LEH Memorial Grants
The LEH Memorial Grants are an invitation-only fund named in honor of its long-serving previous President, LeRoy “Roy” E. Hoffberger (LEH), to honor his philanthropic legacy. In 2020, one of the results of the Foundation’s strategic planning process—beyond identifying its two new areas of giving—was the creation of this new fund, which the Board unanimously voted to name in honor of their family member.
The LEH Visionary Grants Committee of the Board will identify and recommend grants each year that reflect the creative and imaginative spirit that Roy exhibited during his lifetime, which may not necessarily be restricted to the Foundation’s stated priorities of workforce development and economic mobility nor children’s mental health and trauma.
The current focus of these grants is to combat systemic issues within the most disenfranchised communities within Baltimore through new and innovative programs that seek to create radical change for those they support.
The inaugural LEH Memorial Grants were awarded in 2021 to the following organizations in recognition of the family’s interest in environmental issues and research into experimental ways to treat a range of challenging issues such as addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant depression:
- Baltimore Compost Collective
- The Johns Hopkins University Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research
- Turner Station Conservation Teams
In addition, a grant was awarded to Open Society Institute (OSI)-Baltimore for its Community Fellows Program (in collaboration with the Lois and Irving Blum Foundation) to create the Lois Blum Feinblatt Community Mental Health Fellow in 2022. This named fellowship honors a 3rd generation family member’s commitment to social justice and community empowerment. Lois, who passed away in April 2022 at the age of 100, was a supporter and friend to OSI-Baltimore and to the Fellowship Program in particular, which is unsurprising since Lois embodied the spirit of the Fellows. Like her, Fellows are committed to social justice and community empowerment and they are determined, persistent, innovative, curious and out of the box thinkers. With Lois’s professional and philanthropic contributions in mind, the Lois Blum Feinblatt OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow will focus their work in the field of mental health.
**Please do not contact the Foundation about the LEH Memorial Grant as it is an invitation-only funding opportunity.