Just over one year ago, a small committee formed with a lofty goal: get 40 local businesses to commit to supporting Huntsville’s hospital with a total of $1,000,000 in pledges. Now, they are celebrating the first anniversary of the initiative almost three-quarters of the way to their goal.
As of today, 29 local businesses have each committed to donating $25,000 – $5,000 each every year for five years – to the Huntsville Hospital Foundation. (See the full list at the bottom of this story.) They’ll be gathering on Monday, February 13 at On the Docks Pub to celebrate and encourage other local businesses to come on board.
“We want to say a huge thank you to these businesses for showing their leadership in the community and their support of the hospital in Huntsville,” says Katherine Craine, Executive Director of the Huntsville Hospital Foundation. “Their leadership means a lot to all of us in the community.”
It means a lot to the hospital, too.
It’s great for us because we get to know that our local businesses are supporting us for five years – it helps us to plan ahead to make commitments to the hospital to purchase equipment when we know the amount of pledges coming in. And it demonstrates to the hospital and the doctors and everyone at the hospital that businesses in the community really to care about them.
Katherine Craine, Executive Director, Huntsville Hospital Foundation
Campaign chair, Pat Dubé – who oversees the initiative with committee members Chantelle Armstrong and John Crockett – kicked off Business Cares with a donation from his own business, Greystone Project Management.
“Having been in business for over 20 years, I felt like I had to give back to our community,” says Dubé. “I was looking for a cause and felt the best place would be the hospital. The community has been great to our business, so being able to do this for the community makes me feel really great.”
He encourages other businesses to follow suit. “While it’s not an insignificant amount of money, it is manageable for a firm of size. It’s such a worthy cause and with all the controversy about our hospital and what’s been happening, it’s been easier to bring the issue to the forefront and explain to people how much the government doesn’t fund in our healthcare. Personally, I wasn’t totally aware of how much responsibility our ministry of health expects our communities to undertake. They don’t fund significant equipment purchases and there are so many pieces of equipment that wear out that need to be replaced.”
Dubé says Business Cares is an opportunity for business to step up and show their concern and commitment for the hospital.
What would your business be like if the hospital wasn’t here or didn’t have the capacity to deal with the issues that might occur because of your business? If you have many employees and there’s ever an issue at work, if there’s ever an accident, it’s something we’ve come to expect that it’s close at hand and ready if there’s an event.
Pat Dubé, Business Cares campaign chair
“It’s a worthy cause to give back to and it’s worthy of our time to try to try to raise this million dollars,” adds Dubé. “We are a year in to this campaign and we’re almost there.”
If you are interested in joining the other Business Cares members, RSVP for the celebration on Monday, February 13 (3-5pm at On the Docks Pub) or get more information by emailing [email protected] or call 705-789-4756.
Read about the launch of Business Cares on Doppler here.
The Business Cares campaign has reached 29 of its goal of 40 local businesses supporting Huntsville’s hospital
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