There is a lot happening here at The Dayton Foundation. Read what’s new on this page, or check out our Media & Publications page, where you will find recent press releases, a calendar of events or highlights about the Foundation in the news.

The Dayton Foundation has named Jerome F. Tatar, retired chairman of MeadWestvaco Corporation and former chairman, CEO and president of Mead Corporation, as the new chair of its Governing Board. Mr. Tatar has been a Governing Board member since 2004 and most recently chaired the Foundation's Grants and Programs Committee and served as the Board vice chair and member of the Executive Committee. He will serve an 18-month term as chair.

The new Board members are William L. Gillispie, retired deputy city manager for the City of Dayton, and Lisa E. Hanauer, owner and president of MED-PASS, Inc., which interprets governmental regulations and creates compliance records and resources for pharmacies, long-term care facilities, assisted living communities, home healthcare agencies and hospice providers.

Read more about each of them here.

During the second half of 2011, The Dayton Foundation awarded more than $18.3 million in grants from donor funds to a wide variety of charitable organizations in the Greater Dayton Region and beyond. A portion of this amount was made through the Foundation's discretionary grantmaking program, which a number of donors have made possible by providing unrestricted or largly unrestricted funds to the Foundation to be able to act on opportunities for the community and address pressing needs throughout Greater Dayton.

Discretionary grants totaling $275,000 recently was awarded to local organizations.

Read more about these grant awards here.

For the eighth consecutive year, The Dayton Foundation has been named an award winner for excellence in communications by the international Wilmer Shields Rich Awards Program, sponsored by the Council on Foundations.

Competing against entrants from the largest of the more than 700 community foundations in the U.S. and abroad (community foundations over $250 million in assets), The Dayton Foundation received two 2011 Wilmer Shields Awards for Excellence, one for Good News, the Foundation’s general newsletter, and one for the Foundation’s 2009-2010 annual report.

The Dayton Foundation also has been honored with three awards for outstanding achievement in video production for its video, A Community is Defined by the Passion of Its People – Stories of Caring & Commitment. The video premiered at the Foundation’s 2010 Biennial Meeting Celebration and is posted online at www.daytonfoundation.org/videos.html and at www.youtube.com/The Dayton Foundation.

The Foundation received a Gold 2011 Hermes Creative Award and a 2011 Award of Distinction in the Videographer Awards competition. Both international awards programs are administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals.

The video also won a Bronze Award, the second highest honor, in the 32nd annual Telly Awards competition, which is judged by industry professionals, each of whom is a past Silver Telly winner, the program’s highest honor. The award recognizes outstanding video and film production, as well as local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs, and web commercials, videos and J. Norman Eckstein Ratna Palakodeti, M.D. films.