“Project Ventilator”: Our response to COVID-19

The Foundation’s “Project Ventilator” campaign seeks to address concerns specific to the COVID-19 pandemic. Philadelphia has faced extensive burdens – medical, financial, political, and social – and our campaign is an effort to ameliorate damage and to aid communities in need. We’re proud to support the following initiatives and partners under the auspices of the “Project Ventilator” campaign:

01 PENN MEDICINE

A campaign to raise awareness and funds for communicable disease research and clinical therapy development being undertaken by our partners at Penn Medicine. Penn Medicine has worked to discover therapies, vaccines, and testing at the onset of the global health crisis. Their research not only addressed immediate coronavirus response, but also preventative measures for COVID-19 treatment going forward.

 02 THE COLOR OF COVID

“The Color of COVID” project, a longitudinal reporting series by The Philadelphia Citizen seeks to highlight the experiences and insights of Philadelphia’s communities of color as they confront the impacts of a world historic event on their workplaces, neighborhoods, and families. With faith in our political and economic elites shaken, our city and our society are long overdue to consider the perspectives of a community who face most immediately the consequences of policies handed down from on high, but whose opinions, critiques and day to day lives under the shadow of those policies go unnoticed and unheard.

03 VOLUNTEER PROJECTS

The Fellows of the Germination Project have developed various volunteer projects to aid distressed communities over the past few months. A deployment of over one hundred volunteers worked on various initiatives, from mask deliveries to nonprofit fundraisers.

 04 PPP LOANS

Project Ventilator turned to Emigrant Bank and Dilworth Paxson LLP to delve into Congress’ CARES Act and developed a response team to provide legal counsel to businesses applying for PPP loans. Project Ventilator facilitated the following PPP results:

  •       Number of businesses receiving a PPP Loan: 42
  •       Total dollar amount of PPP Loans: $28,008,692.43
  •       Average size of PPP Loan: $666,873.63 
  •       Smallest business by employee count: 1 employee
  •       Largest business by employee count: 300 
  •       Average size of business by employee count: 56

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