Pew Growth Grant Aims to Expand Reach and Enhance Services

Last week, the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based philanthropic organization dedicated to “addressing the challenges of a changing world by illuminating issues, creating common ground, and advancing ambitious projects that lead to tangible progress,” announced a series of $8 million in grants in the areas of LGBTQ+ Youth Wellness and Stability, Maternal and Infant Health, and the Teacher Shortage in Philadelphia. Mazzoni Center is proud to have been awarded a $1.8 million five-year growth grant.

What is the purpose of this funding?

The intent of Pew in providing this support is to assist Mazzoni Center in increasing outreach to marginalized communities in Philadelphia’s most under-resourced neighborhoods. Pew’s support will be used to strengthen our outreach strategy to provide Philadelphians in historically underserved communities with better access to basic medical services and connect them to more comprehensive site-based and virtual services, as well as enhance and integrate Mazzoni Center’s continuum of youth services. The five-year cycle of this grant will launch with a year-long business consultation process in which we will undertake a comprehensive review of programs, services, facilities, staffing, and more to understand how we can maximize the impact our organization makes for our community.

According to Sultan Shakir, Mazzoni Center’s President & Executive Officer, “One of the exciting things about Mazzoni Center is that we've been able to work tirelessly to meet the ever-evolving needs of our community and to grow and expand along the way. The growth grant from Pew will allow us to reflect on that work, to identify areas in which we can go deeper in making a stronger impact in our community, and to ensure we're doing the work in a way that reflects our values as well as the needs of those we aspire to support.”

What does this grant mean for Mazzoni Center?

In addition to the impact this grant will have on Mazzoni Center and our clients, an investment of this magnitude by such a trusted funder as Pew is an expression of faith and confidence in our organization and our leadership and an understanding of the unique role we play in the community. As much as Mazzoni Center already does in serving 15,000 clients each year, Pew understands – and we agree – that we need to and can do more.

As our Board Chair, Jeff Doucette, says: “The Pew Charitable Trust grant will be a transformative gift to Mazzoni Center. For 45 years, Mazzoni Center has grown to meet the ever-changing needs of the communities we serve. This grant will allow us to evaluate, create, and implement both existing and new programs to ensure the long-term viability of the organization as a critical healthcare and wellness hub for the region and beyond.”

This is a large grant. Does it alleviate Mazzoni Center’s need for other support?

Yes, this is a large grant – in fact, the largest single philanthropic gift in Mazzoni Center’s history. This is also a large organization serving a large and diverse community, with a much greater need that we’re currently able to meet. Our budget for the current year is approximately $19 million. Pew’s five-year grant averages $360,000 per year. While this grant will be a game-changer with major impact, Pew’s

intention is to help us grow. It does not alleviate our need for support to sustain the services Mazzoni Center provides on a daily basis, including underwriting over $1 million in services each year for community members who don’t have the ability to pay. If anything, we hope that Pew’s partnership signals to others who may not currently support Mazzoni Center that we are an impact partner worthy of investment.

When should we expect to see the impact of this grant?

Mazzoni Center’s four-decade history has been a story of continual evolution to meet the growing and changing needs of our community. Over the next five years and beyond you should expect to see gradual changes – some big and some more modest, as we harness Pew’s support to expand our reach to underserved communities, focus on how to better serve youth, and work to ensure that we maximize our resources to refine our model of fully integrated wraparound health and wellness services for our LGBTQ community. Some of those exciting changes in fact preceded Pew’s award announcement, as we recently announced that we have made changes to expand service capacity in our medical center, eliminating our waiting list and allowing us to offer same and next day appointments to both new and existing patients. As always, we will communicate with you – our clients, our community, and our supporters – on developments as they happen.

Mazzoni Center offers its extraordinary gratitude to the Pew Charitable Trusts – for their confidence, their faith, their support, and their partnership. We are so excited to see what we can do together.