The John T. Gorman Foundation has announced that Tony Cipollone, of Baltimore, Maryland, will become the first President and Chief Executive Officer of the foundation effective August 1.  "The Board of Directors is tremendously excited about the prospect of working with Tony and learning from him," comments Shawn Gorman, Chairman of the Board. "We have every confidence that Tony will do an outstanding job guiding the John T. Gorman Foundation as it grows and develops, and that under his leadership the foundation will become a strategic philanthropic leader in the State of Maine."

Cipollone is currently the Vice President for Civic Sites and Initiatives at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where he has worked in senior leadership for over 20 years.  Over the course of his career at Casey, Cipollone established the foundation's grant making strategies in education as well as in evaluation and policy research.  For more than a decade he also was responsible for Casey's KIDS COUNT Initiative and its national network of state-level policy advocates.  In addition, he managed the foundation's efforts to use strategic communications to advance Casey's lessons and its messages.  In recent years, he has led the teams associated with two significant sets of community change investments in Baltimore and Atlanta, each seeking to  help deeply challenged neighborhoods through grants and social investments aimed at increasing economic opportunities for parents, improving the quality of schools and early learning centers for children,  promoting housing quality and affordability, and physically transforming the community.

The John T. Gorman Foundation, with offices in Portland, Maine, was founded by the late John T. ("Tom") Gorman, Jr. of Yarmouth, Maine, a grandson of L.L. Bean company founder Leon Leonwood Bean.  Tom Gorman created this foundation to give back to the community and to honor the memories of his mother and his father, John T. and Barbara B. Gorman.  From the start, Tom Gorman was clear that he wanted to benefit disadvantaged children and the elderly in Maine and help those suffering from cancer and from mental illness. Nephew Shawn Gorman explains: "The foundation has been characterized by a willingness to provide general support to organizations that provide for the fundamental needs of the very poor, including food, housing, energy, transportation, and communication, as well as cancer and mental health services. This kind of general, non project-based funding is unusual, hard to come by, and crucial to an organization's survival."

Since its beginning, the John T. Gorman Foundation has made approximately 320 grants totaling more than $6.4 million.  Annual giving will increase to about $8-9 million in 2012, all of which will be made to support efforts that advance the Foundation's mission and priorities across the State of Maine.

Cipollone remarked: "I am honored to help advance the legacy of Tom Gorman, an individual whose values and principles were similar to the humble and generous founder of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  I welcome the opportunity to return to New England and look forward to working with the philanthropic community and other partners to support populations and issues that I care deeply about in the context of Maine."