In The News

Freedom of speech is too often misunderstood or undervalued, and so is freedom of the press, said The Pittsburgh Foundation’s President and CEO Maxwell King, as he opened the First Amendment for the Twenty-First Century conference yesterday. “Freedom of speech,” he said, “isn’t something that takes place in some ether over the nation. It takes place in communities. City by city, town by town.”

Bill Strickland has served as an ambassador for the city, for the underprivileged, for higher education, for the arts and for workforce development. His resume is impressive. More important to him, though, are the thousands of Pittsburghers who bettered their resumes through his programs. Bill Strickland is a Pittsburgh Foundation Board member.

Project Hunger is a station-wide initiative to bring awareness to food insecurity issues in the greater Pittsburgh area. The hour-long program focuses on what food insecurity really looks like and the army of volunteers and advocates who strive to connect wholesome food with those who need it.

The foundation on Thursday said its 18-member board of directors is launching the search process and expects to announce Mr. King’s successor early next year.

The community foundation’s board chair, Edith Shapira, on Thursday said that Boston-based Isaacson, Miller has been retained to manage the search, which is expected to be an eight- to nine-month process. Shapira and Walter Smith, who heads the board’s governance committee, are co-chairing the search committee.

On May 1, a million-dollar effort to raise money for Pittsburgh-area food banks and food pantries will get underway. The Critical Needs Alert, which was put together by The Pittsburgh Foundation, will run from 8 a.m. until midnight, with donors able to make their donations at pittsburghgives.org and pittsburghfoundation.org.

Neighbor-Aid came together in early 2009, shortly after a federal report spelled out just how devastating the nationwide recession was and after it became evident that the community’s need for services would overwhelm the budgets of local nonprofits. “I think we didn’t believe this could happen to us as a nation,” said Jeanne Pearlman, senior vice president for Program and Policy at the Pittsburgh Foundation, who was the foundation’s education grants officer in 2008.

Briefly Noted from Spring 2018 issue of Philanthropy magazine

On May 1, The Pittsburgh Foundation will be holding 16 hours of giving as part of what it is calling a critical needs alert. It’s an urgent effort to raise money to help more than 170 food pantries in the Pittsburgh region. The goal is to raise $1 million, with $600,000 being seeded by The Pittsburgh Foundation and its key donors.

This year, several artists were awarded grants from the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Heinz Endowments to participate in the festival. They include Heather Hopson presenting Single Mom Defined, a photo essay exhibition and video series meant to empower single mothers, dancer Brandon-Ahmauri McClendon and R&B group Water Seed.