Expanding Our Horizons
Dear Friends,
rowth
and change characterized the Foundation’s work in 2008. We made tremendous
progress in our fundraising campaign, launched a new focus area on improving
the health care system for children with special needs, and expanded our
information work to cover all of California.
The Board also refined our mission and vision statements, and established some core beliefs that will guide our future work.
In our Breaking New Ground campaign for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the child health programs of Stanford University School of Medicine we reached $289 million toward our $300 million goal. The Campaign was boosted by a generous $30 million challenge grant to encourage major gifts to support fellowships and faculty scholars.
Total donations for the Hospital and School reached a record $90.8 million in 2008, thanks to the generosity of 8,051 individuals, foundations and corporations. Packard Children’s continued to refine its plans for expanding to serve larger numbers of children and accommodate the fast-moving advances in technology that allow the Hospital to provide the finest care. A portion of the payout from the Hospital’s Association of Auxiliaries was directed toward that project.
Grantmaking in Transition
As a result of a strategic review of our Grantmaking investments, that program began a transition in 2008, when the Board decided to phase out our support of programs that support the emotional health of preteens, ages 9 to 13.
Over the last decade, the Foundation has invested $18 million in grants in this area, funding 62 individual agencies that have served approximately 64,000 preteens. We will exit from of this area gradually, leaving a strong legacy of accomplishments. During 2008, the Foundation made 16 grants totaling almost $2.7 million to community partners in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Our new focus area will be children with special health care needs. While these children receive excellent care when they are acutely ill in a children’s hospital such as Packard, the overall health care delivery system is not organized to optimize their health. The Board believes that the Foundation must play a role in ensuring a better and more complete continuum of care for these vulnerable children.
Extending our Reach
Based on the success of our expansion to six counties in the Bay Area, our Information Program took steps to launch a statewide version of kidsdata.org, our flagship website. In 2009, we will begin providing data for all counties, cities and school districts in California. Our goal is to make timely and objective data available to grantseekers, program planners, legislators, media and others interested in children’s health, so that we make progress on pressing issues.
As always, we could not achieve our goals on behalf of children without the tremendous support of our donors and community partners, and we thank you for your ongoing interest.
Sincerely,
Matt James
Chairman, Board of DirectorsDavid Alexander, MD
President and CEO