Giving News
Second Annual Day of Impactful Giving
We are very grateful to the 55+ donors who participated in our second annual Day of Impactful Giving on December 10, 2014. With your help, we raised over $55,000, including a generous $25,000 matching gift from NAM member Dr. Herb Pardes. This show of collective action allowed us to surpass our goal of raising $50,000 in just 1 day! With these funds, we will mobilize science and leverage our independent status to expand health care knowledge. We will translate knowledge into accessible action steps. And we will get the message out, empowering people to take charge of their own health and well-being.
If you missed the opportunity to donate on 12/10, but would still like to make a tax-deductible gift, please give now.
We greatly appreciate those who graciously give to the NAM, the IOM, and other groups within the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. We hope their generosity and the academies’ strong mission will inspire others to donate!
$1 Million Gift to the Harvey V. Fineberg Impact Fund
In May 2014, John W. “Jack” Rowe and his wife, Valerie, recently made a generous $1 million gift to the Harvey V. Fineberg Impact Fund, named in honor of the past IOM president. “In many ways, Harvey embodies for us what the IOM is about–he’s trusted, reliable, always focusing on important questions, and he always delivers,” Rowe said.
In May 2014, John W. “Jack” Rowe, a geriatrician and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, first became aware of the Institute of Medicine’s impact in the early 1980s, several years before he was elected as a member. “At the time, I was developing a program on aging and geriatric medicine at Harvard University,” Rowe said. He was also chairing an IOM committee examining priorities in geriatric academia, and was amazed when a paper he co-authored that summarized the study’s findings was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. “It was not easy to get support in the medical community.”
The article generated a tremendous amount of positive response, and Rowe realized just how well-positioned and respected the IOM was as a source of authoritative information in health care policy. And that reputation has only continued to grow in the 25 years since Rowe became a member and went on to chair or serve on many other study committees, including his current role as chair of the IOM’s Forum on Disability and Aging. “I never feel like the time I serve on IOM committees is a burden because they are so effective. There is so much leverage.”
To that end, Rowe and his wife, Valerie, recently made a generous $1 million gift to the Harvey V. Fineberg Impact Fund, named in honor of the outgoing two-term IOM president. “In many ways, Harvey embodies for us what the IOM is about — he’s trusted, reliable, always focusing on important questions, and he always delivers,” Rowe said. The fund is being used to initiate studies on controversial and complex issues that government and other institutions are not able or willing to support; to establish and sustain meaningful partnerships for action and innovative use of media to reach and educate the public; and to more effectively translate and communicate findings and recommendations of IOM studies.
“The environment we find ourselves in today is replete with claims and counterclaims on almost any issue. We are in dire need of a trusted source of information,” said Rowe, who also is a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s board and the former president and CEO of Mount Sinai NYU Health and former chairman and CEO of Aetna Inc. “Any philanthropist has to ask, ‘Am I really making a difference with this gift?’ Rarely do you find an organization with such a proven track record and the amount of leverage to influence such a broad audience.”
The IOM Receives $500,000 Gift for A Healthy America
We are extremely grateful to the George Family Foundation for its recent gift of $500,000 to the IOM. These funds will help launch A Healthy America, a public health media campaign that will draw upon evidence-based advice to motivate people to live healthy lives. The NAM will collaborate with the nonprofit The Public Good Projects on the initiative.
For more information, or to make a gift, contact Julie Ische, Director of Development, at [email protected] or 202-334-3031.
