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In 1959, Joyce Mertz and her parents, LuEsther and Harold, established
a family foundation called the Mertz Foundation. Joyce married Robert
Wallace Gilmore in June of 1964, and the couple began managing the
Foundation’s operations. Their strong personal convictions influenced
both their approach to grantmaking and their funding interests.
Together with their colleague and friend, Bayard Rustin, they became
strong advocates for peace and civil rights issues for a number of
years. Their grantmaking was a logical extension of that work. They
also were committed passionately to the quality of life in New York
City where they lived and made grants to performing arts institutions
and to groups working to protect the city’s environment. Their interest
in the environment led them to support programs reaching beyond the
city to include state, national and global issues as well.
Initially, family members provided the Foundation with funds on a
yearly basis. However, when Joyce Mertz Gilmore died in January 1974,
her will provided for an endowment to the Foundation. Robert Gilmore
soon changed the Foundation’s name to the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore
Foundation in her honor and memory. Robert Gilmore died some years
later in 1988 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's Disease, but not
before he set the Foundation on a new course by expanding the Board
beyond the family. His heirs donated a generous portion of his estate
to the Foundation.
In 2002, the Board of Directors changed the name of the Foundation to
the Mertz Gilmore Foundation to honor the memory of Robert, as he had
previously done with Joyce.
While always open to new ideas and changing needs, the Foundation has
remained true to the values and interests of the founders and their
views about how a foundation should function. The Board continues to
believe, as did the founders, that the Foundation’s primary task is to
find effective organizations working within its program interests and
to provide them with the necessary funds to carry out their work.
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