Annual Report 1999

• Mission Statement
• President’s Message
• Statement of Activities
• Grant Recipients
• Highlighted Grants

Mission Statement

Realizing the healthcare crisis in our country, the Board of Washington Square Health Foundation, Inc. recognizes that no one foundation can meet all the challenges of the healthcare environment. However, the Foundation has developed a program of grant making which is designed to be both a catalyst and guide for other foundations and grant making organizations in meeting the various needs of the Chicagoland healthcare community. The Washington Square Health Foundation, Inc. grants funds in order to promote and maintain access to adequate healthcare for all people in the Chicagoland area regardless of race, sex, creed or financial need. The Foundation meets this goal through its grants for medical and nursing education, medical research and direct healthcare services.

As a guide to other foundations and other service providers and as a part of the Board’s stewardship of charitable funds, the Washington Square Health Foundation, Inc. has developed a grant evaluation system to ensure that the objectives of various projects are carried out in the manner prescribed by the approved grant.

The Foundation wishes to impress on the philanthropic community that the careful evaluation of the outcomes of grant projects is as important as the appropriate selection of grant recipients.

President’s Message

Dr. Angelo P. Creticos

Washington Square Health Foundation held a most successful 2 ½ day retreat in 1999 wherein we had an in-depth analysis of our first dozen years as a philanthropic organization concentrating on funding grants for the Chicagoland Health Community.

The purpose of the retreat was to allow our Board members uninterrupted thinking time in order to review our work and, more importantly, to have at least two respected and well-known individuals in philanthropic endeavors address our forum and critically — objectively evaluate our performance in date and help us modify our future endeavors or develop changes in our mission, if necessary.

It may come as a surprise that an excellent attendance by such a heterogeneous group of Directors, along with our three consultants, our legal counsel and Executive Director, was 100% throughout the 2 ½ days, all working diligently on the extensive agenda prepared for us — and that nobody played golf, nor tennis, nor spent the day in a spa! That you must agree is serious dedication!

What did we learn and what will be our mission for at least the next decade? We were pleasantly surprised to learn that we have an unusually focused group which has spearheaded a type of health care philanthropy that fills a serious void in the health grants field. Our function has resulted in our being an effective catalyst, to be most helpful to institutions and organizations not privy to elaborate funding by the larger bodies of philanthropy, such as government agencies or funders of basic research, to strike a comfortable balance between education, cutting edge research and community health services, and to create a unique grant program known as a program related investment wherein support monies are provided for capital improvement on a low interest loan basis, enabling struggling organizations to proceed with their health projects. A self administrated program related investment foundation activity is extremely unusual for a foundation of our size. Normally, such programs are found in much larger organizations.

Surfacing in much of our discussions was the need to continue and possibly expand our interests in programs such as our study of Emergency Room use and services and the study relating to the large death toll experienced by Chicago in the great heat wave of the summer of 1995. These projects created a large interest in the health community and the E.R. report, for example, stimulated a faster development of E.R. triage support systems by a number of hospitals that greatly reduced the inappropriate use of E.R. facilities and thereby reduced health care costs.

We concluded our retreat with a renew vigor that we have initiated a new pathway in grant giving, that it has been successful, and that we must continue to focus on that initial mission and continue to fine tune it. We have been rewarded with the thought that we have found a most comfortable and workable niche — and that we need to continue to cultivate it.

We thank all our grantees for their most successful projects which serve to support the obvious — that our mission has had an emphatic meaning to the community. We look forward with confidence as we proceed in our second decade and hope to equal or exceed our accomplishments to date.

Statement of Activities

	Year ended September 30, 1999
Operating activities:
	Revenues:
	Interest and dividends	$1,082,725
	Net realized gain on investments	3,083,244
	Other	4,854
Total operating activities revenue		4,170,823
	Expenses:
	Grants	1,787,968*
	Management and general:
	Salaries	150,073
	Payroll taxes	9,444
	Professional fees:
	Investment management and custodial	178,915
	Legal and accounting	35,985
	Board fees and expenses	92,846
	Occupancy	32,289
	Office supplies	12,151
	Insurance	16,456
	Depreciation	4,161
	Miscellaneous	27,708
Total management and general		569,028
	Provision for federal excise taxes	72,828
Total operating activities expenses		2,429,824
Excess of operating activities revenue over expenses		1,740,999
Nonoperating activities – net unrealized gain (loss) on investments		(2,105,984)
Increase in net assets		364,985
Unrestricted net assets, beginning of year		32,329,495
Unrestricted net assets, end of year		$31,964,510
*Grants do not include Program Related Investments (PRI) of $50,000 distributed during fiscal year 1997-98. Grants and PRI’s distributed for fiscal year 1998-99 total $1,837,968. The official and complete audit as certified by KPMG Peat Marwick .

Fiscal Year 1998-99 Grant Recipients