Dear Jon,

Congratulations for your new career opportunity.

For longer than I have been associated with the CRCPO you have served as a key resource for the environmental organizations in the region, the Great Lakes and the Nation. The mission of the George Gund Foundation has been well served by your work.

You provided unique leadership by seeing and promoting opportunities, in connecting organizations, and in providing wise counsel along with grant support.

Your support to CRCPO for our operations, environmental collaborations, workshops, communications and outreach and our CLEERTEC Initiative provided critical resources as we focused and strengthened our mission on behalf of the Cuyahoga River.

I know many other organizations in our region can also speak eloquently about the effectiveness of your leadership and support to their work as well. We are all losing a gifted and unique friend to our region. You will be missed.

Please accept my heartfelt thanks for a job well done. Best wishes to you in your new duties.

Jon  - you have been a wonderful force in Cleveland's movement towards sustainability, changing brownfields to greenspace, linking neighborhoods through trails, and developing buildings with creative, green design principles. You have asked the right questions, nudged the right people, brought new ideas to practitioners and been open to new thought around a variety of issues and projects. We will miss you and the leadership you provided. With all best wishes.  Bobbi Reichtell

I owe Jon an enormous debt of gratitude -- he is single-handedly responsible for my career to date in Cleveland. 

1.    Before I had met Jon, he was funding the national "transportation-for-livable-communities" reform work of the Surface Transportation Policy Project in Washington DC (where I had an internship in my final semester of undergrad in 1994).  Because of his funding for STPP's research work, they were able to send me home to Cleveland with a year of paid work.

2.  With financial stability provided by that job, I also began to do local advocacy work for transit, bicycling, and sustainable urban land use.  Jon funded my "bike racks on buses/ bike-on-rail" campaign via Earth Day Coalition, and provided funding for my "Transit-Oriented Development" committee via CNDC.

3.   A few years later, after a year of overseas travels, I returned to Cleveland and was feeling lost and disillusioned with the City.  Jon offered me a paid internship at the Gund Foundation and gave me the freedom to pursue whatever interested me for more than six months.  If not for this, I would have likely given up and moved permanently to the west coast.

4.   Jon connected me to his fellow board member from a national wildlife nonprofit - a photographer who hired me to lug his gear through Cuba, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Martinique, etc.  A once-in-a-lifetime experience!

5.   In 1999, Jon provided a grant via EcoCity Cleveland to support my idea of creating a "Car-Free in Cleveland guidebook".

6.   From 2000-2006 I did transportation advocacy work at EcoCity Cleveland.  Jon's grantmaking to EcoCity provided the annual core of that budget.  Throughout these years he continued to support my work, as well as the sustainable transportation work of many others in the midwest and nationally.

7.   Most recently I have started a car-sharing company with the aim of helping people to live in the city without owning a car.  Jon has expressed enthusiasm for getting the Gund Foundation to sign up as a customer, and for spreading the word among other tenants in their building. (Wait!  Don't go yet, Jon!)

I couldn't have followed my passion for improving city living and the quality of Cleveland's transportation choices without Jon's enthusiastic longtime support. 

Thank you Jon!  Best of luck in your new adventure.

Ryan McKenzie, founder
CityWheels car-sharing
www.myCityWheels.com
216.795.2345

Thanks Jon, for all you’ve done to stimulate positive change in the region. You’re a visionary with the practical sense of someone who’s been in ‘the trenches’ and knows what it takes to make a non-profit successful. You’ve challenged your grantees to build capacity and ‘get out of the basement’, (an endearing reference to adult kids who are still dependent on Mom and Dad), and eventually cutting ties to your funding. Back in the nineties, you saw the potential for a regional land trust and funded activities by the Northeast Ohio Land Trust Coalition, later to be incarnated as the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. And you saw the value in supporting local and regional conservation planning, as a catalyst for new partnerships and synergy in land protection. You’re leaving a wonderful legacy in Northeast Ohio, and you’ll be missed. Good luck and take care!

In 1995 Jon Jensen made a grant to an all volunteer land trust called Chagrin River Land Conservancy. That grant made possible the hiring of CRLC's first employee. Since then Jon and the Gund Foundation have had a continuous and transforming effect on land conservation efforts in the region. Their support helped to fund the largest ever merger of land trusts (8) in 2006, which merger created Western Reserve Land Conservancy. Jon's constant support in so many ways (the funding and so much more) had a great positive effect on our land conservation mission, and it is fair to say that without his leadership our community of conservationists would be vastly lesser. Jon, you are exceptional, and we wish you all the best!

He also coined a new phrase for me, which I love and will share with him as an anecdote. Many of us always wondered how Jon could posssibly be so many places and do so many things and never be rushed or flustered. We'd see him at the City Club one day and in
Denver the next day at a national rally, etc. One day I told him I had back to back to back to back meetings. He said, "I hope they are not scheduled like Star Trek meetings. That's when you have to be in Cleveland from 1 - 2 pm, and then you have a 2 pm meeting in
Akron. Some people think they can just beam me up."

When Holly first approached ShoreBank Enterprise Cleveland to be fiscal agent for start-up E4S, I must admit I was concerned that money that came through us to E4S could impact the support the Foundation was giving to our organization. However, Jon was quick to reassure us that not only did he view this funding separate from our organizational support, but he expressed gratitude to SEC for being willing to serve as their fiscal agent. It is because of Jon that, today, I am able to proudly say that SEC "incubated" E4S for a number of years until it was able to spin off on its own. Thank you Jon for your vision, wisdon, enthusiasm, and belief in E4S; that kind of support is priceless!

For a bugs and plant guy, Jon, you sure knew how to support the dream of creating a network of business leaders who wanted to implement sustainability.  Without your support and guidance there would not be an E4S. Thanks for believing in the possibilities and thanks for believing in me! Many blessings in the creation of your new stories in Ithaca. Cheers to the many stories we will share about your time here in Cleveland. See you Tuesday, August 21. Let the stories begin!