UCSF Children’s Hospital Receives $100 Million Gift To Build New Hospital

UCSF Children’s Hospital has received a $100 million gift to help fund the construction of its new home at the UCSF Mission Bay campus near downtown San Francisco. The gift is a private donation from San Francisco residents Lynne and Marc Benioff, and is both the largest gift the donors have ever made and the largest gift ever granted specifically to the UCSF Children’s Hospital.

Marc Benioff is founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, the San Francisco-based enterprise cloud computing company. Benioff will formally announce the gift today (June 22) at the salesforce.com Cloudforce 2010 customer and developer conference in San Jose, Calif.

In honor of the donors, the hospital is being officially renamed UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. The new name will apply to the current facility at UCSF’s Parnassus Heights campus and to the future UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital at Mission Bay, part of a 289-bed integrated hospital complex for children, women and cancer patients that is scheduled to break ground this year.

“The significance of this gift is truly profound and underscores Lynne and Marc Benioff’s dedication to giving back to their community through philanthropy,” said UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann. “Their contribution will play a vital role in maintaining UCSF’s excellence in patient care, discovery and education, and as a leader making a difference in both the local San Francisco Bay Area and worldwide.

“The Benioffs’ extraordinary generosity will have a direct impact on the many thousands of young patients cared for at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital each year,” said Mark Laret, CEO of UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. “UCSF and the Benioffs share a commitment to performing at the very highest level, and we look forward to realizing our joint vision of creating the worlds most advanced children’s hospital at Mission Bay.”

The $100 million gift is one of the most significant private gifts ever made to a children’s hospital in the United States and is the largest contribution made to any capital project in the country this year. It is the fourth largest philanthropic gift in UCSF’s history.

“In business, we say that people overestimate what you can do in a year and underestimate what you can do in a decade. This is true in philanthropy as well,” Marc Benioff said in a commentary. “We will give exclusively to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, which has the research base for the next generation of discoveries, a commitment to advance health worldwide, and a focus on every child, regardless of resources. This is where we believe our time and resources will make the most impact in the next decade and beyond.”

The current gift completes the $125 million matching gift to the Campaign for UCSF Medical Center made in March 2009 by The Atlantic Philanthropies and its founder Charles F. Feeney. The match comes in two years ahead of schedule and brings the total raised for the $600 million capital campaign to $320 million. The Mission Bay project is now the only capital project at any University of California campus to receive two pledges of $100 million or more.

“This campaign has made great strides in a remarkably short time, especially given the current economic climate. Our progress speaks to the compassion of our supporters and to the importance of our cause, and we hope to continue inspiring others to join us,” Laret added.

To further engage the community, UCSF is launching an interactive website that will invite visitors to help shape the future of the new Mission Bay hospital. The UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Ideas site will offer an open forum for submitting suggestions and engaging in conversations about different aspects of the new facility, including innovations in care and patient amenities. The Benioffs will unveil the site at the Cloudforce 2010 conference. A link to the Ideas site is available at ucsfbenioffchildrenshospital.org. The site is powered through salesforce.com technology.

Upon completion in 2014, the 183-bed UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital at Mission Bay will set a new standard for patient- and family-centered health care, safety, sustainability and translational medicine. The new facility will offer urgent/emergency care, pediatric primary care and specialty outpatient services; and, with 45 more beds than the current hospital and an on-site helipad, there will be room to grow and serve more critically ill children who otherwise might not have access to lifesaving care.

In addition, the close proximity of the hospital to UCSF’s 42.5-acre biomedical research campus will speed the application of laboratory discoveries to the treatment of pediatric patients in the Bay Area and beyond, explained Laret.

While the current children’s hospital operates within a facility designed primarily for adults, the Mission Bay children’s hospital has been designed specifically for children and their families. Innovative equipment, child-friendly decor, and rooms and resources that engage the whole family will promote the healing process, according to Roxanne Fernandes, executive director of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. Patient rooms will be large enough to enable parents to stay with their children around the clock, and thousands of square feet of rehabilitation, play therapy, and outdoor garden areas will complete the space.

The entire hospital complex also has been sustainably designed and will be certified LEED Gold by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Among other elements, its energy and water conservation measures, green roofs, and selection of non-toxic materials will be among the most extensive of any urban U.S. hospital, according to Cindy Lima, executive director of the Mission Bay Hospitals Project.

The current gift builds upon a longstanding relationship between the Benioffs, the Salesforce.com Foundation and UCSF. Previously, the donors have supported various research projects and have endowed four departmental chairs in gastroenterology, hospital medicine, maternal fetal medicine, and psychiatry. Lynne Benioff also is active on the UCSF Foundation’s Board of Directors, the institution’s premier volunteer leadership body.

 

About UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital creates an environment where children and their families find compassionate care at the forefront of scientific discovery, with more than 150 experts in 50 medical specialties serving patients throughout Northern California and beyond. The hospital, which is part of UCSF Medical Center, admits about 5,000 children each year, including 2,000 babies born in the hospital.

 

About UCSF

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. For more information, visit ucsf.edu.

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Related Links:

Blog mail from Marc Benioff:
http://cloudblog.salesforce.com/2010/06/announcing-ucsf-benioff-childrens-hospital.html

UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay:
http://missionbayhospitals.ucsf.edu/

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Ideas site:
http://ideas.ucsfbenioffchildrenshospital.org/

Follow UCSF steady Twitter at http://twitter.com/ucsfnews