Every year around high school graduation, members of the Foundations Community Partnership Board visit high schools in Bucks County.

The board members are there to personally present scholarships to deserving students who have been nominated by their guidance counselors for their academic excellence and community service.

It’s one of the favorite things that Tracy Pasternak Willis does as FCP’s board chair.

.“Just the response from the kids and the teachers and the high schools is great,” she said.

Willis has been on the FCP board since 2018 and has been its chair since January. She’s also served as vice chair and as a member of the Professional Development and Education Committee.  

With a background in behavioral health, she’s spent a lot of her career working at psychiatric hospitals, working with children and adolescents.

These days, Willis spends more time at FCP on the executive and business side of behavioral health.

It’s a good place to be, she said, because now she can see the big picture, and effect more change to develop and build things that will help those most in need.

“When you’ve had a long day and you’re doing all kinds of crazy stuff, it’s great to have to go to a board meeting because you’re deciding who can you help now,” Willis said.

The main mission of FCP is giving out grants to nonprofit organizations focused on the behavioral health and human service needs of children, young adults, and families in Bucks County.

Willis joins other board members in deciding who gets the grants, based on a strategic set of criteria.

The board looks at the structure and leadership of an organization and whether its mission aligns with FCP. It also considers how many Bucks County recipients will benefit.

“Then you come up with scores and go from there,” Willis said.

FCP has emergency grants for nonprofits when something unexpected comes up, as well as programmatic, capital, and general operating support grants.

It also distributes the Partnership in Education scholarships annually to one deserving student in each public and technical high school in Bucks County.

And those scholarships keep on giving. After a recipient finishes their first year of college, they have the opportunity to apply to FCP’s Summer Youth Corps, a 10-week, paid service learning program, and be matched with a nonprofit serving Bucks County.

“It gives real-life experience to the recipient and much-needed help to the organization. It’s really a win-win,” she said.

Willis didn’t start off thinking she’d one day be supporting nonprofits in Bucks County. 

Her original plan at Arcadia University was to be a physical therapist, but she didn’t want to take all those science courses, “dissecting things and all that medical, this was not for me.”

She switched majors to psychology after being impressed by a psychology course, continuing with a master’s degree in human services psychology from La Salle University. 

Today, she is a licensed professional counselor in Pennsylvania.

“I really, really like working with children and adolescents, but I didn’t see myself as a teacher.”

Wilis started working with children and adolescents at psychiatric hospitals and eventually fell into FCP’s sphere of influence.

FCP origins

Foundations Community Partnership grew out of a Doylestown behavioral health organization called Delaware Valley Mental Health Foundation. It later became Foundations Behavioral Health, a hospital providing behavioral health services to children and adolescents. 

Willis joined the nonprofit hospital working as a senior manager in operations.

The hospital was purchased by a for-profit company, Universal Health Services. As part of the purchase agreement, FCP was created as a philanthropic nonprofit.

Ron Bernstein, the CEO for Foundations Behavioral Health, became the FCP’s first CEO. 

“I have a long history of working with him,” Willis said. “Ron was sort of my mentor for years and he brought me onto the board.”

FCP started with a small group of board volunteers and continued to grow over the years. In the beginning, back in 2008, it was tough even finding organizations to accept their grant money.

“We had to actually market ourselves and reach out to people to apply,” Willis said.

Now the community response is overwhelming and FCP’s been able to make a huge impact for the nonprofits in Bucks County, she said.

These days, Willis divides her time between the FCP board, working with FCP CEO Dr. Tobi Bruhn, and serving as regional director of business development at the for-profit organization Haven Behavioral Health Care.

“I’m well connected,” she said. “I’ve been around  this community for 25 years.”

“It’s just a natural progression,” she said.