Beverly J. Wall Lovelace Fund

The Beverly J. Wall Lovelace Fund is one of many ways that the memory of Beverly Jewel Wall Lovelace lives on in Pittsburgh. Lovelace, a Homewood native and graduate of Westinghouse High School, was a tireless social worker and reformer who put Allegheny County “ahead of the national welfare reform curve.” She helped create programs like the Gaps Initiative, which used existing community resources to fill holes in Allegheny County’s social safety net. The design of Gaps was characteristic of Lovelace’s style: rather than telling people what they needed, Lovelace empowered the people she served by asking them what they needed and then designed programs to meet those needs. Listening, rather than imposing, was her forte.

Lovelace died at age 57 from cancer in 2001. At the time of her death, she was a senior program officer at The Pittsburgh Foundation. After her death, one of her colleagues at the Foundation, Gerri Kay, who oversaw grantmaking at that time, helped establish the fund in Wall Lovelace’s honor. The fund was created with the specific mission of supporting and benefitting low-income Black families with children, with the requirement that any funds “only be used for programs in which the needs of the families and children served are determined by the families themselves.”

Kay also helped create the Beverly Jewel Wall Lovelace Children’s Program (BJWL), an after-school program that serves families in public housing and is partially supported by the fund. A path-breaking partnership between the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families, The Pittsburgh Foundation and community organizations, the program now has 16 sites serving 1,400 children in communities around the county. In the spirit of Lovelace’s mission, each BJWL site is managed by a member of the community it serves.