The Fund for Our Economic Future, a collaboration of more than forty funders working to promote economic opportunity in Northeast Ohio, has approved a new three-year, $10 million strategic plan.

The plan, which has received commitments totaling $6 million from local and national grantmakers, is based on the fund's Two Tomorrows regional assessment released earlier this year. Building on the collaborative's fifteen years of work on economic competitiveness issues in the region, the plan codifies its perspective on the actions businesses, nonprofits, and residents of Northeast Ohio must prioritize if the region is to achieve economic growth and greater opportunity for all people.

To that end, the plan calls for local and national organizations to pool their philanthropic resources in support of seven priorities over the next three years: advance growth and opportunity principles region-wide; call attention to systemic racial inclusion as a standalone agenda and embed it within its own processes and strategies; work with local leaders to embed growth and opportunity principles into local strategies; support specific job-creation interventions, with a focus on the region's innovation strengths; support specific job-preparation interventions, including sector-based partnerships that increase opportunities for residents to advance in family-sustaining careers and initiatives aimed at reducing employment barriers; support specific job-access interventions that bring jobs to people through an intentional focus on building employment hubs and that bring people to jobs through innovative worker mobility pilots; and build the strength of the collaborative.

"In the Two Tomorrows, we were candid: Northeast Ohio faces real economic challenges, but there is a path forward," said Fund for Our Economic Future vice president Bethia Burke. "We must choose the path that will lead us to an extraordinary tomorrow. That requires holding growth and opportunity as co-equal propositions and putting aside our individual agendas to work together. We must redefine what we consider to be success and advance efforts that will improve not just job creation in this community, but preparation for and access to jobs."