In The News

For a $41 million check, it didn’t make much noise, but UPMC announced Monday it will make that final payment next year for early fulfillment of its $100 million commitment to The Pittsburgh Promise. That’s the scholarship program that has helped roughly 7,000 city high school graduates into college in the past nine years. It has provided more than $83 million in scholarship money to roughly 120 colleges, universities and trade schools across Pennsylvania. There’s enough money now to keep this program going through the high school classes of 2028. Those children are in first grade now.

The event is in memory of Owen Galluzzo, who at 9 died from complications related to heart surgery. He was a student at Osborne Elementary School. Following his death, friends and family created the Owen Galluzzo Memorial Fund, a permanent endowment held by The Pittsburgh Foundation. Funds support organizations that help the lives of medically fragile children.

The Ai Weiwei exhibit at the Andy Warhol museum has been extended through September 11th. The exhibit displays the work of Weiwei, the provocative Chinese artists who has attracted the ire of his home country’s government on multiple occasions, being jailed in 2011. (Funding for the exhibit was provided by W. Paul Spencer Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation.)

As community foundations nationwide, including the Pittsburgh Foundation, look forward after the tech failures during Give Local America Day in May, they discuss the ways they hope to improve these events going forward. Representatives from various groups across the nation held conference calls to identify the problems that plagued the last event and to create a plan of action for future community giving days.

The Charles E. Kaufman Foundation announced $1.8 million in total across 8 grants on Wednesday. The grants were awarded to researchers at both local and state universities.

Presented in collaboration with The Pittsburgh Foundation, the event also served as a prelude to Desmond’s Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures talk on his New York Times bestselling book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, an in-depth, intimate look at America’s affordable housing crisis as seen through the experiences of eight Milwaukee families and two struggling landlords. 

Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond gave a lecture about the costs of eviction to Pittsburgh tenants, landlords, and public officials at the University of Pittsburgh. Desmond is touring the country in support of his book Eviction, which tells the story of various families and individuals facing the fallout from eviction in Milwaukee.

The conversation was facilitated by the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Foundation and Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures.

Local veterans are experiencing lowered levels of anxiety, depression, and stress after receiving highly trained dogs from the Florida-based Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs Inc. One of the dogs can even tell her owner, who has diabetes, if his blood-sugar level is too high or low. “Twenty-two is the number of veterans who commit suicide each day,” activist Tony Accamando said. “For veterans who have received a Guardian Angel dog, the number of suicides is zero.”