizations to create affordable and sustainable homeownership opportunities for low-to-moderate income (LMI) people. This is a small grants program. The average size grant is approximately $7,500. The grant program focuses on homebuyer counseling, homebuyer education, and foreclosure prevention activities. Deadline is June 30.
Rural Technical Assistance Opportunity
The National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in San Antonio, TX who recently received a HUD grant to deliver project-based and organizational technical assistance (TA) and capacity building services, and loans to affordable housing and community development projects, in rural communities in 12 states.

Government, tribal, and non-profit affordable housing providers, and community and economic development entities in rural areas of Ohio are eligible for this TA. More information here.
Employment Opportunities
CDC Association of Greater Cincinnati is seeking a PT contract Finance and Communications Manager.

View more employment opportunities on our website.  Organizations with employment opportunities in community development may send their notices for free posting to Lisa Much.
State News
Ohio House Plan Bolsters Housing Trust Fund
On May 2nd the Ohio House of Representatives approved a state budget proposal that would significantly expand the Ohio Housing Trust Fund through a modification to county recording fees - the Trust Fund's revenue source. The House's amended budget also dedicates funding to fight Ohio's heroin crisis, including a $6 million set-aside from the Housing Trust Fund to address the housing needs of people exiting residential addiction treatment programs. After years of declining revenue, the House's budget marks the first major increase in 14 years to the Ohio Housing Trust Fund - the primary source of state funding for local homeless and affordable housing programs in Ohio. This is a major step forward, and your support for the Home Matters to Ohio campaign helped us make the case that the Trust Fund is critical to so many organizations working to make this state a better place to live for all Ohioans.
Spring HDAP Applications Now Available
Application materials and scoring workbooks for the spring Bond Gap Financing and Housing Development Gap Financing rounds are not available on OHFA's website , including the Bond Gap's AHFA and the Non-Credit Gap's GFA. These materials also include supplemental workbooks to apply for the new National Housing Trust Fund program. Questions can be directed to Operations Manager Karen Banyai at KBanyai@ohiohome.org
Federal News
Administration Releases FY18 Budget Proposal,  Guts Community Development & Housing
The President's FY 2018 budget request was officially released last week titled A New Foundation for American Greatness. The proposal, which largely mirrors the budget preview released in March makes steep cuts to housing and community development programs, slashing the overall HUD budget by $6.2 billion or 13.2% compared to FY 2017. View the historic HUD/USDA budget chart by program. 

The bulk of the cuts are to community development programs, which are largely eliminated such as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME Investment Partnership (HOME) programs. These proposed cuts, if implemented, would be devastating for communities. 

Although the administration's budget is largely a political statement that has been rejected by many in Congress, it remains important to communicate to your members of Congress the impact these cuts would have to your community: that the bulk of these programs have already been significantly cut over the last several years and that they need to be increased, not just protected.

To help tell the story of CDBG and HOME in Ohio, we've created flyers for these programs. View the CDBG flyer and HOME flyer. You can use these flyers when talking about these programs. The flyers are editable PDFs that allow you to enter your organization's contact information on the back. 

US House of Representatives - Click  here   to contact your representative.

US Senator Rob Portman - Click here  to contact Senator Portman.

US Senator Sherrod Brown - Click  here  to contact Senator Brown.

Thank you for your advocacy!
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