After a funeral at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church (built with funds from her family), she was buried at Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh.
[10] During her lifetime, Sarah Mellon Scaife donated tens of millions of dollars to a variety of humanitarian causes and the arts, including family planning, hospitals, disability and poverty issues, environmental conservation, and museums in the Pittsburgh region.
Perhaps her most impactful gift was $35,000 to equip a virus research lab at the University of Pittsburgh during the late 1940s.
Constructed at a cost of $12.5 million, the gallery more than doubled the exhibition space of the Museum of Art.
Her son, Richard Mellon Scaife, chaired the museum's fine arts committee during the 1970s.