A Tribute to Excellence:
A Letter from the President

Judy Jolley Mohraz, Pd.D.
President and CEO

During 2009, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. Anniversaries bring to mind bookends. Our first bookend is the beginning of the foundation following Virginia Piper's death on June 14, 1999. While the Trust did not formally open its doors until September 1, 2000, the four original lifetime trustees whom she had designated met at least weekly over those 14 months to plan, learn and decide questions essential to building a new foundation.

It is fitting that this annual report, actually this year's final issue of Piper Notebook, inaugurates our 10th anniversary by including excerpts from the biography of Virginia that we commissioned. Author Melissa Pritchard's rendering of Virginia's life will soon be published, and we are delighted to offer a preview in the following pages. We know that with each passing year, there are fewer and fewer people who knew Virginia personally and understand her life and her values.

Certain themes from Virginia Piper's life have shaped our work, and as the board has expanded, each new trustee has embraced these values as well. Stewardship was a powerful impulse in Virginia's life. She believed she was a steward-that the money Paul Galvin left in her care was for the benefit of the community and the work of God. We feel this responsibility, as well, and understand we are accountable to our community and to Virginia's memory to uphold her standards of humanity, dedication and respect for all people.

Through every decade of her life, Virginia wanted to learn. We continue that quest for new knowledge, valuing all that we have learned while listening to our community partners. The grants included in this report as well as those from previous years are the result of continual conversations with nonprofits and thought leaders about the needs,and the possibilities,of one of the fastest growing, most diverse communities in the nation.

The other bookend for this anniversary is the move to the new office building, which the Trust owns, located almost at the geographic center of the community of four million people whom we serve. A glimpse of our new facilities is another part of this report, reminding us all of the evolution of an organization that is still young, still changing, but unswervingly committed to the values of the Trust's founder. We continue to be privileged and humbled to serve in her stead.

< Previous   l    Next >