Remembering Margaret E. Mahoney, former president of The Commonwealth Fund

Margaret E. Mahoney, president of The Commonwealth Fund from 1980 to 1995, passed away on December 22, 2011, after a long illness.

Mahoney was the first woman to head a major U.S. philanthropic foundation, becoming president of The Commonwealth Fund in New York City in 1980. Prior to her leadership of The Commonwealth Fund, she was a senior executive of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and prior to that, of the Carnegie Corporation. She played a key role in the transition of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from a family foundation to one of the largest U.S. foundations in the 1970s, and revitalized The Commonwealth Fund, which was founded in 1918 and today has assets of $680 million.

"Margaret Mahoney was a pioneer in health care philanthropy, and the models she conceived for the role of foundations in effecting change continue to influence grant making around the U.S. today," said Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis. "It was inspiring to follow in her footsteps, and to build on the wonderful foundation she constructed at The Commonwealth Fund. She will be missed."

In a career spanning more than four decades, Mahoney helped redefine and reenergize American health care philanthropy. Under her leadership, The Commonwealth Fund became a significant force for improving the delivery of health care, addressing the health care and developmental needs of vulnerable populations, and strengthening key health care institutions. By bringing about the merger of the James Picker Foundation with The Commonwealth Fund in 1986, she assembled resources that were key in the emergence of the patient-centered care movement, which is now embodied in the Triple Aims of the Affordable Care Act of 2010: better health, better patient experience, and lower cost. Other major Fund initiatives carried out under Mahoney’s leadership—the Commission on Women’s Health (1993–98), Task Force on Academic Health Centers (1996–2003), Commission on Elderly People Living Alone (1985–1990), and a national program promoting mentoring of vulnerable adolescents—were based on her ability to spot emerging issues, engage national and local leaders in bringing attention to them, and mobilize the Fund and other philanthropies’ resources to help address them in practical ways.

"Margaret Mahoney was unquestionably one of the most creative and effective people in the world of philanthropy and its application to health care," said former Commonwealth Fund Board chair Samuel O. Thier, M.D., a professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard Medical School. "On a personal level she was responsible in great part for a good deal of the things I was able to accomplish through her combination of advice and support."

Upon her retirement from The Commonwealth Fund in 1995, Margaret Mahoney worked with the Commonwealth Fund and other funders to create Healthy Steps, a national initiative to encourage pediatricians to pay more attention to developmental issues in the first three years of a child’s life. Some 50 Healthy Steps practices are in operation around the country, and serve as models for integrating health care and social services needed by vulnerable children.

A leader of American philanthropy from the late 1960s into the 1990s, Mahoney was noted as a talent spotter and for her willingness to take risks with promising but yet unproven health care professionals and researchers. She had great ability to convince other philanthropies to join as partners in endeavors launched by The Commonwealth Fund and the other foundations at which she worked, and was sought out for advice on both institutional development and fund raising by health care leaders and researchers all around the country.

A native of Nashville, Tennessee and a graduate of Vanderbilt University, Mahoney served as a Foreign Affairs Officer for the U.S. Department of State from 1946 to 1953 before entering the foundation field. She received honorary degrees from many colleges and universities including Smith College, Williams College, Brandeis University, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She served on numerous nonprofit boards including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Columbia University, the Alliance for Aging Research, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Dole Foundation, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Dartmouth Medical School/Koop Institute Board of Overseers. She was a member of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, which she helped create in the 1970s.