David Haas serves, since 1998, as board chair of the William Penn Foundation, a regional grantmaker focused on the greater Philadelphia area, founded in 1945 by Otto and Phoebe Haas. The Foundation funds in the areas of Children, Youth & Families, Environment & Communities, and Arts & Culture. From 1989 to 1997, he worked as coordinator of the Philadelphia Independent Film/Video Association (PIFVA), a service organization for independent film, video and audio makers, then based at International House of Philadelphia, and worked as part of the team that launched the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema in 1991 (now, the Philadelphia Film Festival). Prior to working at PIFVA, Haas served as executive producer of AIDS in the Barrio (1989), a nationally recognized, 30 minute documentary on AIDS in the Latino community in Philadelphia, and worked as a freelance photographer. He received an AB in Mathematics from Brown University in 1978, and an MFA in photography from Tyler School of Art in 1987.