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Hopefully, the hyperventilating over the Cleveland Foundation’s reduced support for the Future Fund will move to figuring out “What’s next?”

Here’s what we know:

The Cleveland Foundation will not outsource its economic development budget. It does not want to hand over a major slice of its economic development budget to a the Fund, headed by the president of the Gund Foundation.

The Cleveland Foundation badly fumbled the public explanation of its move. It could have effectively made the case that the Future Fund is a regional effort, and that after priming the pump, it was time for others in the region to step forward. The Cleveland Foundation could make the case that the Future Fund needs a sustainability plan beyond initial start-up funds (just like any other grantee).

The Future Fund handles the press better than the Cleveland Foundation. No surprise here. Abbott and Brent Larkin share a professional and personal bond that goes way back.

Neither the Future Fund nor the Cleveland Foundation leverages Web 2.0 effectively. The Cleveland Foundation’s failure to embrace new media means that it is hostage to the perceptions drawn by the press. If the Cleveland Foundation is worried about its image, quit complaining and do something about it. The Future Fund has never effectively engaged the region in an on-going strategy, despite its heavily promoted Voices and Choices. (Voices and Choices was the big Greek wedding, and little more.)

The Future Fund isn’t as collaborative or as open as it said it was. It’s probably time for the Future Fund’s leaders to stop promoting themselves this way — a nationally recognized collaboration, blah, blah, blah — and start focusing on the issues of strategy and governance that led to the blow-up.

The Cleveland Foundation did not kick the Future Fund to the curb. It’s still providing support, albeit not much. Larkin is certainly over the top when he writes, the the Foundation “kicked regional collaboration in the teeth “. This is the type of inflammatory commentary that does no one any good. The fact is that the Cleveland Foundation provided major support for the Future Fund over the last number of years. Without the Cleveland Foundation’s early support, there would be no Future Fund.

The Cleveland Foundation’s president needs to take a breather (and a course in handling public relations would probably help). As a real estate developer with strong interests downtown, Goldberg stands to benefit from the Foundation’s refocusing in Cleveland. Absent any public statement of broader interest or strategy, people will assume that Goldberg is more worried about Goldberg than the Foundation. (His petulance does not bode well for the Foundation.)

It’s time for the Cleveland Foundation and the Future Fund to step back and define their new direction clearly. The Future Fund should focus on developing its connections to higher education…major drivers of both talent and innovation. To get more professional focus, Ronn Richards would do well to hire his friend at Angelou Economics to give voice to the Foundation’s new direction.

It’s time to move on.

Continuing this pie fight does no one any good.

Here’s a place to start on a new path: How about the two organizations focusing their attention on a set of regional principles for collaboration?

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