Akron Community Foundation
Urgent Crisis, Enduring Change
Amid a nationwide epidemic, Summit County remains deeply impacted by one of the most pressing public health and safety challenges of our time. With an average of more than two overdoses per day, our community continues to reel from a crisis fueled by prescription opioids and compounded by newer, more complex threats.
Yet even in the face of these grim realities, there is hope. In 2024, Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro announced the creation of the Summit Health and Safety Innovation Fund, a separate, tax-exempt, charitable organization of Akron Community Foundation known as a supporting organization. The fund received its initial contribution of $45 million from the county's opioid litigation settlement funds for the purpose of benefiting the long-term health and safety of Summit County residents.
The creation of a supporting organization will enable the Summit Health and Safety Innovation Fund to have maximum community impact: The fund will be permanently endowed and invested according to an investment policy that is similar to Akron Community Foundation's, but it exists as its own Ohio nonprofit corporation. The fund also has its own governing board of directors charged with management of the organization and grantmaking, among other responsibilities.
By housing this fund at Akron Community Foundation, the county ensured that settlement dollars stay local, support innovation, and adapt to the evolving health and safety challenges facing Summit County for generations to come. Once fully operational, the supporting organization will likely generate more than $1 million in new funding for nonprofits in the community each year.
The fund's first grant cycle is expected to begin in 2027.
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History
The Summit Health and Safety Innovation Fund isn't the county's first collaboration with Akron Community Foundation. Following the opioid litigation settlement in 2019, Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro and a group of stakeholders, including Akron Mayor Shammas Malik and Summit County Public Health, helped assemble the Opiate Abatement Advisory Council, which provides oversight to ensure funding from the settlement goes to Summit County programs that help to abate the opioid epidemic by addressing four priority areas: Harm Reduction, System Coordination, Evidence-Based Prevention and Education.
In 2021, the OAAC established the Summit County Opioid Healing Fund at Akron Community Foundation to support nonprofit organizations that serve residents directly impacted by the opioid epidemic. Since then, the fund has awarded $1.6 million to support programs that help our community respond, rebuild and recover from the opioid epidemic.