by Grant Oliphant
President and CEO

The recent announcement by Essential Public Media regarding the future format of 90.5, the former WDUQ, has reignited the community debate on what the station could and should be.  I think it is important to take a broader view of this debate or as we say count our blessings.

First, it is important to celebrate that 90.5 has been saved as a public asset that will benefit this community.  When Duquesne University announced the pending sale of WDUQ, there was a real danger that the station would be sold to a private buyer and that news and jazz programming would disappear from the dial in favor of secular programming interests.

University officials should be commended for exercising patience and working with a variety of interested parties to obtain an arrangement that has the best interests of our community, the University and the students at heart.

Pittsburgh’s jazz community should also be proud. You have taken an active role in shaping the future of 90.5 and ensuring that Pittsburgh has a diverse art and cultural scene.  I can say that the new management has heard you and that is represented in the programs they are seeking to put in place to deliver and expand jazz programming offers that will benefit our community as well as other communities.

We can’t ignore the drastic changes to our national media landscape and the importance of our citizens having access to reliable, trusted, and unbiased information.  The new 90.5 will rise to meet this challenge in our community by becoming a source for national, regional and local news.  Pittsburgh is one of only two markets in the top 35 that does not have an all news public radio station.

With any change there will always be discontent, bumps in the road, and uncertainty.  I urge you to give the new management a chance as they are trying to do the right thing for the future sustainability of 90.5 FM while honoring the heritage of jazz programming that it offered.  Providing a non-partisan expanded source of local news and information while developing digital tools for jazz programming, the new 90.5 will grow into an even stronger asset for our community.

By Yvonne Cook
President of the Highmark Foundation

The Highmark Foundation believes that investing in and addressing the oral health and dental care of individuals, as well as the safety net providers who care for them, will greatly benefit Pennsylvania. In December 2008, a total of $1.87 million in foundation grants was awarded to 20 non-profit dental care safety net providers in communities served by Highmark Inc., its affiliates and subsidiaries. The purpose of the grants was to build capacity among safety net providers to deliver quality dental care that is coordinated, accessible and evidence based. Additional goals were to help providers measure and track the quality of services provided and implement patient self-management strategies that would improve oral hygiene behavior.

The grantees demonstrated unique approaches in expanding access to care. While some literally took to the road to provide care, others implemented unique partnerships to reach patients who traditionally would not have access to care. With the help of a $75,000 grant in 2008, the Lehigh Valley’s new Miles of Smiles mobile dental clinic travels daily to four Allentown elementary schools and social service organizations where low-income children and some adults receive treatment.

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By Grant Oliphant
President & CEO
The Pittsburgh Foundation

I want to thank our nonprofit organizations for doing work that is some of the most important, if also undervalued and least appreciated, in America today. I want to thank them for educating our children, caring for our seniors, mentoring our students, tending to our sick, feeding our hungry, giving opportunity to our disadvantaged.

I want to thank them for inspiring our ailing and aching spirits with art, music, poetry, dreams of community, examples of hope and transformation.

I want to thank them, too, for all the money that they save us, by keeping our young from falling into trouble, by giving them a way out when they do, by giving them the education they need to compete in a harshly competitive world.

I want to thank them for all the money that they save us, too, by taking those of us who never learned to provide for ourselves and teaching us how, by keeping those of us whose only sin has been to grow old or sick out of institutions, by caring for those of us who suffer with mental illness and giving us safe haven, by granting us refuge when we have been battered and our homes are unsafe, by encouraging us to invest more in schools than we do in prisons.

I want to thank them for all the things they do every single today to make this community a better place, a richer place, and a more financially sensible place.

I am not a partisan. I share the conviction that many in government today hold so dear that our country and our state must stop borrowing from our children and start living within our means. They are right about that, and it is time we all acknowledged that.

And I believe our sector owes it to the communities we serve to work with government to promote smart reforms that lower the cost of delivering the services we all know are so vitally important.

But if we are serious about that, if we are serious about living within our means, truly serious, then surely we must be willing to look at every available option to help right this fiscal ship of ours.

I understand the mantra that we are broke. But repeated ad nauseum as it has been, it risks becoming a self-defeating and self-fulfilling prophecy. Being broke does not equate with having no choices. It does not equate with being morally bankrupt.

Being broke does not mean we have to sacrifice who we are as a community or as a people. And it certainly does not mean we should cut the very investments that make us more productive, more competitive and more sustainable as a society.

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“ Summit II: Homeless Education Network, Collaborations and Models.”
Educational Rights for Youth Experiencing Homelessness

On April 8, 2011 at The Rivers Club in downtown Pittsburgh, the Homeless Children’s Education Fund will be holding an event titled, “ Summit II: Homeless Education Network, Collaborations and Models.”

The Summit will provide an update on the educational challenges and obstacles facing children and youth who are homeless, addressing those challenges from national, state, and local perspectives.

Barbara Duffield, Policy Director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, will be speaking on the fundamentals of education for the growing number of children experiencing homelessness in the country.  According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty “Families with young children now account for 40% of the nation’s homeless population and in the course of the year, more than 1.3 million children are experiencing homelessness.”

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Our community’s health can be measured by our success at caring for our vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, especially children and youth and the elderly. So it was heartwarming to hear about Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s initiative to establish Pittsburgh as a city of service.

Supported with grants of $200,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Mayor has enrolled Pittsburgh as one of 17 cities, including New York, to establish and promote volunteerism and youth mentoring programs among our citizens.

Under the banner of ‘ServePGH,’ he is calling for Pittsburghers to join programs to help young people and contribute to the city’s revitalization through volunteerism designed to encourage the continued development of healthy neighborhoods. The Mayor has promised to get involved personally as a mentor, and he’s giving all city employees two hours of paid leave each week to do likewise.

Volunteerism and youth mentoring are two-way streets, benefiting both those giving their time and individuals receiving help. It also sets new dynamics in motion that enliven and invigorate a community, and we have come to understand the beneficial results of that as ‘doing well by doing good.’

Pittsburgh prides itself on its sense of community, supporting the notion that self-esteem is earned by doing esteemable things. It is more critical than ever that we inspire and encourage our families, friends and coworkers to participate as nonprofits continue to struggle to meet ever-increasing demand for their services with ever-depleting resources.

Congratulations to Mayor Ravenstahl. This initiative will serve to help build a better community now and for the future, further enhancing Pittsburgh’s reputation as a premier city to live and work.

Grant Oliphant
President and CEO
The Pittsburgh Foundation

By Grant Oliphant
President & CEO

Many of you may wonder why our organization, as our region’s community foundation, has embarked on an ambitious program to develop an on-line platform designed to safeguard and strengthen independent local journalism.

Our thinking – and that of many of our United States counterparts, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation which has helped to fund our initiative – lies in the dramatic changes to our national media landscape that continue apace, aided by ever-advancing technology.

In Pittsburgh we are fortunate to still have a strong newspaper presence, although even here the resources to undertake deep investigative journalism are increasingly scarce. Many other parts of the U.S. are less fortunate. Newspapers have ceased operating altogether or limp along with drastically reduced editorial staffs and resources, baring little resemblance to the bold journalistic traditions that historically have contributed so significantly to the health and vitality of our communities.

“Knowledge is power,” as activist Robin Morgan famously remarked many years ago. And it is just as important today that our citizens have access to trusted, reliable and unbiased information that enables them to make better-informed decisions and choices which in turn contribute to our community’s well-being.

Working with our partner in this initiative, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, it is our hope that our on-line news initiative will follow the successes of similar web-based ventures that have been and are being developed across the U.S. We hope also that as an independent resource, it will work collaboratively with local broadcasting and print media and help to strengthen overall the delivery of local news while cultivating broad citizen engagement and participation.

It remains to be seen whether nationally the newspaper business model manages to adapt and evolve to the challenges of the digital age. In the meantime, our role is to help ensure that our community continues to be served with the information and transparency on which it depends to support a vibrant democracy.

For more information:

On Monday, March 7, 2011 the Homeless Children’s Education Fund will be hosting its 12th Annual Champions for Children Benefit at the Rivers Club in One Oxford Centre, Downtown Pittsburgh.

It will be a time of great celebration as we honor Pittsburgh Steeler defensive end Brett Keisel and Sarah Keisel as the recipients of our 2011 Champions for Children Award. Executive Director Joann English, Sojourner House, and Sojourner House MOMS are to receive the Linda A. Dickerson Award.

Robert Fragasso, CEO and Chairman of Fragasso Financial Advisors, is the Event Chair and Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania Chairman Ralph Papa and Ruth Anne Papa are our honorary Hosts. We wish to welcome you as we celebrate our heroes for children with a night of fine wine and food pairings provided by Rivers Club’s Chef Jim Gelzheise as well as sweets provided by local chocolatiers. All proceeds will directly support the educational programming that provides “hope through learning” for the children experiencing homelessness in Allegheny County this year.

 To learn more, contact Zach at 412-562-0154 or zmarsh@homelessfund.org.

The Homeless Children’s Education Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1999 by Dr. Joseph F. Lagana and has since been dedicated to raising the general public’s awareness of the difficulties that children experiencing homelessness endure. Central to our commitment to the children’s academic success are the HCEF Learning Centers’ housed within our partnering transitional and bridge housing, as well as in emergency shelters.

The Homeless Children’s Education Fund also provides multiple opportunities for adults, youths, and children to advocate for families experiencing homelessness and for the educational rights of the children affected.

To learn more about the Homeless Children’s Education Fund, please visit our website at www.homelessfund.org.

by Grant Oliphant
President & CEO

Bravo to WQED for joining the effort to save funding for public media from the budget axe. Public media are an essential voice in our nation’s and community’s civic dialogue. If public media outlets won’t step up to make that case, who will?

Too many nonprofits shy away from advocacy as a tool to advance their missions. For reasons ranging from a fear of controversy to confusion over what the law permits them to do, that is often the case in Pittsburgh, where our community’s admirable penchant for mannerly collaboration sometimes gets in the way of nonprofits standing up and demanding the respect their priorities and perspectives deserve.

Budget woes are forcing governments at all levels to make painful decisions that will affect nonprofits of all kinds, along with the people and causes we serve. If the nonprofit community wants a voice in how those decisions are made, we have to speak out. WQED is modeling the way.

One year after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake ravaged the island nation of Haiti, killing 230,000, injuring 300,000, and rendering 1.5 million men, women and children homeless, international medical relief and development organization Global Links continues its work there, with cholera prevention and the rebuilding of the nation’s health care system as its chief priorities.

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, Global Links assumed a leadership role in developing and coordinating relief efforts by the Pittsburgh community, providing local first-responder medical personnel with key medical materials to hand-deliver to Haiti, and coordinating rapid shipment of desperately needed medications and medical supplies to Hôpital Albert Schweitzer (HAS). Two large shipments followed, with a special focus on orthopedic supplies, casting material, crutches, wheelchairs, and walkers, all desperately needed due to the thousands disabled by crushing injuries and amputations.

In late fall 2010, a particularly virulent strain of cholera, a disease not previously seen in Haiti, began spreading from the mountains into the capital. The lack of clean water and adequate sanitation created an epidemic, sickening more than 150,000 people and killing more than 3,300. At the request of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Global Links sent four more containers of basic supplies – mattresses, IV poles, and rehydration materials essential for seriously ill patients to survive cholera. More shipments are planned.

“The cholera outbreak is not expected to start declining until it reaches a peak of 400,000 people infected in the first 12 months,” says Kathleen Hower, Global Links co-founder and CEO. “Setting up more treatment centers and keeping them stocked is vital to keeping the death rate low and curtailing the spread of the disease. Cholera response will continue to be our primary focus over the next few months.”

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“Tikkun olam” is a phrase in Hebrew that means, “Healing the world.” In Jewish tradition, it expresses the work of every devout individual and every generation to leave the world better than they found it, an ongoing and never-ending obligation passed from parent to child in an unbroken chain through history.

I cannot imagine a better symbol of tikkun olam than the extraordinary, $50-million gift we announced yesterday from the late Charles Kaufman. Throughout his life, this self-made man saved and invested with the express purpose of one day leaving his wealth to the good of the community he loved. In his gift he celebrated his faith in public education, his love of the land, his Jewish heritage, and above all his passionate belief in the ability of science to improve the human condition.

There is a timelessness to the concept of tikkun olam that spoke to me as we announced Mr. Kaufman’s gift.  Many people congratulated me in the wake of that announcement and their praise made me uncomfortable. It is wonderful to be in the CEO’s seat when something like this happens, but I knew that Mr. Kaufman’s faith in The Pittsburgh Foundation had grown from nearly 30 years of attentive stewardship by various board members, CEOs, and staff.

For me, his gift was, more than anything else, a reminder of the constancy of this institution, and as much an occasion for humility as for pride. We engage current and future donors at the level of individual relationships, of course, but over time what we promise them is that there will be a continuity and excellence to the Pittsburgh Foundation that will ensure our good stewardship of their resources in perpetuity.

 Through all our bumps and triumphs, changes and growth through more than a half century of promoting philanthropy in Pittsburgh, that remains our essential promise, and we deliver on it. Mr. Kaufman’s gift is the fruit of that promise, as demonstrated faithfully by staff and board across nearly three decades of this particular relationship, and across 65-years of our existence. In his generosity Mr. Kaufman reminded all of us who are privileged to be associated with The Pittsburgh Foundation that we are part of a proud and meaningful tradition that was here before us and will continue, if we do our jobs faithfully and well, long after we are gone.

That sentiment is one that knows no boundaries of faith or doctrine. When I expressed these feelings to a member of our board who, among other things, is a church scholar, he wrote back, “Ecclesia non moritur.” This particular board member and I share a love of language, so I was embarrassed to confess to him that he had me stumped.

“Don’t be,” he wrote, letting me off easy. “This is one few people know or use:   ‘The church does not die.’ To me it says everything about the importance of continuity, the efforts of some being followed by the effort of others, the cathedral builder who works his whole life knowing he’ll never live to see the cathedral completed… Carry on in your line and fruit will be born in the fullness of time.”

For me, that idea of carrying on in a way that will yield fruit in the future lies at the very heart of philanthropy, and in the heart of every man or woman who makes it his or her task to “heal the world.” Mr. Kaufman’s gift was not just about the money he left behind; far more, it was an expression of hope and commitment to the future that will continue well beyond his, or our, ability to see.

Tikkun olam. What a beautiful way to describe such a precious gift.