Portraits in Philanthropy

Very few people in the Lehigh Valley believe they have the wealth — or the generosity — to warrant being called "philanthropists." This is, after all, a category we usually reserve for the likes of the Carnegies, Rockerfellers, and Fords — people who develop fortunes and gave much of their wealth away.

At the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation, however, we have the privilege of working with individuals who are making their own personal impact on the community through their giving, thereby improving the quality of all of our lives. These people, more often than not, come from substantially more modest backgrounds, but their desire to use the resources at hand to do good work make them philanthropists no less — and maybe more — than the famous philanthropists named above. These Lehigh Valley people are the subjects of the Foundation's ongoing "Portraits in Philanthropy" series.

The LehighValley Helping Hand Fund
Donor-Advisors: Albert Bova, Jeffrey Bogert and Dr. James Margolis

"The people who fall through the cracks." Those are the people who have been — and will be — assisted by grants from the Helping Hand Fund of the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation.

The Fund became a part of the Foundation's family of philanthropic funds in January of 2000, after many decades of charitable service to people in need in the Allentown area. Jeffrey Bogert, Albert Bova, and the late Atty. Robert Margolis turned the Fund over to the Foundation for management and grant making in perpetuity. Atty. Margolis provided some historical background:

The Helping Hand Foundation was incorporated in 1955 by the late Morris H. Senderowitz of Allentown, a partner in Royal Manufacturing, a major Lehigh Valley textile firm at the time. Morris served on several boards in Allentown, including the board of Sacred Heart Hospital. He saw people's needs up close and saw that these needs often could not be met within the budget constraints of organizations and agencies in the area.

When Morris began the Helping Hand Fund, he sought — and received — the support of many of the most prominent CEOs and community leaders in the Allentown area. F. Reed Wills, who began the General Acceptance Corporation (GAC), was part of the original group, and so were Warren York Trust President Leland Smith, Air Products founder Leonard Pool, and textile mill owner Patsy Billera. Margolis' father, Harry, was also one of the founders of the Helping Hand Fund and served as its auditor. After his father's death, Robert Margolis joined the Helping Hand board.

These met monthly at the Lehigh Valley Club on Hamilton Street for lunch. It cost each of them $100 for every lunch, no small commitment in the those days, and they always joked about having to pay dearly to serve on that board. Between those lunch meetings, Morris would ask members for major gifts to build the fund — gifts of $10,000, $15,000, and $25,000. Slowly, but surely, and with careful investment, the value of the Fund continued to grow through the years.

The Fund provided assistance for people who needed surgery, dental work, medical care outside the Lehigh Valley, and a variety of other human-service needs. Requests for help or reports of need were personally checked for authenticity by those connected to the Fund.

Today, the Helping Hand Fund provides grants at the recommendation of the donors for the very same purposes it has served since its founding in the midst of the Depression. Now, as then, it supports "those who fall through the cracks," from new immigrants needing hearing assistance to medical care for the elderly. Five decades after its founding, the Fund has found a home at LVCF and, like all of the Foundation's other funds, will be here "for good ... forever."

To find out how you can donate to the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation, click here.