By Frank J. Diekmann
When I write “Children’s Miracle Network” or “Credit Unions 4 Kids,” there’s little doubt that if your credit union career is longer than the initial meeting with HR you’ve heard of both organizations and are familiar with what they do.
But it’s also most likely an outside-in familiarity: the golf tournaments, the jeans days, the car washes, CO-OP’s Miracle Match. In short, the giving side of the equation. For many in credit unions, that’s where it ends, with the oversized checks and the photos taken for distribution to media outlets, until the next fundraiser comes around again.
But the money doesn’t just disappear into the ether of good intentions. It goes places. It helps people. It heals wounds surgeons and doctors can’t, brings smiles to those who have little reason to, and, as was shared with me, even has children asking when they can return to a place you’re not supposed to want to visit.
In this case that place was The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, with which credit union vendor SWBC and the charity Credit Unions 4 Kids have long been involved (even before it was called CUs4Kids), and where the management team at the former and doctors, nurses and others from the latter were nice enough to share their time and give me a tour recently.
For the last 31 years Credit Unions 4 Kids in San Antonio has been raising money for The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, having raised $7.1 million during that time. That’s a big number that has come from too-many-to-count small fundraisers, from candy sales to bowling tournaments, from employees and members, all from 20 or so credit unions that have been involved over the years. (Since 2006, the national CU4Kids effort has raised $150 million for about 170 Children's Miracle Network Hospitals nationally).
In the San Antonio area, the two principals behind SWBC, Charlie Amato and Gary Dudley, were the driving forces behind local efforts to raise funds for local hospitals, an effort that would eventually join forces with the Credit Unions 4 Kids program that originated in the Pacific Northwest (and which ultimately would make CMN the beneficiary of its fundraising). Both men have given generously with time, effort and their own money. Amato would eventually serve as national chairman for Children’s Miracle Network, and he has also served on the board of the CHRISTUS Health Foundation (the children’s hospital is part of CHRISTUS Health). Along the way, both have also had family members with health issues that required hospital treatment, and anyone who’s been through something like that knows how quickly a “cause” can become much more personal and meaningful.
Much More Hospitable
What all the money raised has done is to make the hospital a whole lot more hospitable for children and their families. As part of our tour of The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio we stopped by the oncology floor, where, if that were not scary enough, the length of stay can be the opposite of being an outpatient. After you get past the shock of your child getting that diagnosis, your upside-down life includes an extended hospital stay that brings new meaning to being patient, putting pressure on family members as well as the kids who are in the fight of their lives. And that’s where you really see where credit unions’ money goes and the good it does.
For the past four years The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio has been undergoing an $80-million transformation ($76 million of which has been raised to date). That capital campaign has helped to create a new two-story lobby, a chapel, and remodel and improve many of the floors. The remodeled spaces are color and theme-coded, not to mention bright and welcoming and friendly, especially from a child’s point of view. There is a Child Life Activity Center with three objectives: help a child to continue normal development, even though a medical condition may retard some neurological development; to allow the child and the parent to deal with the trauma together; and, as one doctor explained, “to let kids have honest-to-goodness playtime and fun.”
Perhaps not as much fun but critically important: a full-time teacher and teaching assistant are also on staff to keep kids on track in school.
The Little Things Are Big
There are washers and dryers available for families, addressing one of the biggest needs of people who are away from home. In some cases, the hospital rooms come are equipped to be adjoining rooms in which family members can stay, or in cases where there are multiple children from the same family being hospitalized, such as after a car accident, the kids can be near each other.
Like many children’s hospitals there is a Ronald McDonald House for families. Unlike many hospitals, in the case of The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, Ronne Mac’s place is inside the hospital itself.
And when children are too sick or at risk to get to those places, the activities and fun can come to them, with many of the supplies and materials and playrooms paid for by credit unions.
In many hospitals now the concept is “family centered care,” an intentional move away from the long-time tradition of patient care and hospitalizations in which the family were viewed as just this annoying group of people who were in the way. Families can be critical to recovery and to even monitoring the child, and they can also be involved with the hospital for a long time. As one doctor noted, a leukemia patient’s treatment may last three years, and that’s if there is no relapse.
“This (hospital design) has been built to reflect that a lot of parents support each other,” explained a hospital spokesperson. “Little kids want to be in groups; teenagers not so much.”
Wanting To See Where Money Goes
During the tour, SWBC’s Amato observed that when it comes to charities, people—especially Millennials—want to pick and choose where their funds go, to see their money doing good. He noted credit unions go through the same thing, especially with what often feels like a circular parade of charitable groups asking for help and assistance. He’s hopeful more people within credit unions will get to see all the hospitals that are recipients of funds from Children’s Miracle Network, and how the money is being used. It isn’t going to new or remodeled buildings such as that being completed by The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. Instead, the money goes to all those things that make the buildings more human, almost home-like, and that may be the real miracle.
Take a tour of a children’s hospital sometime and see how all that money raised is being spent and you’ll quickly realize that “people helping people” isn’t just about finances. And that golf tournament or jeans day or candy sale is a lot more than a fundraiser.
If you’d like to know more about The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, you will find a video here.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info and followed @FrankCUToday.