David and Inez Myers Foundation

David and Inez Myers Foundation

David and Inez Myers established their namesake foundation in 1954, embedding it as a supporting organization of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. The wealth originated from real estate — the Myers family interests were historically linked to Forest City Enterprises, the publicly traded developer behind large-scale mixed-use projects. Today trustee Charles Ratner, former CEO of Forest City, maintains a direct connection to that origin story alongside President S. Lee Kohrman. The foundation pursues an endowment-style investment strategy spanning real estate, private credit, hedge funds, secondaries, and venture capital — with exposure from seed-stage, through growth equity, to distressed debt and mezzanine. The portfolio blends direct co-investments and fund commitments. Geographic focus centers on Cleveland and the broader Midwest, though the investment strategy does not appear to be geographically constrained. Philanthropically, grantmaking concentrates on Jewish community institutions, health and science research, and social-fabric organizations. One verified grantee is Seeds of Literacy, an adult education nonprofit where the foundation sponsors programming alongside Seed Wealth Management, the boutique RIA founded by Jonathan H. Seed. The investment committee operates under the governance of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, making this foundation more akin to a multi-generational endowment than a single-family office. The foundation's size — estimated at $223 million in assets — places it among a cohort of mid-sized regional foundations that are significant local grantmakers but often operate below the threshold of national visibility. No adjacent philanthropic vehicles or DAFs are publicly associated with the foundation, and it has not disclosed a dedicated investment staff separate from Federation management. The structural differentiator is governance, not scale. As a supporting foundation of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, the Myers Foundation pools resources, investment oversight, and grantmaking infrastructure with a larger communal entity. This arrangement provides institutional-quality asset management for a $223 million pool while tying distributions to Federation priorities — a model more common among community foundations than among independent private foundations with wealth-origin legacies like Forest City.