7 This award is presented to an individual, couple or family with a proven track record of exceptional generosity who, through direct financial support, has demonstrated outstanding civic and charitable responsibility, and whose generosity encourages others to take philanthropic leadership roles in our community. OUTSTANDING PHILANTHROPIST Salvatore Alfiero, posthumous Sal Alfiero was a prominent philanthropist in the Western New York Community for decades before his passing in June 2022. Through his many philanthropic gifts he supported education and entrepreneurship, healthcare and cancer research, homelessness, and veteran populations in the region. Some of his most impactful gifts include but are not limited to the following: A $2 million gift to the University at Buffalo to name the School of Management’s student-focused academic and development center. Named for Sal, and his wife Jeanne, the Alfiero Center is the first academic facility at UB, and one of only a few in the State University of New York system, to be funded primarily through private donations. More than $9 million to Kaleida Health (both Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and its successor John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital) - including a $5 million donation in 2012 that helped fund the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and the Emergency Department. In 2014, he added an additional $1-million commitment specifically for the new hospital’s helipad. This $6-million-dollar commitment was the largest personal gift during the fundraising campaign for the new hospital. Sal was a pillar in the development of the move to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and building of John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital. Additionally, Sal served as Board Chair for the former Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and was one of the six founding directors of Kaleida Health when it was formed in 1998. He subsequently served as its second Board Chair and provided over $30,000 in support to the Kaleida Health Foundation over the years to assist Millard Fillmore Suburban and Buffalo General Hospitals. Sal and the Alfiero Family also committed $1 million to support construction for the new Buffalo City Mission Community Center. The 75,000-square-foot flagship community center, opened in 2020, provides preventative services on the front end to decrease the percentage of homelessness year-over-year for those who are on the brink of homelessness. An endowment for Breast Oncology was also created with a $1.5 million gift from Sal and family to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2009. The endowed chair supports the Institute’s renowned breast cancer research center and treatment programs and provides a secure base of annual funding to continue to grow the Breast Center’s programs and to explore the latest in clinical treatments for patients. Sal’s commitment to philanthropy didn’t stop in Western New York – he and his family have also supported Veterans Transition House in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The Anthony C. & Salvatore H. Alfiero Outreach Center was opened in 2020 with a leadership gift from Sal and the Alfiero Family. The Outreach Center, which is staffed by professional licensed clinicians, is a resource to all veterans and their families seeking information and services that support their safety, health and well-being. He also has a scholarship fund at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Through Sal’s giving we can see commitment to supporting both healthcare and education. He understood the importance of providing quality healthcare to children across Western New York with his contributions to Children’s Hospital – but also recognized the need to support it is as the only standalone children’s hospital in the state as well. As is clear through many of his other gifts, he is an advocate for better healthcare outcomes for those that are homeless or at risk of homelessness as well as Veterans and their families. Further, Sal is committed to quality education as can be seen in his support of both scholarship funds and educational centers dedicated to providing resources to students to help them succeed on their academic journey and career thereafter. Through all of his contributions, it is clear that Sal and family lead by example. They have supported many worthwhile causes in the Western New York Community and beyond, while also helping to promote the importance of philanthropy. During an interview in 2005 before the grand opening of the Alfiero Center at the University at Buffalo, he said: “I think the university is a primary, if not the primary, asset of the community of Western New York,” he said. “We also feel that when you get as much as we have been fortunate enough to receive, both in terms of a good lifestyle and in the successes our businesses have enjoyed, it is incumbent upon us to give back to the community.”
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