Departments
Ups and downs
By Dustin S. Klein
Smart Business Cleveland | July 2002
(Ups) to Peter Lewis. The retired Progressive Insurance chairman's protest against Case Western Reserve's management problems is a prime example of how to force positive change through one's pocketbook. Let's just hope Lewis' freeze on donations to Cleveland's charitable community until CWRU shows improvement doesn't cause long-term harm to the region's nonprofit world.
(Downs) to Gov. Bob Taft. Taft's desperate attempt to balance Ohio's budget, which not only does little beyond shifting the state's budget crisis to next year, it also raids Ohio's portion of the tobacco settlement and rainy day fund. As a result, Ohio's credit rating has been downgraded from stable to negative. This is a new take on voodoo economics.
(Downs) to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum. Donations are down. Attendance is down. Overall revenue is down. So rather than focus on driving corporate donations and giving donors a reason to give and visitors a reason to come, management cut key positions in fund-raising and education. That protected senior-level executives, whose jobs should have been on the chopping block for letting the Rock Hall's situation deteriorate. It's no wonder the induction ceremonies are held in New York instead of Cleveland.
(Ups) to SBN Magazine's Cleveland staff for garnering three Excellence in Journalism awards. We secured a first place state award for last August's cover story, "Alien's stole my staff!"; and second places for last year's FYI section and Morgan Lewis' November cover story profile on Jim Weaver, "Hard to kill."
