Mark Weinheimer · 2025 Honoree

Mark Weinheimer’s many years of soliciting proposals, evaluating grant requests and administering grant-giving programs for large foundations, state and federal governments stood him in good stead when, in 2019 he stepped into the role of Chairman of the Capitol Hill Community Foundation’s all-volunteer Grants Committee. He had long been an enthusiastic member of the committee, evaluating a dozen or more requests at each half-yearly grant cycle. He was a natural to take on an even larger role as chairman. His whole life had prepared him for it and the activist attitude it promotes.

Growing up in northwest Philadelphia, the son of Jews who had escaped Nazi Germany, Mark learned more from his older brothers than the sandlot baseball they all loved. Each one became engaged in political action in one way or another. In August of 1963, as a high schooler, Mark was part of the March on Washington and was awed by what he experienced that day. After majoring in government at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he embarked on a career focused on the development issues in fighting poverty and reviving older downtown neighborhoods. This took him from Lancaster to Harrisburg and then brought him to Washington, to a job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development working with nonprofit organizations to stimulate community involvement and economic development nationwide. 

A colleague at HUD told him there were only two places in the DC area to consider living – and one was Capitol Hill (the other was Takoma Park). Mark and his wife Cecelia loved the Hill, happily raising their son Dan here, sending him to Brent Elementary and Wilson (now Jackson-Reed) Senior High, enjoying the conveniences and warmth of city and neighborhood life. But it wasn’t until, after a period of managing an inner-cities venture fund for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and several years of running his own consulting firm, as he was thinking about possibly retiring, that Mark, at Cecelia’s suggestion, decided to become more involved in issues closer to home. Soon he was president of the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals which gave him a seat on the Board of the Community Foundation. He quickly gravitated to the grants committee.

Mark takes particular satisfaction in the work that the Foundation has been able to do supporting local schools. He’s proud, too, that grants not only help organizations financially but bring together individuals involved in many different aspects of community work. Award checks are given out twice a year at “Great Grant Giveaways,” gatherings where grantees pick up their checks but also meet each other, nibble snacks and talk. Two years ago, he created a new level of grant awards – Innovation Grants – to encourage our local organizations to take on new and larger programs.

And, perhaps even more satisfying than any of that is that Dan’s two boys who, while they live far away in Oregon, are as obsessed as their grandfather was – and is – with baseball.