“The Neighborhood House has been supporting West End residents for over 55 years. We are now more than ever looking to our future. Much of our past and current funding has come from granters. Because improvements are needed to allow our programs to grow and be contemporary, we need greater individual donor support.  We have both building and programmatic needs.

Building Needs Needed are funds and equipment to supplement our grants to expand and update our kitchen to allow, for example, use for food production for larger community events and for teaching cooking and nutrition classes.

Our Lower Level Multipurpose room has had several updates including addition of walls and dividers (during our 2015 Reds Community Makeover) and waterline repair and new floor (via the 2017 Neighborhood Enhancement Program). To make the space optimally useful for a wide variety of community events, our accompanying lower level bathrooms and locker rooms also need refreshing. A chair lift would be ideal to help elderly and disabled residents access to our Lower Level space.

In 2017, we received a grant from the State of Ohio to expand our Trauma Center to a nearby building on Freeman Avenue. We had previously used this building as our administrative offices. Since moving out of that space, the building has fell into disrepair. Funds are needed to repair the building. Once repaired, our current grant will support its updating and repurposing as a Trauma Center.

Program Needs We have six general program areas and grant funding supports nearly all our programs. However, there are still needs. For example, we increasingly have students and residents wanting to offer their support for our organization. To help us best leverage these valuable resources, we need a Volunteer Coordinator to develop a Volunteer Training Program and schedule volunteer opportunities. Our current staff currently works very hard to meet the need but could expand and tailor offerings if a coordinator were present to support them.

In addition, we are working diligently to better measure our outcomes so that we can improve our programs and share our successes with grantors and donors. We want to ensure we are accountable to our donors and grantors, that we are achieving our mission and that we will achieve our vision. To this end, we would like to implement systems to measure our program use and successes. We need support to purchase and implement these systems and train our staff in their use.

As always, we need supplies. For our Back to School events, we need school supplies. For our Thanksgiving and Holiday events, we need holiday food items and gifts for our neediest families. For our Emergency Food Pantry, we need boxed and canned goods. We would also like to have hygiene products such as tooth paste and tooth brushes, feminine products, razors, soap, and lotions. New and gently used clothing donations and small furniture items are welcome. Please call before delivering furniture.