Welcome
Posted February 18, 2009 // 1 Comments // add yours
By Grant Oliphant
Welcome to Community E-Forum, The Pittsburgh Foundation’s new blog. If you are someone who shares our mission to make this community a better place for us all, we hope you will visit – and comment – here often.
I was privileged to be hired as The Pittsburgh Foundation’s President and CEO almost a year ago. I came into this role with high aspirations, both for the foundation and for the community we serve.
I believed then, as I still do, that Pittsburgh is at a critical point, a defining moment. The evidence is all around us – from the reform efforts underway in the Pittsburgh Public Schools to the rejuvenation of our downtown, from the region’s leadership in green building to the extraordinary reinvention of our riverfronts. This is a community that is coming to believe in itself again and in the possibility of bold change.
But there are major challenges, too: a struggling economy, racial inequity, fragmented government, entrenched bureaucracies, schools that should be better. The problems we face here are not unique, but they are real. And any hope we have of reaching our true potential lies in our willingness to confront them head on.
The metaphor of the tipping point is overused, but I believe that’s where we find ourselves: at a tipping point between opportunity and decline. What people forget about tipping points is that pushing past them requires great energy, and that the price of timidity is backsliding into a previous state. Transformation requires courage, commitment and passion.
So as I came into my new role a year ago, my hope for The Pittsburgh Foundation was that we would be a source of those transformative qualities. The foundation’s board and staff shared that vision. Collectively, we wanted to help this community push past its lingering resistance to change and tip forward into a new era of possibility.
Nothing that has happened in the last year has dissuaded us from that hope. The economic downturn was a major blow, for us as for everyone. But we believe this would be the worst possible time for Pittsburgh, or its community foundation, to abandon its higher ambitions.
Yes, we have a crisis to deal with, and our community will deal with it. At The Pittsburgh Foundation, we have responded by taking strong action: joining with the United Way to launch the Neighbor-Aid Fund, partnering with the Forbes Funds to better understand how the downturn is affecting critical nonprofit agencies, collaborating with community foundations in five cities on a report detailing the downturn’s impact on human services in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and even meeting with the White House and Members of Congress to ensure the stimulus bill helps those most in need.
But even as Pittsburgh responds to this crisis, we must not let it define us. When this difficult time ends – and it will – we still will aspire to be a community where the water is safe, the air breathable, the schools excellent, the arts strong, and the opportunities shared by everyone. The task for us now is to respond to a short-term challenge in a way that also protects our long-term future.
The foundation’s response to the economic crisis has been designed to do just that. We are directing resources to agencies serving those in greatest need, but we are also standing with organizations whose missions we consider critical to creating a brighter future.
This strong, balanced response is emblematic of how we hope The Pittsburgh Foundation will operate in the years to come. We plan to develop a more interactive, transparent and collaborative relationship with our donors and the community at large. We will offer up the Foundation as the ‘go-to’ resource for philanthropy in our region. We will strengthen partnerships with funding organizations and community leaders around issues that are pivotal to Pittsburgh’s future. And we will provide leadership on tough challenges and bold solutions, such as the extraordinary Pittsburgh Promise.
We want to ensure that the Pittsburgh we know and love has the impetus and energy to be a place of hope and promise for all its citizens, and for our children, grandchildren and generations to come. We are currently working on an array of strategic initiatives that will help us achieve this goal, and I look forward to sharing the details of these with you in the months ahead. We also welcome your ideas about what you would like to see in your community foundation, and in Pittsburgh. We look forward to hearing from you.
Grant Oliphant
President & CEO
The Pittsburgh Foundation
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DEAR SIR
GREATINGS TO YOU IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
DEAR BROTHER
WE ARE VERY HAPPY TO READ YOUR WEB PAGE ABOUT YOU WORK
NOW WE ARE PRAYING FOR YOU GOD USE YOU MORE AND MORE IN HIS KINDOM TO HELP POOR CHILDREN AND FAMELIY
THANK YOU GOD BLESS YOU
TSD
Comment by REV.T.S.DANIEL // March 23, 2009