{"id":116660,"date":"2026-02-18T02:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/116660\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T02:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:01:09","slug":"local-college-awarded-1-million-by-rk-mellon-foundation-to-support-economic-revitalization-wpxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/116660\/","title":{"rendered":"Local college awarded $1 million by RK Mellon Foundation to support economic revitalization \u2013 WPXI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">WASHINGTON, Pa.  \u2014 Washington &amp; Jefferson College has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to support economic revitalization in Washington, Pennsylvania. This includes the renovation and expansion of the five-year-old Ignite Business Incubator, deemed a crucial element to foster entrepreneurship and meet growing demand for programming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">W&amp;J said the funding will be used to advance a collaborative effort between the college and the City of Washington to improve quality of life for residents and support small business development. The college and city have worked jointly to identify priority initiatives for implementation through a multi-year planning process.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Since Ignite\u2019s debut in 2021, it has graduated more than 150 small businesses through its Ideas 2 Enterprise program, a five-week business accelerator program available free to Washington County residents and which serves as a bridge between W&amp;J and the local community. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/2026\/02\/16\/wj-rkmellon-grant.html?ana=wpxi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/2026\/02\/16\/wj-rkmellon-grant.html?ana=wpxi\">Click here to read more from our partners at the Pittsburgh Business Times.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Pa. \u2014 Washington &amp; Jefferson College has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Richard King&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[20623,55476,676,146,55479,55478,55475,73,75,74,22277,55474,55477,55473,55472],"class_list":{"0":"post-116660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-demand","9":"tag-entrepreneurship","10":"tag-funding","11":"tag-grant","12":"tag-ideas-2-enterprise","13":"tag-ignite","14":"tag-ignite-business-incubator","15":"tag-pittsburgh","16":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","17":"tag-pittsburgh-news","18":"tag-programming","19":"tag-richard-king-mellon-foundation","20":"tag-small-business-development","21":"tag-w-and-j","22":"tag-washington-and-jefferson-college"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}