Grants Made for Calendar Year 2025

The St. Margaret Foundation Board of Directors voted to approve$809,090.36 in grants for 2025 in alignment with the organization’s strategic priorities of: 1) Patient Access, 2) Patient Education and 3) Patient Experience. New this year is the Patient Crisis Care Endowment, organized by physicians, which holds donations in perpetuity from which annual allocated earnings are distributed to help patients in crisis with critical medicine, medical equipment and outside services not covered by insurance. This year $92,000 in earnings was granted to help fill this gap.

Also new this year is a grant for adaptive feeding equipment requested in collaboration by the food and nutrition department, occupational therapists, nurses, and nutritionists at the hospital to help patients with tremors and stroke victims be able to eat when they leave the hospital. “A stroke or tremor that impairs hand mobility robs patients not only of nutrition but their dignity,” said Foundation President Mary Lee Gannon. “We want to be a solution.” Beginning this year, patients who need adapted utensils will be able to take them home, allowing them to have the proper tools to continue to feed themselves. “Our team at UPMC St. Margaret went above and beyond to put this program together for our patients, thinking down the road to what life would be like at home,” said Ms. Gannon.

In addition to its major commitment to four free shuttles, the Foundation board approved $109,000 for sleep chairs for patients’ family members to spend the night in their room while they recover. Ms. Gannon said the Foundation’s board of directors is dedicated to the organization’s motto of ‘Filling in the gaps with hope, healing and independence.’ “In a flash your health can turn into the biggest challenge of your life. The last thing we want is for you to forgo filling your prescription because you need to feed your family or for you not to replace a broken walker because Medicare won’t provide one for five years.. Our donors have answered the call of their neighbors in their hour of need,” said Ms. Gannon. “Because of them we are able to fill the gap.”