Foundation awards immediate grants of $65,000 to Haiti's emergency relief effort

   
 PITTSBURGH, Pa., Jan. 28, 2010-- The Pittsburgh Foundation today announced immediate grants of $65,000 to organizations, some with strong local connections, that are supporting the Haiti emergency relief effort.



Hôpital Albert Schweitzer has been awarded $35,000 and Brother’s Brother and Doctors without Borders have each been awarded $15,000 following approval by members of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.
 
Funding for the grants has come from a fund established in memory of a donor Mr. Benjamin Harris, former President of U.S. Steel’s Tubular Products, Inc., who passed away in 1952.  The fund, established at the Foundation in 1982 following the death of his daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Harris Brainerd, is currently valued at more than $1.4 million and forms part of the Foundation’s pool for discretionary grantmaking.
 
“We are entrusted to carry forward the spirit of Benjamin Harris’s philanthropy and the provision of emergency medical services in developing places like Haiti was an issue about which he cared deeply,” said Grant Oliphant, the Foundation’s President and CEO.  “When we talk about ‘the face of giving’ at the Foundation this is what we mean – donors like Benjamin Harris for whom lasting legacies are created to benefit the needy and the less fortunate.”
 
Hôpital Albert Schweitzer, located 40 miles north west of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, withstood the catastrophic earthquake and is operating with full staff to treat casualties and provide life-saving care. The facility was founded in 1956 by Pittsburgh native, Dr. Larimer and Gwen Grant Mellon, inspired by the work of Albert Schweitzer.
 
Brother’s Brother, located on Pittsburgh’s North Side is amassing urgently-needed medical supplies for shipment to Haiti, including antibiotics, surgical packs, surgical instruments and other requested provisions. Its first shipment was airlifted to Haiti last week, escorted by Dr. Chip Lambert, Medical Director with Brother’s Brother.
 
Doctors without Borders is an international humanitarian organization which receives strong support from medical professionals in the Pittsburgh region. The organization’s facilities in Haiti were severely damaged by the earthquake, but staffs have established temporary clinics to treat the injured.

 “As a community foundation our primary focus for discretionary grantmaking is rightly our local region,” said Grant Oliphant. “But when a disaster strikes somewhere else we, like many of our donors, see a role for us in reaching out to others who are in desperate need and hardship.”

 In addition to the Foundation’s grants, individual donors have contributed more than $32,000 from their funds at the Foundation to various relief organizations that are providing emergency aid in Haiti. And over $17,000 has been contributed through the Foundation’s on-line resource, PittsburghGives, to four local organizations involved in the relief effort: American Red Cross, Brother’s Brother, Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti and Global Links.

 The Foundation is covering all credit card transaction and processing fees charged by its vendor for donations to those four local relief organizations received through its PittsburghGives site at: pittsburghgives.org.

For further information, contact:
John Ellis
Vice President for Communications
412-394-2647 
Ellisj@pghfdn.org