A Toledo-based foundation is awarding 23 grants valued at $520,900 as part of a first-time distribution for the newly formed organization.

The funding from the John Henry Eldred Jr. Foundation includes money that will go to Connecting Kids to Meals, a nonprofit organization that provides hot, nutritious meals to kids at no cost.

“When we think of the $25,000 that they provided to us, that means they've helped us to be able to serve 50,000 meals to kids in our community, said Wendi Huntley, CEO at Connecting Kids to Meals. “Now, we serve about 700,000 meals so the magnitude of what they've done is huge.”

Overall, the foundation's grants assist with youth education, tackling food insecurity, and supporting housing stability, said Kate Blake, the foundation's president and executive director.

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Toledo, Toledo Lucas County Homelessness Board, the YWCA of Northwest Ohio, Lucas Housing Services Corp., Toledo Public Schools Foundation, and the Library Legacy Foundation of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library are among the 23 recipients. The funding breakdown was not specified in the grant announcement.

With many children dealing with an abundance of issues such as violence, domestic violence, social media, bullying and suicidal thoughts, Connecting Kids to Meals wants to eliminate the stress of hunger.

“We'll take this off their plate,” Ms. Huntley said. “For us to be able to say ‘Look, one thing you don't have to worry about in this community is figuring out where you're going to get a meal because we have sites everywhere,’ that is what makes our work important."

“But it allows for the funders like the John Henry Eldred Jr. Foundation to see what their dollars are doing,” she said. “They know that their dollars are actually impacting kids.”

Additionally, through a discretionary budget, the foundation is able to give a very select number of grants based on extraordinary need. Not only did the foundation provide a grant for meals, through the use of its discretionary fund, it also helped the agency to acquire a box truck.

“We serve within about a 45-minute radius of Toledo,” Ms. Huntley said. “And when you're serving in other regions, you're trying to take the maximum number of meals for multiple sites because you're so far away from your home base. And to do that effectively, we needed the box truck.”

The agency had previously been renting and borrowing vehicles and was in need of a commercial vehicle.

“This relieves the stress on our organization and helps us do a number of things that are needed as it relates to our programmatic work,” Ms. Huntley said. “I was completely blown away that they were so generous to really help us to do that. This is what is needed in our community because there's so many families that are struggling.”

“The more that we have the support of a community like the John Eldred Jr. Foundation to help us to do this work, the more work we're going to be able to do,” she added.

The John Henry Eldred Jr. Foundation’s roots date back to 2012. It had been known as the Dorothy Louise Kyler Foundation, named in honor of the mother of John Eldred. However, the following year after his 2021 death, the foundation’s board unanimously voted to rename the foundation in his honor.

“He was really, just a nice, humble, quiet guy and didn't necessarily want people to know his name, but we feel like the gift he's giving the city should be acknowledged,” Ms. Blake said of her stepfather.

Mr. Eldred and the foundation started by supporting small and rural libraries in low-income communities, particularly in providing materials for their children's departments. “But as he became more successful and the foundation grew, he expanded his giving to Toledo and the rural areas surrounding it,” Ms. Blake said.

A foundation grant enables the Cherry Street Mission to further its effort to eliminate homelessness.

“For us, it's great for people who need emergency services to have a safe place to come, to have a bed, to have a shower and get a great meal,” Cherry Street Mission president and CEO Ann Ebbert said. “For any individual that comes to use the services at the mission, this is how that grant ties into our overarching mission.”

“The Eldred grant is directly for our workforce development division where individuals can enter into training classes that are short-term certificates,” Ms. Ebbert said.

They can make their way toward earning a livable wage in fields such as welding, tool and die, auto mechanics, introduction to building trades, and carpentry, she said. She said other opportunities include office specialist classes with a heavy emphasis on computer technology, and culinary arts and manufacturing.

The Rogers High School Community Hub received a grant under the youth education category. “So the way we're going to use this educational opportunities grant is to provide incentives to expand our intern team at Rogers through incentives for the interns,” said Josh Davies, director of the hub school.

A project, Strengthening Students Support, will work to support interns whose work will, in turn, help to support Rogers’ students. The interns receive professional development opportunities through training, workshops, and conferences, he said.

“And we've also built in a wellness component because a lot of interns, they're unpaid internships,” Mr. Davies said. “We're going to have some funds that are dedicated to activities that promote wellness and prevent burnout. Because you can't pour from an empty vessel, we want our interns to be taken care of.”

The John Henry Eldred Jr. Foundation’s success is linked to local company, Midwest Tape, in which Mr. Eldred was a partner. The Holland company is a full-service media distributor, working exclusively with public libraries since 1989.

“Part of his gift to the foundation was actually interest in the company, so some of the residuals from that goes into the foundation. In some ways, Midwest has then become a supporter,” Ms. Blake said.

In previous years, the foundation would seek out projects to fund.

“We decided if we were going to step up our giving that we could probably have a bigger impact if people were able to talk to us about the things they wanted to do and the projects they wanted to have, and solicit money,” Ms. Blake said.