The Community Foundation supports local nonprofits providing vital community services by building and endowing charitable resources to support their missions. We also connect donors to causes and organizations they are passionate about.
Community Foundation Priorities – The Community Foundation believes a thriving community is one where all people have equal access to safe, affordable housing; living wage jobs; nutritious food; health care; quality educational opportunities; supportive relationships and community engagement. We appreciate the work of our nonprofit partners and provide many ways for people to contribute. We also help donors find, learn about and give with confidence to hundreds of local organizations – some of which are listed below:
100 Black Men Mentoring and Scholarship Program
- Mission: To prepare young men and women to realize their highest potential, by creating viable solutions to address local and national issues affecting African American communities.
- Objectives: To award scholarships to high school seniors in Bradley County to enhance educational and economic opportunities for African American Youth.
Art is Here Partnership
- Mission: Believing that the arts, give heart and breath to the life of our community, strive to provide paths for arts infusion into the lives of our citizens.
- Objectives: To establish a Community Arts Center in Cleveland/Bradley County, Implement Community Arts Plan developed through a Tennessee Arts Commission Grant, Raise awareness of the value if the arts and arts education in our community, integrate the arts and culture community into the Cleveland and Bradley County’s overall planning efforts.
ATS The Bridge
- Mission : To protect our next generation from substance abuse and to prepare them to become responsible citizens.
- Objectives: To raise awareness of the opioid epidemic, guide people who are ready to seek treatment and encourage them to sustain sobriety once they’re clean.
A Step Ahead
- Mission: To remove barriers to contraception though education, outreach and access to free birth control.
- Objectives: To provide judgement free health services, education and accurate information about contraception, birth control and family planning.
Boys and Girls Club Cleveland/Benton
- Mission: Tot stive to offer safe and encouraging places to go during out of school time to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as Caring, Productive, Responsible citizens.
- Objectives: We have a dream that every child who walks through our doors becomes: CARING, PRODUCTIVE, RESPONSIBLE citizens.
Bradley County Sheriff Equipment Fund
- Mission: To protect and serve the citizens of Bradley County
- Objectives: To support law enforcement personnel’s physical and mental health of law currently on duty at the BCS office and gym space. A tailored, individual program prepares the officers for optimum physical health to perform at work, home and retirement.
Caring Place
- Mission: “ Meeting Needs With Love” to provide access to the basic resources and opportunities our neighbors need to thrive.
- Objectives: To connect, advocate, restore, empower and equip. Support for the most basic resources that individuals and families need through our basic food and clothing assistance program. During the school year, the Sac Pac program provides weekend meals for children facing hunger over the weekend.
CASA of Bradley County
- Mission : Through state and local members is to support and promote court-appointed volunteer advocacy for abused and neglected children so that they can thrive in safe, permanent homes.
- Objectives: Recruits and trains court advocates for children in abuse and neglect situations.
City Fields
- Mission: To be a catalyst for change in Cleveland’s most overlooked neighborhoods by helping cultivate people and the environments around them.
- Objectives: To transform disadvantaged neighborhoods through five primary areas: physical revitalization, social revitalization, economic development, neighborhood safety, and leadership development.
Cleveland Emergency Shelter
- Mission: To provide collaborative, comprehensive services to homeless individuals and families and foster public awareness.
- Objectives: To provide daily care for those most vulnerable and desperate among us. Supplying emergency services of food and shelter. Offer support that will promote, empower and nurture families or individuals. These services include, but are not limited to, case management, advocacy, family/individual counseling, voucher assistance, life skills, and budgeting training.
Cleveland Orchestra of TN
- Mission: To promote, encourage, and foster the appreciation of the musical arts.
- Objectives: For musicians from the surrounding area to have the opportunity to play and present fine orchestral music to local audiences.
Cleveland Storytelling Guild
- Mission: To share and perpetuate the art of storytelling in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia by training storytellers, sharing stories in both public and informal settings, and encouraging people of all ages to discover and exchange stories of their own and others.
- Objectives: To promote and perpetuate storytelling as an art and as a common bond among peoples by performing at community events, conference, schools, and facilitating workshops, camps.
Cold Weather Shelter
- Mission: To serve some of our city’s most vulnerable by providing overnight shelter when the temperatures fall below 32 degrees.
- Objectives: To provide Shelter to the homeless during the cold winter months, in partnership with Salvation Army/The Caring Place.
Community Foundation of Ocoee Region
- Mission: Connecting people who care with causes that matter in our community.
- Objectives: To provide educational opportunities for non-profits and other charitable organizations to enhance program design and support their services. Non-profit Training – address community needs by provide non- profit training to enhance program design and delivery and strengthen fund development to support those services.
Disruptive Hope
- Mission: To provide hope, financial aid, and emotional support to families who experience a “disrupted adoption.” This is when an adoptive family is matched with a mother who later decides to parent her child. While this is a beautiful and joyful decision, it also results in large financial losses for adoptive families, prohibiting many from continuing their adoption journey.
- Objectives: To support families financially and emotionally to reenter the adoption process and realize their dream to adopt a child.
Dream Center of Cleveland
- Mission: To equip emerging adults (18-29), who have been marginalized by substance abuse, poverty, and crisis, with the skills needed to live and work successfully in the community.
- Objective: We provide housing, food, medical care, mental health care, life skills training, and job training, and placement. Our goal is the success of each participant.
Family Promise
- Mission: To provide families facing the crisis of homelessness with a safe place designed to engage, inspire, and guide them toward a future where they feel empowered to control the course of their lives.
- Objectives: To respond to the growing need to provide shelter, meals and comprehensive support services to homeless families. The homeless prevention program, Project Home 100% of the funds given to this project go directly to landlords in our community preventing children and their families from entering into homelessness.
Feed Gods Lambs
- Mission: a multi-church ministry for children and youth in Polk County TN. They are an equal opportunity provider within the community.
- Objectives: This organization provides meals and opportunities for young people to learn about Christ.
Focus Forward Ministries
- Mission: The mission is to share Christ with the Lakota people. Founded out of love for the Native American community. The focus is on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
- Objectives: Our ministry is dedicated to sharing the transformative message of Christ with the Lakota tribe, honoring their rich cultural heritage while embracing the hope and redemption found in the Gospel. Rooted in deep respect for Lakota traditions and values, we strive to foster meaningful connections within the community, building bridges of understanding and trust.
FOLA (Friends of the Library)
- Mission: To ensure community, trust and education by supporting our Cleveland Bradley County Public Library.
- Objectives: To raise money in the community through memberships and many other arts and culture events throughout the year.
Foundation House Ministries
- Mission: To provide homes for women in crisis pregnancies and aid as much as we can: financially, physically, emotionally and most importantly spiritually.
- Objectives: To provide Job Training, Reliable Transportation, Childcare, Stable Housing, Education, Permanent Employment, Healthy Relationships.
Habitat for Humanity of Cleveland
- Mission: Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build and repair homes, communities and hope.
- Objectives: To focus on shelter, Advocate for affordable housing. Promote dignity and hope. Support sustainable and transformational development – transform lives and promote positive and lasting social, economic and spiritual change within a community; homeowners pay affordable mortgages, receive financial education and build their homes alongside Habitat volunteers.
Harbor Safe House & Advocacy Center
- Mission: Strengthening communities by providing a safe, caring place and high-quality advocacy for abuse victims.
- Objectives: We serve victims/survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in Bradley and Polk Counties. 24 HOUR CRISIS HOTLINE: 423-476-3886. ALL Contact is confidential.
Investigative Foundation
- The Investigative Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Cleveland, Tennessee. They are dedicated to assisting families impacted by crime and crisis in the wake of unsolved cases, such as unsolved homicide, missing persons, unidentified persons, and domestic violence or sexual assault. When cold case units are shut down, families are grieving without answers, victims are without justice and communities are without peace. Every story deserves to be heard and every life deserves to be fought for. When law enforcement resources become limited, The Investigative Foundation steps in to help bring healing and awareness to the ever-growing needs in our own communities – connecting families in crisis to professional investigative services, legal aid, trauma and grief counseling, and other vital resources at little to no cost that they otherwise may not have access to due to financial or social status. For the public, they offer free community safety classes each month and are working to build a digital cold case database. The long-term goal is to raise money to open a cold case unit with the 10th Judicial District Attorney’s office, serving Bradley, Polk, McMinn, and Monroe counties.
Junior Achievement of the Ocoee Region
- CHANGING THE LIVES OF YOUNG PEOPLE – At Junior Achievement we believe in “possible.” Each day, we work to help young people discover what’s possible in their lives. We do this by helping them connect what they learn in school with life outside the classroom. We let them know it’s possible to invest in their future, to gain a better understanding of how the world works, and to pursue their dreams. We show them that it’s possible for tomorrow to be a better day.
Karis Community Health
- Mission: To follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ by serving others through the provision of quality medical and dental care to low-income adults in the community.
- Objectives: To provide a comprehensive range of dental and medical services and support systems.
Kimsey Ridge Community
- Mission: Supporting and saving the Kimsey Junior College Building (Old Ducktown School).
- Objectives: Provide space for events, concerts and more, retaining the historic value of the Old Ducktown School.
Life Bridges
- Mission: To help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities live their best life.
- Objectives: To provide exceptional services to the people we support, their families and our community to promote independence, respect, and trust while meeting our social and financial responsibilities.
Misfits Church
- Mission: Utilize worship as a reflection of grace, authenticity and deep spiritual connection with Jesus Christ
- Objectives: . Provide a space where all are welcomed —- free from performance, perfection or expectation — into an atmosphere of genuine encounter and healing.
Museum Center at 5ive Points
- Mission: To tell the story of the Ocoee Region by celebrating its history and culture, while providing a place for members of the community to gather learn and grow by connecting our past and present while dreaming about the future.
- Objectives: Provides education programs for school students and the community through tours, workshops, exhibits, camps, and events.
New Hope Pregnancy Care Center – Options. Care. Support
- Empowering women and families facing unexpected pregnancies in Cleveland, TN. New Hope provides accurate information, free services, and practical support with a holistic and compassionate approach. New Hope gives each client the care and attention they need, empowering them to make informed decisions for themselves and their future.
- New Hope Pregnancy Care Center is a 501c3 non-profit in the state of Tennessee. Community support ensures our ability to meet the needs of local women and men facing unexpected pregnancies. We are 100% funded through the generosity of individuals, businesses, and organizations in our community. All donations are tax-deductible.
Ocoee Outreach
- Mission: To empower our volunteers to bring hope through evangelism and restore dignity in the lives of homeowners through home repair and building intentional relationships.
- Objectives: To complete 3 main types of projects- painting/exterior work, roofing, and building wheelchair ramps. A non-construction option for ministry would be to host a VBS/Day camp type event at a local Boys & Girls Club or apartment complex here in Cleveland.
Ocoee Regional Rotary
- Mission: Providing “service above self”, in all aspects.
- Objectives: The club is focused on serving others by helping folks thrive and accomplish their mission within the communities served
Ocoee Theatre Company
- Mission: Offer Quality, accessible theater to Ocoee region through theatrical productions that allow residents in the area to refine aridity talents, learn new skills or expand cultural awareness by participating on stage, behind the scenes or in the audience.
- Objectives: Bring together a diverse group of people who are interested in community theatre to create and present quality theatre productions.
OrphanWise
- Mission: To bring hope and healing to children from hard places by equipping their caregivers with trauma-informed resources.
- Objective: OrphanWise trains adoptive and foster parents, biological families seeking reunification, children’s home staff, teachers, social workers, churches, after-school program staff, and law enforcement officers.
Patriot Memories
- Mission: To provide American Flag displays to honor Bradley County Veterans
- Objectives: Recognize and honor Bradley County veterans by placing American flags around the Courthouse on Patriotic days of the year.
People Helping People
- Mission: To provide assistance and comfort, without discrimination or monetary gain, to anyone in their time of distress.
- Objectives: To assist single parents, elderly, individuals, persons just released from jail, victims of domestic violence, or people who have gotten a job where special clothing is required.
Polk County TN Public Events
- Mission: The purpose of this organization is to have and promote events for the residents of Polk County to attend and enjoy.
- Objectives: Established by the Polk County Commission for the fun and enjoyment of local residents and other visitors to the region.
Project Free 2 Fly
- Mission: To support, nurture, and empower women through hand-sewn custom accessories and apparel, rehabilitative programming and community.
- Objectives: To serve women from all walks of life and being a resource to enrich their lives is our main desire. We seek to walk with women in our community down the new path they desire and encourage them along the way. We want them to ultimately know that they are valuable to our community and their families.
Remnant House
- Mission: A one year Christ centered program for men who have lived a life of addiction.
- Objectives: Providing a place where participants can encounter Jesus Christ every single day and overcome who they used to be. It is a place where men leave their past behind and discover their path, plan, and purpose for their future.
Restoring Hope, A House of Restoration
- Mission: To create an atmosphere where individuals and their families are encouraged and built up in faith, hope and love and they themselves become what their environment is. Our goal is they are restored to wholeness through the resources, provided both on and off campus leading them to return to a healthy, productive lifestyle where they become a life giver to their community.
- Objective: At Restoring Hope it is our vision to assist individuals and their families who have faced difficult hardships that have led them to homelessness. It is at this house of restoration that we will assist them to achieve their goals as they journey to prepare for a better, brighter future.
SHARP Animal Rescue
- Mission: To provide assistance to dogs and cats in need and promote spay/neuter surgeries in Polk County, TN.
- Objectives: To rescue abandoned animals , provide them with loving temporary foster care, find them well-matched, carefully screened forever homes, receive a medical evaluation, updated shots, heartworm check and are spay/neutered.
SPCA of Bradley County
- Mission: To provide humane enforcement and sheltering for companion animals, while providing compassionate animal control services, under the No Kill Equation mode.
- Objectives: To provide every animal with fully care vetted before they go to their new homes which includes spaying and neutering, age-appropriate vaccinations, micro-chipping for identification purposes, and many times other physical or social needs, to build a new modern facility and establish an endowment for ongoing operational support of the SPCA.
Salvation Army
- Mission: To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.
- Objectives: To provide individualized services to families with children who desire to take action to break the cycle of crisis and vulnerability that repeats generation after generation, to address the root causes of poverty , helping families overcome challenges like unemployment, unstable housing, and lack of education leading families down a path toward increased stability and, ultimately, self-sufficiency, provide programs that help inmates rebuild their ties to the community and reduces the likelihood that they will relapse (see sheet of specific programs).
Tennessee Valley Diaper Bank
- Mission: To make a difference by eliminating the diaper need in the Cleveland/Bradley area and bring awareness to the diaper insufficient diaper supply needed to keep infants and children healthy and dry.
- Objectives: To help provide easier access to diapers for the children of families who struggle every day to make ends meet. Keeping our infants and toddlers healthy is the key to building a solid foundation for all children to reach their full potential, continue to establish distribution centers ,to keep a steady supply of diapers to these organizations and help them expand their already great services to our wonderful community.
Trek Thru Truth
- Mission: Engaging families in the stories of the Bible.
- Objectives: Offering curriculum and devotionals for families, churches and private schools, based on the 52 exhibits. In addition to the 52 permanent exhibits, the facility will include a theater seating 500, meeting spaces, restaurant, gift shop, and temporary exhibit space. Example temporary exhibits may include Animals of the Bible, Professions in the Bible, Transportation in the Bible, Medicine in the Bible, Music in the Bible, etc.
Tri State Therapeutic Riding Center
- Mission : To provide opportunity for safe and effective equine activities to enhance quality of life for those with developmental, physical, cognitive or emotional challenges.
- Objectives: To offer the opportunity for emotional and physical healing, equestrian education, and fulfillment for physically, mentally, or emotionally challenged individuals of all ages. Programs: Reinbow Riders, Mindful Riding Program, Reinbow Rehabilitation, Horses for Heroes
Trousdale School
- Mission: Serves adults with intellectual disabilities by providing academics, life skills, occupational development, arts, and recreational programming to learn independence.
- Objectives: At Trousdale School, our vision is “Learning for Life.” We strive to be an authentic community in which students are empowered to continue learning across all dimensions of their lives, both inside and outside the classroom. Because we emphasize real-world situations and application of knowledge and skills, our educational approach can be termed “life-wide” learning.
United Way of the Ocoee Region
- Mission: To be a community-based organization that leads the efforts in identifying community needs, facilitating collaboration, and maximizing resources to positively impact our community and surrounding area. Our service area includes Bradley and Polk Counties.
- Objectives: To move the needle on issues related to our community’s most pressing needs, including Stable Housing, Transportation, and Access to Quality Childcare & Healthcare.
Unity Center
- Mission: To build hope and opportunity by promoting educational, social and spiritual growth for all.
- Objectives: To provide leadership and success programs including Afterschool program provides homework assistance, art and language education, life skills training and play time for community elementary students, day camps, overnight camps and youth leadership.
Wesley Memorial United Memorial Church Snack Pack Project
- Mission: To serve Cleveland City schools children by providing and packaging food items to distribute to hungry school children on the weekends.
- Objectives: To alleviate food insecurity by providing weekend snack to school children and their families; to cultivate a group of volunteers to serve in this project.
Westwood Baptist Church Park
- Mission: To use our park property as a resource for our church and our community as a gathering place for many families, individuals and organizations of all types.
- Objectives: To update the current playground equipment, gazebo area, and develop the park area with walking trails to allow access for all ages in the community.
WillowBend Farms
- Mission: WillowBend Farms, Inc is a 501c3 non-profit organization with a mission to restore survivors of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and sexual violence.
- Objectives: We are a faith-based, Christ-centered, non-profit organization focused on the restoration of minor and adult survivors of human trafficking to facilitate health in all areas of life including physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, educational, financial, and job skill assessment and partnership.