When Chris Gessner got a letter about six months ago from a philanthropist asking to name part of Akron Children’s hospital, he didn’t know whether it was real.
He reached out to Shelly Brown, the chief development officer and executive director of Akron Children’s Foundation. He Googled Tom Golisano, the entrepreneur who was offering money.
Golisano, who had donated millions to other children’s hospitals in the U.S., checked out. After the philanthropist toured the hospital and hospital executives visited his Florida home, they came to an agreement, announced Monday.
Golisano, who founded Paychex, Inc., would grant Akron Children’s $50 million, no strings attached. In exchange, the Akron campus would be known as the Akron Children’s Golisano Campus.
The $50 million gift is the largest grant the hospital has received and one of the largest in Akron’s history.
“It’s a big, big gift,” said Gessner, the president and CEO of Akron Children’s hospital. “It’s really special.”
Gessner said the largest previous gift for the organization was $10 million from Kay Jewelers. In terms of other local philanthropy, Summa received a $15 million grant in 2017 from Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams, which followed their previous $5 million gift. The Austen BioInnovation Institute launched with $20 million from the Knight Foundation, which also committed $20 million to the University of Akron’s efforts to reopen the Polsky Building.
The Akron Children’s donation is “definitely a legacy gift,” said Tracy Carter, the president and CEO of Trailhead Community Health Foundation, the philanthropic organization spun out of Summa after that hospital system was sold.
Kyle Kutuchief, the Akron program director, confirmed that the Knight Foundation had not given a larger gift than the $50 million donation at one time in Akron.
“With that size of a gift, it’s definitely game changing,” Carter said. “It’s definitely a transformational gift.”
What will the $50 million be used for?
Akron Children’s will receive $10 million annually for each of five years, and Gessner already knows what the first tranche of money will go to.
The hospital will relocate and enlarge its cancer center and its in-patient behavioral health services, moving both from the main hospital building at 214 W. Bowery St. to the Kay Jewelers Pavilion at 1 Perkins Square. The money will help accelerate that process, Gessner said. It will pay for an outdoor area and a gym for behavioral health patients, facilities Gessner said have been shown to be therapeutic.
It also will help fund an outpatient behavioral health program in Southeast Ohio, in the Marietta area.
Additionally, the hospital is partnering with the Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Ohio to establish primary care offices in one or two locations and telehealth options for others. The funds will help that effort.
From there, he said, ideas include expanding cutting-edge clinical research, opening more facilities in underserved areas and supporting programs like pediatric dental programs that are hard to find funding for. Other money could go toward covering more costs for food, social workers or equipment that patients need but that insurance companies and the government don’t pay for.
“All of those things are sort of safety-net type of services or programs that sometimes fall through the cracks, and it’s really nice to have a source of funds like the Golisano funds to help us with that,” Gessner said. “We can start to dream bigger and faster. A lot of times what philanthropy does is it accelerates innovation and big ideas.”
Carter, the Trailhead leader, said she might expect the hospital to look at expanding medical education opportunities or pay for some capital needs. She said behavioral health needs had come up as Trailhead executives talked to community members in their service areas about what that organization might fund.
The gift, she said, puts Akron Children’s on the map as one of the best children’s hospitals in the nation. It will help attract more giving, she said, and make the hospital a more attractive place to work.
“It’s a positive all the way around,” Carter said. “They do great work over there. The national gift is just affirmation of their excellence. It’s well deserved, well earned.”
Akron Children’s will join a network of Galisano-funded hospitals
Gessner also thinks the gift will help attract talent, and he’s hopeful that it will bring more philanthropy in as well — perhaps from Golisano, who has repeated donations to some health care organizations.
No one from Golisano’s foundation was available to speak about what made Akron Children’s attractive for philanthropy, but in a statement announcing the money, Golisano said the hospital “has demonstrated a strong commitment to meeting families where they are, expanding services in underserved communities, and building a healthier future for children across Ohio.”
Bill Considine, the CEO emeritus of Akron Children’s, said the hospital has worked hard to bring treatment closer to patients. He called the grant “truly transformational.” Considine said his understanding was that Golisano looked for organizations that reached out beyond their walls — which aligned with Akron Children’s efforts to serve patients regardless of location.
“The whole community should be letting out a rah, rah, rah,” Considine said. “It came like manna from heaven.”
In addition to the funds, Akron Children’s will become part of a network of Galisano-funded hospitals — there are 15 now, with the inclusion of Akron Children’s and hospitals in Dayton and South Dakota that also received funding, announced Monday.
The network will meet several times a year, and Gessner said it will provide an opportunity for close collaboration with like-minded leaders who want to improve children’s health. The first meeting he’ll attend, he said, will be in June in Rochester, New York.
Being part of the network will help Akron Children’s increase its sample size for research and will help the organization keep on top of fresh ideas, Gessner said.
He called Galisano, “a very generous guy” who was using his personal wealth to help improve children’s health care.
Considine said he thought the community was blessed by the donation, which will further enhance Akron’s health care offerings.
“You look at the size of our community, and to have medical resources like we have here, it’s phenomenal,” he said. “Let’s make the investment to be deserving of future investments.”
For his part, Gessner said he appreciates how much flexibility the gift provides for hospital leadership to execute on Akron Children’s mission.
In his 36 years in health care, Gessner said, this is the first time a letter like Galisano’s arrived.
“We can have Mondays like this every Monday,” he said. “I’d really be happy.”
