How many nonprofit organizations are in East Cleveland? Why is this simple question hard to answer?

✍ Scribed by Ruth J. Milne; Duncan Neuhauser

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 84 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1048-6682
• DOI: 10.1002/nml.9

✦ Synopsis

H OW DO YOU find all the nonprofit organizations in a commu- nity in need? We set about trying to answer this question for East Cleveland, a residential city located about seven miles from downtown Cleveland, Ohio. 1 East Cleveland occupies approximately three square miles and, according to the 2000 census, the city' s population was 27,217, reflecting approximately an 18 percent loss from 1990. Ever since Cleveland's civil disorders in the 1960s, the East Cleveland community has experienced decline in socioeconomic indicators.

As Table 1 indicates, East Cleveland is characterized by a higher poverty rate, lower household income, and higher unemployment than the surrounding region or county. In 1990 East Cleveland had approximately eighty-two hundred families with an average income of $16,378 and an unemployment rate of 16 percent. The black or African American population was 94 percent, compared to the county average of 25 percent. Nearly 63 percent of the households in East Cleveland were headed by females, with 35 percent of families living below the poverty level (Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change, 2001).

As these data suggest, East Cleveland is a good candidate for the kind of needs and resource analysis that has long been characteristic of community social services planning. One major feature of such planning is investigation of the range and scope of existing resources, including nonprofit organizations in the community. But therein lies a problem seldom discussed in the nonprofit literature. In an effort to assess the nonprofit institutions serving this community within the city's boundaries, we used five readily available data sources