Memorial Foundation

Memorial Foundation

Memorial Foundation was capitalized in April 1994 with an endowment funded entirely by the sale of Nashville Memorial Hospital in Madison, Tennessee. The hospital's board transitioned into the foundation's Board of Trust, creating direct institutional continuity between the healthcare asset and its philanthropic successor. Scott S. Perry, the foundation's founding President and CEO, has led the organization for over three decades, operating from its headquarters at 855 Skyline Ridge Drive in Madison. Grantmaking is restricted by charter to nonprofits serving residents of Davidson, Sumner, and Robertson counties. The foundation works across health, youth and children, senior citizens, education, human and social services, and community services — a six-category mandate that covers the full spectrum of local need. Grantees include Operation Stand Down Tennessee, which connects over 4,500 veterans annually with housing and career services; Siloam Health, providing medical care to more than 6,700 immigrant and refugee patients from over 100 nations each year; Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, distributing over 42 million pounds of food annually; Safe Haven Family Shelter, which places more than 300 families in stable housing yearly; Communities in Schools of Tennessee, supporting over 5,000 at-risk K-12 students; and Renewal House, a residential treatment program serving over 500 women and children recovering from substance use disorders. As of 2025, the foundation had made 5,843 grants totaling $201,166,096 since 1996. The 2025 grant cycle alone deployed $5,587,750 across 209 grants (per the firm, 2025). The foundation maintains a partnership with the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, where it is listed as a founding partner. Governance rests with a board chaired by David McKee, M.D., with Varina Buntin as Vice Chair and Alfonzo Alexander as Secretary. Frank Bumstead, the long-time Finance and Investment Committee Chair and a founding trustee, passed away in 2025. The foundation represents a specific, studied architecture: a hospital-conversion endowment locked to a three-county geography with a permanent grantmaking mandate. Unlike foundations that can shift focus or geography over time, the Memorial Foundation's charter creates an unusually rigid structural tie between a single asset-sale origin and a fixed service territory — a constraint that functions as a concentration strategy rather than a limitation.