In The News

For Pittsburgh Public School students who earn the full $30,000 award available under the Pittsburgh Promise, the maximum extra $28,000 Raise.me award could go a long way toward financing a degree at Pitt's Oakland campus, where base undergraduate tuition is $17,688 a year.

A portion of each entry fee for the Sept. 25 Great Race in Pittsburgh (www.rungreatrace.com) benefits the Richard S. Caliguiri Amyloidosis Fund., a fund held by the Pittsburgh Foundation that is dedicated to supporting medical research. To make a donation, go to pittsburghfoundation.org.  

UpPrize, the social innovation challenge created by The Forbes Funds, returns this year to once again challenge our community to find new solutions to critical social issues.

 “If 30 to 40 percent of the population really isn’t getting an opportunity to participate in [the new Pittsburgh], then it’s not a success,” says Maxwell King, president of The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Elaine Harris-Fulton is a volunteer with the Wilkinsburg Family Support Center, one of the nonprofits  participating in a Western-Pennsylvania wide effort to get people representing minority populations to register and vote. The Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership (GPNP) with funding from The Pittsburgh Foundation and the national group called Nonprofit Vote is organizing the effort, which aims to get at least 4,250 people—250 from 17 nonprofits each—registered and to the polls.

A magical place inside the August Wilson Center for African American Culture holds the work of Tony Award-winning costume designer Paul Tazewell until Nov. 30.

Just before 11 a.m. on May 3, Maxwell King, the Pittsburgh Foundation’s president and chief executive, was preparing for a two-hour shift handling phone calls from donors and others who had questions during the foundation’s Day of Giving — the ambitious online philanthropy event that raises millions of dollars to benefit 1,000 nonprofits in the Pittsburgh region.

Back to Pittsburgh around 6 p.m. to prep for a meeting I have next week with the Visionaries of Westmoreland County, a young professional philanthropy group that a few friends and I started about five years ago. Each year, we gather a group of young professionals, raise money, and then throw a party where votes are cast to award funds to local charities.

As it has in past national election years, the Port Authority of Allegheny County has teamed up with the Black Political Empowerment Project to push that organizations tenet that African Americans should vote in each and every election. In East Liberty, Sept.8, PAT and B-PEP announced that 40 buses will carry that message across Allegheny County as they ply their daily routes between now and the Nov. 8 election. “For the first time in our history, with financial support from the Pittsburgh Foundation sponsoring our signs and our mission,” said B-PEP Founder Tim Stevens.  

Steve Shelton and Trade Institute backers herald the program as a great investment, boasting a one-year re-incarceration rate of 4 percent, compared to the state’s average of around 22 percent. They’ve found backers in local philanthropic groups like the Heinz Endowments and the Pittsburgh Foundation, and have started a partnership with Construction Junction and Carnegie Mellon University called Project RE. The program pairs Trade Institute grads and CMU design students to find new ways to reuse old construction materials.