Human Services Origin Story

Jean Yawkey regularly serves as an active volunteer for the American Red Cross in New York City during World War II. The Yawkey Foundation goes on to support the American Red Cross in Massachusetts and on Cape Cod through later donations, perpetuating Jean’s commitment to the organization’s mission.

Tom Yawkey personally funds the United Community Service of Metropolitan Boston, the predecessor organization to the United Fund and today’s United Way. Tom continues to provide support through his personal giving to the organization for the next two decades.

Tom and Jean Yawkey begin to support Tara Hall Home for Boys, a residential school in Georgetown, South Carolina for boys from troubled backgrounds with academic and behavioral health needs. Tom and Jean purchase and donate 11 acres of land to the nonprofit to serve as a residential campus. The Yawkeys support Tara Hall throughout their lives, maintaining close ties to the organization and the young people it serves.

Jean Yawkey purchases the Greater Boston Food Bank’s first refrigerated food truck. Jean continues to support the Food Bank over many years and in 2005 the Yawkey Foundation honored Jean’s long-term commitment to the organization with a transformational capital grant of $3 million to support the construction of a new facility.  Today, the Greater Boston Food Bank serves 140,000 people monthly across 190 cities and towns throughout Eastern Massachusetts.

Jean Yawkey begins personally funding Pine Street Inn and Rosie’s Place, two of Boston’s largest human services agencies providing shelter, food, and critical needs for homeless individuals.  She continues to support these organizations every year through her personal giving for the rest of her life. Both organizations remain valued partners to the Yawkey Foundation to this day. 

The Yawkey Foundation and the Yawkey-owned Red Sox begin to support the Dimock Center, an organization providing integrated comprehensive health and human services to Boston’s underserved neighborhoods, targeting particularly the African American and Latino residents of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan and Jamaica Plain. This longstanding relationship culminates in a transformational capital 2018 grant of $2.5 million to support expansion of the Dr. Lucy Sewall Center for Acute Treatment Services. The project increased the center’s capacity by 33%, enabling them to provide much-needed detoxification and substance abuse recovery services to more than 4,000 people annually. 

After decades of support for Catholic Charities and the programs and services the organization provides across the City of Boston, the Yawkey Foundation underscores Tom and Jean Yawkey’s commitment to the City and its residents, and in particular newly arrived and long-term resident Haitian immigrants and refugees, with a transformational capital grant of $5 million to support the construction of the Haitian Multi-Service Center in Dorchester. The Haitian Multi-Service Center supports educational development and economic self-sufficiency in a culturally and linguistically familiar environment.

The Yawkey Foundation provides program support to Nashoba Learning Group and their efforts to provide comprehensive, individualized educational programming to students with autism. The Foundation continues to support the organization with a series of small capital grants enabling the school to expand in order to better serve its students. In 2013, the Yawkey Foundation makes a strategic investment grant of $500,000 to support Nashoba Learning Group’s new Adult Program designed to offer employment support, job skills training, life skills, recreation and leisure, and community activities to young adults with autism.

After more than a decade of supporting Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and providing strategic investment planning grants as the organization expanded, the Yawkey Foundation perpetuates Jean Yawkey’s commitment to helping Boston’s homeless by providing a $5 million transformational capital grant to Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program to support the construction of Jean Yawkey Place, a respite and recovery facility for people experiencing homelessness.

To assist with costs around the planning and design for House of Possibilities’ new facility in Easton, the Yawkey Foundation provides a $250,000 strategic initiative grant to help the organization advance its mission of being a place where individuals with developmental challenges are ensured access to critically needed support, in a space where children and adults can work toward achieving their highest potential. Over the next several years, the Foundation provides a series of strategic investment grants and additional program support.

After decades of critical needs program support originating with Jean Yawkey’s dedication to the organization’s mission, the Yawkey Foundation provides a $1.2 million strategic investment grant to Pine Street Inn to help the organization with its strategic shift towards sustainability and permanent housing while continuing to provide basic services.

The Yawkey Foundation gives My Brother’s Keeper, a longstanding program grantee providing furniture, food and other basic needs to families in southeastern Massachusetts, a $250,000 strategic investment grant to help the organization address the unmet need in the communities of Fall River and New Bedford through expansion of its service area.

Having previously provided funds for programming and expansion planning for Melmark New England’s clinical and educational services to children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the Yawkey Foundation awards a transformational capital grant of $2 million to Melmark for the construction of four new children’s residences on its Andover campus.

After many years of providing program grants for cultural enrichment, the Yawkey Foundation awards a $500,000 strategic investment grant to Cardinal Cushing Centers for the construction of their new MarketPlace buildings providing hands-on job training and hands-on work experience for people with intellectual disabilities. 

The Yawkey Foundation supports more than 60 nonprofit organizations responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with $4 million in grant funding. The grants are focused on providing equitable access to critical human services and health care to the most vulnerable individuals and families impacted by the pandemic.