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Lee Cruz
Community Outreach Director
Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

Mr. Cruz’s Neighborhood

The Community Foundation’s human ‘glue’ that binds people, ideas and resources together

If you’ve never heard of Eliezer Cruz, Business New Haven’s 2010 Minority Businessperson of the Year, that’s because just about everybody who knows the community outreach director at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven knows him as Lee.

And just about everyone knows him. Cruz has worked professionally in the non-profit arena his entire life — in education, international development, health, housing and the arts. He has been with the Community Foundation for nearly five years, starting his career there working on neighborhood revitalization. Cruz is originally from New York City, attended Wilcox Technical School in Meriden, earned a baccalaureate degree from the University of Rhode Island, and attended graduate school at Brandeis University.

Through international work, Cruz learned that “No place can be viable without a healthy economy.

“You can send people food and provide medical and education supplies literally until the cows come home — but it won’t matter unless you’re helping to build and sustain the local economy,” says Cruz, who allows that disasters on the magnitude of the Haitian earthquake are a different animal.

His success working with neighborhoods led Cruz’s boss at the Foundation, William W. Ginsberg, “to ask me if there were ways to ‘supersize’ the work that I was doing.”

Cruz first thought his boss wanted him to work in more neighborhoods. But “what he really meant was to take the approach taken in the neighborhoods to a broader level.”

Established more than 80 years ago, the Foundation’s mission is based on the principle “that there are good ideas, good people and good resources to benefit our region,” Cruz explains. “A big part of our work is bringing ideas, resources and organizations to make greater New Haven a better place to live, work and play.”

Says Ginsberg, the Foundation’s president and CEO: “Lee’s an extraordinary person. He’s got enormous passion. He’s got an enormous sense of connecting people and connecting people to issues. He lives and breathes what brings people together, whether it’s around environmental issues or people in the neighborhood. He’s just a natural born organizer.”

Ginsberg knew Cruz was special even before he joined the organization “because I had known Lee in prior incarnations — because everyone in New Haven knows Lee.” What Ginsberg saw was “what a good fit that is for the work of the Foundation and the work of community, which is what this Foundation is about.”

Nonprofits, Cruz says, must understand the value of what for-profit companies bring to the table.

“In the first blush it looks like, well, they make money. They’re a place [for non-profits] to get money and donations. It’s not that that’s untrue, but that’s not the only thing — it’s an invisible relationship and nonprofits need to understand that businesses hire the people that are served by their agencies.”

Nonprofits need to communicate to companies that “Our clients are your customers, [and] our clients are possibly your employees,” Cruz says.

The Foundation, he says, also affords “a way to let the community know that you’re concerned with things other than making a dollar — not that it’s not important — but that you have a broader interest and a broader commitment to the community.”

The business community “hires people and generates jobs and revenue, and also nonprofits buy a lot of stuff [from private companies]. They bring money from the federal government, from state government, from private charities, and people’s philanthropic dollars.”



Part of Cruz’s job is to bring these elements together — including working with the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and encouraging nonprofits of the right size and means to join the chamber.

“We’re into long-term community stability and that comes from building and maintaining [local] wealth that helps us through these hard economic times,” says Cruz. “We’re also there for the philanthropic community, which includes the business community, to help them make decisions and choices about where we need to help now to keep our region from having too much of a dip-down — too many homeless people and people needing more services.”

Says Chamber President Anthony Rescigno: “Lee has been an extremely valuable member of the chamber for a lot of years, both in his present capacity working for the Community Foundation and previously. He’s been an active member and plays a very important role on our not-for-profit committee. He’s on the steering committee so he helps guide the committee to put on what I consider excellent programs.”

Last year, Cruz organized an Audubon Street block party with the chamber. “He saw it as a great way to show off the chamber and show off the businesses and organizations that are on Audubon Street,” says Rescigno.

“He’s just a good guy, an asset,” he adds. “He’s community-minded. He’s always thinking about other people and how to make other people look good. I just see him as a real asset to the community.”

Ken Janke, president of Groundworks Initiatives, has not only worked and collaborated with Cruz on a number of projects but is also his neighbor and friend. Janke and his family moved from Dallas to New Haven five years ago.

“Coming to New England was a new adventure for me and my family,” Janke recalls. “We settled in the Fair Haven community along the Quinnipiac River, which is where Lee lives. I always say when you come into a neighborhood or a city, look around to see who are the men of peace of the neighborhood. The first person who jumped out at me, the first person I came in contact with was Lee Cruz. He was quick to welcome and quick to introduce me to other people in the neighborhood and was a tremendous bridge for myself and my family. He helped us to connect with people who became our friends and also connect with civic involvement in our community.”

Adds Janke of his friend: “He works tirelessly trying to make our city a better place. He champions the city at every turn, and as a neighbor who lives close to me, he’s the kind of kind of person I’d want to live next to.”

In order for New Haven to remain competitive within the national and world economies, Cruz believes “We have to be looking at one another — meaning all the towns and cities — as partners, [though] not necessarily equal partners. If we don’t, we risk greater New Haven becoming a dead-end street in the world economy.”

It was in Nicaragua that corporate coach and trainer Millie Grenough met Cruz in 1985. At the time, he was the point person for the New Haven/León Sister City Project and she was co-leading a group of high-schoolers from New Haven schools.

“He received us wonderfully which is, in a way, what he continues doing now,” Grenough recalls. “He’s skilled at putting people together and giving information that’s useful. He had these 14- to 16-year-olds meet with some of the major government officials and really sit across the table and talk with them.

“He maintains his enthusiasm for bringing all kinds of people together in working toward something that is beneficial for all parties,” she adds.



Cruz came to the Community Foundation after being challenged by a staff person there. “This person said, ‘Your ideas and your approach to the work is so much bigger than what can be contained in any one agency [so] I’d like you to consider coming to work at the Community Foundation, where your approach can be shared with multiple organizations.”

The staffer was talking about nonprofits, but it soon became clear to Cruz that it was not just about nonprofits.

“We’re a regional organization that has great potential to be a ‘convener’ of not only money but of ideas and of people — to bring all of these elements together to make greater New Haven a better place. We’re supporting economic development, art, education, and I have started engaging young entrepreneurs about what it means to be citizen/businesspersons in greater New Haven.”

The toughest challenges Cruz has faced are on both sides of the table. “There are knee-jerk reactions from, on the one hand, nonprofits who come from the mindset that ‘We do good work. People who are in business should just automatically recognize that and open their wallets up and just give to us because it’s the right thing,’” Cruz explains. “While it may be true and necessary, it’s not sufficient to get people to understand why they should partner with you.”

On the for-profit side are “the people who have the reaction that ‘Those nonprofits — other than the ones that I know and support — just want a quick buck from you.’”

Cruz also describes opportunities for “cause marketing,” which he explains is “something that makes sense for your business to connect with. There are many examples we’ve found through the chamber of commerce where businesses have come together with nonprofits in a way that makes sense for both sides and give opportunities to move forward economically and socially.”

Cruz says his challenge is “constantly looking for, creating and pointing out where these things have happened.”



To overcome the challenges, Cruz the power of a compelling story to be an agent for change. “You can only be there to help them to make the connection, ready to help them to increase to probability of success when something clicks in their mind because they were inspired by a story.

Says Joel Tolman, director of development and community engagement at Common Ground: “Lee really appreciates the value of powerful stories in creating change. He uses stories to change people's perceptions of New Haven, to make clear what is possible in our small city, and to push people to make commitments and take risks. He also helps to create some pretty remarkable stories. The work he's done in Chatham Square —bringing neighbors together to solve their small and large problems — is impressive stuff.”

His greatest failure, Cruz says, is his inability to see locally for so many years.

“I came back from doing international development work in the late ‘90s. I’d lived here and went away for 12 years to Nicaragua and then came back. I kind of went around to different nonprofits in isolation — in the arts, in housing development,” Cruz recounts. “For ten years I failed to see in New Haven an opportunity for integrated, sustainable development. It wasn’t until I came to the Community Foundation that the light bulb went off over my head to say, ‘Stop dealing with nonprofits bilaterally [and] start thinking in an integrated way. You have to start thinking about what’s the relationship between the social needs and the economic needs of people.”

“Lee connects New Haven,” Tolman says. “He does incredibly important work to bring together the individuals and organizations committed to improve our community. He has a clear sense of what New Haven can be, and the skills to organize people around a common vision. He is also incredibly generous with his talents and stories.

He has, for instance, led remarkable neighborhood walking tours for students in my Documenting New Haven class at Common Ground High School,” Tolman adds. “High school students, like other New Haven residents, are inspired and impressed by his perspective on our city. We are lucky to have him as a friend and neighbor.”