Louis Mayer Succeeds Joanne Denworth As First Hospital Foundation Board Chair

PHILADELPHIA – Louis J. Mayer was elected the First Hospital Foundation’s chair of the board of directors at the foundation’s board meeting held April 20, 2009. A member of the foundation’s board of directors since 2001 and its previous treasurer, Mayer replaces Joanne R. Denworth, who chaired the foundation’s board for more than a decade since the foundation was established in 1997.

At its April meeting, the board also elected the following new officers: vice chair, Jane G. Pepper, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society; treasurer, Julia R. Dutton, founding executive director of Stoneleigh Center, a Philadelphia-based foundation that focuses on at-risk children; and secretary, Suzanne Sheehan Becker, consultant to Community College of Philadelphia.

Mayer is vice president for financial affairs at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Previously he served as vice president for finance & investments and treasurer at The William Penn Foundation and as the chief financial officer of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. “Lou Mayer’s financial experience will be invaluable to the foundation as we go forward,” Denworth said, “and with his non-profit and foundation background, Lou is ideally suited to lead the foundation in furthering its charitable mission to serve the health needs of the underserved in the Greater Philadelphia Region served by Pennsylvania Hospital.”

“Given that I have spent a significant portion of my career in nonprofits as well as in a private foundation setting, I believe that I can offer the First Hospital Foundation sound advice, counsel, and leadership in financial and organizational matters including management of investments and grants,” Mayer says.

During Denworth’s tenure as chair, the foundation has, since 1999, disbursed more than $9.5 million in grants to 85 nonprofit organizations, including $3.1 million to Pennsylvania Hospital programs that serve the health needs of the Philadelphia region’s underserved and economically disadvantaged.

“I am very proud of the work that the foundation has done since its founding at the time of the merger of Pennsylvania Hospital with the University of Pennsylvania Health system,” says Denworth, a land use, environmental and community development lawyer who works in Governor Rendell’s Office of Policy and will remain on the board of directors. “In 11 years I believe we have established a responsive and fiscally responsible foundation that makes careful grant-making decisions supporting both direct services to needy populations and grants to organizations that provide support for those populations.

“I believe my greatest contribution has been to recruit a great group of new directors to complement the talented group of Pennsylvania Hospital directors who formed the original core group of directors of the foundation. This is a hard-working volunteer board that has a broad range of experience in health and community issues and participates directly in evaluating proposals and making grant decisions.

“The board also is extremely fortunate to have been able to hire a fulltime executive director, Ann Marie Healy, in 2007. She has increased immeasurably our ability to do a good job of grantmaking and administrative management.”

Looking forward, Mayer says, “The needs of our community, unfortunately, far outweigh the foundation’s funding capacity. We are becoming more focused and strategic in our approach to grantmaking and will endeavor this year to help the nonprofit community regarding the areas that most interest the foundation. The foundation will also be focusing more on outcomes assessment from its grantees going forward.

“To make sure that we maximize the prudent use of the foundation’s assets, we will focus on funding those areas that we think are going to have the most impact and ones that will provide us with learning that can be shared with other foundations and nonprofits thus enabling us to be even more helpful in serving even more of our underserved neighbors.”