Four Northeast Ohio nonprofits that help children, families and young people find stable housing and build financial skills will share $22,500 in new grants from the Union Home Foundation, the Strongsville-based charitable arm of Union Home Mortgage announced on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in a release distributed by PR Newswire.
The Northeast Ohio awards were the Ohio centerpiece of the foundation’s third-quarter 2026 round, which gave $67,000 in total to 11 nonprofits in seven states, according to the Union Home Foundation announcement via PR Newswire. The foundation said it chose organizations in its operational footprint that are making a tangible impact through financial literacy and housing access, the two priorities at the center of its mission.
The largest Northeast Ohio grant in the round went to Hope Ignites Northeastern Ohio in Garfield Heights, which received $10,000. The foundation said the money will support financial literacy education from middle school through career launch, so the young people Hope Ignites serves can learn to make well-informed, responsible financial decisions as youth, as young adults, and throughout their lives, according to the announcement.
In Berea, OhioGuidestone received $5,000 for the Berea Children’s Home. The foundation described that home, in its PR Newswire announcement, as a specialized residential program that provides trauma-informed care to children and adolescents with complex trauma, mental health needs, academic struggles, and severe emotional and behavioral concerns that prevent them from living safely at home. For families in Cuyahoga County and beyond, the grant supports care that is residential, sustained and focused on helping young people stabilize.
In Cleveland, The City Mission received $5,000 for Rothstein Village Transitional Housing for Families. The foundation said Rothstein Village helps women and children who are transitioning to stable housing through financial education, case management, and pathways to long-term housing and homeownership. That combination — a place to live now, plus coaching and case support toward a permanent home — is exactly the kind of step-by-step stability the foundation says it looks for.
Also in Cleveland, Benjamin Rose received $2,500 for homeownership education programs. According to the foundation’s announcement, those programs help older individuals and families achieve housing stability through homebuyer education, rental counseling, and financial capability training. Together, the Cleveland grants span the housing journey at different ages and stages, from transitional housing for mothers and children to counseling that helps older adults stay housed or become homeowners.
“The work being done by these nonprofits goes beyond meeting immediate needs – they are creating long-term stability and success,” Bill Cosgrove, CEO of Union Home Mortgage, said in the Union Home Foundation announcement distributed by PR Newswire. Courtney Cook, executive director of the Union Home Foundation, offered a similar view in the same PR Newswire announcement: “The incredible impact these organizations have on their community and the people they serve is inspiring,” she said in that release, adding that their dedication to creating opportunities for stability and growth is exactly what the foundation looks for when selecting grant recipients.
The foundation has been building that record for more than a decade. Established in 2015 as the charitable arm of Union Home Mortgage Corp., it says in its PR Newswire announcement that it has distributed more than $2 million to nonprofits in more than 23 states since its inception. Its mission is to equip families to achieve economic self-sufficiency, specifically through financial literacy and housing.
That local giving comes from a lender rooted in Northeast Ohio. Union Home Mortgage, headquartered in Strongsville in Cuyahoga County, is described in the foundation’s announcement as a high-growth, full-service retail, wholesale and consumer direct lender with more than 200 branches across the United States. In this round, the company’s home region accounted for four of the 11 recipients nationally — a concentration that puts Cuyahoga County nonprofits at the center of a national announcement, rather than at its edge.
One additional Ohio organization was funded outside Northeast Ohio. In Sandusky, Volunteers of America Ohio & Indiana received $10,000 for Crossroads Shelter, which the foundation said provides emergency housing and wraparound services for families experiencing homelessness. The other recipients were in Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina, according to the PR Newswire announcement.
Read together, the grants form a continuum rather than four isolated checks. A middle-school student in Hope Ignites is learning money skills years before a first paycheck; a child at Berea Children’s Home is receiving trauma-informed care; a mother at Rothstein Village is working toward a permanent home; and an older Clevelander in a Benjamin Rose program is getting counseling to stay stable. Each meets people at a different point, around the same idea: stability that lasts beyond an immediate need.
What happens next is the work itself. The four Northeast Ohio recipients will put the funds toward the specific programs named by the foundation — financial literacy education at Hope Ignites, residential care at Berea Children’s Home, transitional housing at The City Mission, and homeownership education at Benjamin Rose — rather than toward general operations in the abstract. The foundation directs readers who want to learn more about its giving to its website, listed in the PR Newswire announcement as uhm.com/foundation, where future grant information is posted. For the families those dollars will reach in Berea, Cleveland and Garfield Heights, the announcement on November 3 is the start of that next round of classes, counseling and care.
Photo: Erik Drost, CC BY