Our Story
LHOI was established as a 501(c)(3) separate corporation in 2012 by a group of leaders from the Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church (LHMBC) as a part of a vision for the church and the surrounding community to create a place with activities and support services that would cater to the specific needs of the neighborhoods. The plan included strengthening and expanding the current outreach ministry work of LHMBC. The plan was to enable LHOI to addresses the social, emotional, physical, mental spiritual and economic well-being needs of the individual and family population in the adjacent and surrounding neighborhoods.
Our mission is to empower families and individuals toward becoming self- sufficient through opportunities that promote the previously stated principles as well as improve and assist in maintaining a healthy, independent and sustainable lifestyle and to maximize their quality of life.
The Lincoln Heights and Woodlawn’s nonprofit community has a long history of leadership, civic engagement, and community impact that is vital to ensuring our communities are vibrant, resilient, and strong. Nonprofits positively and profoundly touch every facet of community life in our community each day. Even more, our own lives are shaped by charitable nonprofits from our earliest days to our golden years. Nonprofits are the faces of our communities. More specifically, faith-based non- profits are a vital partner in neighborhoods as they touch the moral fibers that ultimately form the very character and integrity of neighborhoods and communities.
The Future:
Yet, we also know that building effective, efficient, and sustainable nonprofit organizations is a challenging endeavor even under the best of circumstances in the city of Cincinnati. Many factors contribute to this reality including limited funding sources for capital investment and nonprofit financing, sparse and uneven access to capacity building resources and information, a fragmented voice on public policy matters, and deep isolation due to our geographic layout and low income population density. These factors are often magnified for urban and minority nonprofits which reside outside of more popular, more targeted neighborhoods and represent often more maligned populations with more issues of disenfranchisement and need for socioeconomic empowerment.
LHMBC/LHOI are conscious of the changing demographics in our service area and are committed to growing and adapting to meet the emerging needs of the changing diverse communities.
To strengthen the Lincoln Heights and Woodlawn communities and to address challenges like those noted above, LHMBC/LHOI seeks to engage not only the community, but its stakeholders and many constituents in a process to strengthen individuals and families by providing a space and a place that will embody such a spirit. LHOI supports and provides a much needed infrastructure that organizations and nonprofit leaders can turn to for advocacy, resources, and support. LHOI stands to create and sustain critical public and private infrastructure elements developed by community leaders to support the neighborhoods in such areas such as advocacy, networking, recreation, community health, job readiness and training, youth and senior services and business development through the local Chamber of Commerce and educational training and financing services provided by the Small Business Administration and other local financial institutions. Whether individual or family, neighborhoods greatly benefit from a healthy and accessible support infrastructure that can provide ongoing resources from that support from the early stages of life through later senior years of maturity.