Overview

Vermont Health Foundation History

Vermont Health Foundation (VHF) was created in 1983 to function as a holding company for the assets of the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont and to be the place where charitable gifts donated to the Hospital would repose.

When MCHV, the Fanny Allen Hospital and the University Health Center merged in 1995, the VHF became one of the UVM Medical Center’s “parent” organizations with the responsibility to send members to the UVM Medical Center board and to approve changes to its mission or bylaws. It retained circa $13 million in assets and decided to become a grant-giving organization to community based entities whose work would advance or complement the nearly identical missions of the VHF and the UVM Medical Center.

In 2000, the two organizations entered into a Memorandum of Understanding which intended to better align the VHF’s grant-making priorities with the UVM Medical Center’s strategic initiatives. Despite some successes in achieving the efficiencies anticipated by the Memorandum of Understanding, both organizations agreed that the Memorandum of Understanding had not enabled the two to fully integrate their community benefit investments.

By the end of 2011, the two organizations entered into a Gift Agreement under which the VHF gifted its corpus to the UVM Medical Center and the UVM Medical Center created a chartered Community Benefit Committee (now renamed the Community Health Investment Committee) having half its members be members of the VHF Board. The VHF Board agreed to adhere to the following principles as members of the Community Health Investment Committee: to advocate for community needs, to be stewards of the VHF’s history, and to demand accountability in all Community Benefit investments.

Contact Information

julie.cole [at] uvmhealth.org (E-mail Julie Cole.)

Phone: 802-847-8929

Address:
Community Health Improvement
128 Lakeside Avenue
Suite 106
Burlington, VT 05401