In The News

Winners of the Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grants program were announced this morning. The partnership between The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments awarded $308,000 to 18 artists and arts foundations.

Last year, the Forbes Funds created the UpPrize competition to find tech solutions that benefit nonprofits. Now one of the finalists, the East Pittsburgh-based software company Application Verification, has partnered with the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania to find a more efficient way to connect volunteers with vulnerable populations.

As Director of Entrepreneurship Programming for Urban Innovation21, Marteen Garay implements a wide range of community-based support programs, including spearheading the creation of the newly formed Homewood-Brushton Business Association. She's also applying for Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh funding.

For more than 40 years, Kate Dewey has worked for or with nonprofit organizations, foundations and public agencies. Now president of The Forbes Funds, an affiliate of The Pittsburgh Foundation that provides management assistance and technical expertise to nonprofit organizations, the Yardley, Pa., native describes herself as a social entrepreneur who is best at connecting the dots

Artist Ron Donoughe devoted a year to setting up his easel outdoors and painting each of Pittsburgh’s 90 neighborhoods. After his work was exhibited at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and published in a book, “Pittsburgh: 90 Neighborhoods,” he faced the unpleasant prospect of selling each scene separately. Now the collection is on permanent exhibition at the Heinz History Center because three local foundations (led by Maxwell King) purchased the paintings and gave them to the Strip District museum.  

Americans should work harder at breaking out of comfort zones, traveling to unfamiliar neighborhoods and being open to listening to opinions that differ from their own, several speakers emphasized Friday during Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership's annual meeting.

Maxwell King writes that "if Trump does want to turn his concern from campaign caricature into something real that actually helps the poor and the dispossessed - the large percentage of our population left out of American prosperity for decades - then he must dedicate his presidency to this goal."

Released over the summer, the city's Big Burgh app helps connect homeless individuals to medical care, meals and other useful services. In the short period of time that the city’s Big Burgh mobile app, aimed at helping the homeless find resources, has been available, it has far exceeded usage expectations. This project was funded in part by Foundation donor Terry Serafini.

Application Verification Inc., a 2015 UpPrize awardee, is providing volunteer background screenings for a project of United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Good Neighbor Center through a one-year pilot program. The pilot program was formally announced on Thursday by United Way and The Forbes Funds.

The Pittsburgh Promise is reminding graduates who had earned scholarships but not used them that they could still use access the funds by applying for an eight-week pilot program to ease them back into school — or at least get excited about it again.