logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

Can a Nonprofit Save a City?

Jennifer Amanda Jones
September 9, 2013
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

medical-martSeptember 4, 2013; Forbes

As a heart surgeon, Delos M. “Toby” Cosgrove’s first career was to save lives. Today, 73 years old and the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, Cosgrove believes his job is to save the city. Next month, he and others will open the Global Center for Health Innovation, an offshoot of the Cleveland Clinic, which he hopes will make Cleveland a “medical destination city” for healthcare product companies and medical conventions.

The Cleveland Clinic is a state-of-the art, nonprofit, academic medical company boasting 46 buildings, 167 acres, and 42,000 employees. It has offices in Florida and will soon open in Abu Dhabi. Operating income ranges from $250 to $300 million and its assets total $10.5 billion.

Two other smaller, yet also successful hospital systems—University Hospitals of Cleveland and MetroHealth—are located nearby. Together, these medical facilities attract high-quality physicians to a part of the country that is otherwise distressed. As Forbes reports, the city’s “population has plummeted 17 percent to 396,816 between 2000 and 2010, and median income, already low at 66 percent of the national average, fell to 59.6 percent over the same period. Eighty-five percent of the city’s income tax revenue now comes from people who live in the suburbs.”

Over the years, healthcare has had a stabilizing influence on the local economy, but Cosgrove believes he can do better. Cosgrove wants to build a giant mall for hospital buyers. The medical mall would house futuristic showrooms to display and sell the many products hospitals purchase: chairs, medical gear, operating room equipment, wall coverings, air conditioning systems, televisions, and much more. After consulting with potential tenants, Cosgrove’s original ideas were expanded from showrooms to simulation rooms, allowing customers (hospitals) to try out products (such operating room supplies) in a safe setting. Typically, such product sampling takes place in working hospitals. This is disruptive to the hospitals’ daily operations and can be expensive. Simulation rooms in the medical mall would make it easier for buyers to interact with and test out products.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Cosgrove believes the Global Center for Health Innovation will attract healthcare companies to Cleveland and will boost the city’s convention business. County commissioners agreed. They levied a sales tax increase of a quarter-percent to raise the $465 million necessary to develop the medical mall and build a new, 767,000-square-foot convention center next door.

The Center will open in October and has 22 confirmed tenants, including GE Healthcare, Siemens, Philips Health Care, and Cardinal Health. Next door, the convention center is already open and has scheduled 89,395 attendees this year and more than 100,000 next year. It is expected that the $465 million in building costs could be recouped by 2016 in convention center bookings alone.

This has not been an easy process. With convention center business dwindling across the country, there are lingering concerns about how Cleveland’s convention center will fare in the long-term. There have also been numerous stumbling blocks along the way, including local politics.

But, in the end, it’s the scope of Cosgrove’s vision we should be discussing. Cosgrove has gone beyond a myopic, organization- or mission-centered focus many nonprofits adopt. He is looking long-term at not just at his organization or his subsector, but the economics of the city in which it is located. This, he considers, is an “almost patriotic obligation.” If his vision pans out, the impact on Cleveland will be nothing short of transformative.—Jennifer Amanda Jones

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
About the author
Jennifer Amanda Jones

Jennifer Amanda Jones, Ph.D. is the Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management and Leadership at the University of Florida. Her research interests include nonprofit management, philanthropic giving, and social enterprise initiatives. She is a member of Nu Lambda Mu, the international honor society for nonprofit scholars. Prior to her academic career, Dr. Jones was involved in research projects benchmarking the nonprofit sector in San Diego and in the State of California. Additionally, Dr. Jones has spent more than 15 years working with nonprofit organizations of various types and sizes. She also served on the board of directors for a community foundation.

More about: Board GovernanceBusiness Nonprofit HybridsHealth EquityNonprofit News

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

Spring-2023-sidebar-subscribe
You might also like
A Growing Movement of Sabbaticals for BIPOC Leaders
Nineequa Blanding
HLTH 2022: Obstacles to Health Equity
Sonia Sarkar
Leaders Say Public Health Ethics Is Necessary for Social Justice
Nineequa Blanding
How do water shutoffs impact low-income communities?
Iris Crawford
Slow Food Wants to Bring Justice, Education, and Joy to the Food Experience
Brandy Collins
Art Is a Catalyst for Healing
Nineequa Blanding

NPQ Webinars

April 27th, 2 pm ET

Liberatory Decision-Making

How to Facilitate and Engage in Healthy Decision-making Processes

Register Now
You might also like
A Growing Movement of Sabbaticals for BIPOC Leaders
Nineequa Blanding
HLTH 2022: Obstacles to Health Equity
Sonia Sarkar
Leaders Say Public Health Ethics Is Necessary for Social...
Nineequa Blanding

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

NPQ-Spring-2023-cover

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.