[1] He was active in New York City politics[2] and was president of Phelps Dodge mining and served as "adviser and financier" to Woodrow Wilson.

His other son, Bayard Dodge, became president of the American University of Beirut (formerly, Syrian Protestant College) in 1923.

[5] In 1915, the American ambassador in Turkey, Henry Morgenthau Sr., called for urgent humanitarian aid for the Armenian people who were being threatened with annihilation.

[6] Government facilities were placed at their disposal and the following year a national fund raising campaign was organised by President Wilson.

Cleveland was one of the largest financial backers for Wilson's presidential campaign and enlisted contributions from many of his former classmates and sympathetic Princeton trustees.

In addition to his steadfast work with the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (which became the Near East Relief Committee (1919)), Cleveland's philanthropic interests included the YMCA, Princeton, American Red Cross, New York Museum of Natural History, the New York Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Zoo, Botanical Garden and several colleges in the Near East.

He established the Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation in 1917 with an initial funding of five million dollars, wanting to give money away that came to him during the war years.

Next came a seventy footer called Hester followed by Corona, a yacht built in 1893 as Colonia to defend the America's Cup although she failed to be selected.

[9] Cleveland made a gift to Princeton of a bronze sculpture of his dead brother, W. Earl Dodge, called The Christian Student, which had been commissioned by Cleveland from Daniel Chester French, and showed his brother in sports clothing with books under his arms and academic gown over his shoulder.