Hospital seeks to ‘shape future’ via fundraising

The Annual Giving Campaign has started at Sampson Regional Medical Center, a fundraising effort hospital officials hope residents and businesses alike will continue to support as they have in the past.

Amber Halstead, vice president of Strategy and Business Development at the hospital, said this is the fourth year the SRMC Foundation is putting on this campaign, one that started in 2020 after the impact that COVID-19 had on social fundraising events.

“We started this campaign four years ago, really at the time that COVID had impacted the ability to do social gathering,” Halstead explained. “And many of our major fundraising events were centered around doing gatherings. So that’s really where the start of our annual campaign was to continue to give our donors the opportunity to make a tax-deductible gift to the organization.”

The response for this campaign has been great, Halstead said, and it “opened an opportunity for donors who may not participate in a golf tournament to give because it’s a very unique sponsorship opportunity.”

According to Halstead, the campaign is set up so donors have the opportunity to donate to any of the projects or programs that they find interesting and want to support. This could include donating to things like patient care, facility operations, imaging, information technology and security or the board-designated fund.

The Annual Giving Campaign booklet is sent out to potential donors and explains about each of the projects.

The brochure notes that donating to patient care would put money toward “equipment and medical devices for nursing units, operating room, laboratory and rehabilitation.” Imaging is putting money toward imaging equipment like an MRI, CT, or ultrasound. Facility Operations puts money toward the hospital itself like boilers, chillers, HVAC, power redundancy, etc. Money donated to information technology and security will be used specifically for anything technology or security based.

The booklet, while giving a little more information about what funds donors can give their money too, also lists what the hospital’s more immediate needs are.

The needs, as listed in the booklet, are VAV boxes, VOIP, and a CT replacement.

The booklet listed this need for VAV boxes as “replacements needed to convert from nematic to electronic VAV.” It goes on to say that the airflow valve boxes that need to be replaced are used for “temperature and air flow control throughout the facility.”

According to the booklet, getting VOIP would be a technological upgrade that would allow “voice calls to be made through internet connection, providing higher quality and more effective communication throughout the hospital and to the community.”

The CT replacement, as stated in the booklet, means that the hospital needs the funding to replace the hospital’s main CT machine. The booklet said replacing this would help physicians get clearer images.

The last thing you one can donate money to is a board-designated fund. Halstead explained that “90% of the donors choose to give to this fund,” one used by the Sampson Regional Medical Center’s Foundation board to meet the greatest hospital needs.

“The money that is in our (Foundation) board-designated fund is used responsibly by our board to meet the greatest needs at the time of the hospital,” she said.

Halstead said that while the campaign is heavily pushed for eight weeks, people are welcome to donate throughout the year.

“So, generally, our campaign period runs for about eight weeks each summer. And that’s our focus point, but people can make a gift to this campaign at any time during the year,” she said.

Some people, Halstead noted, will make a pledge to donate $500, but they’ll give $250 in the spring and $250 in the fall. Or they may pledge to give $1,000 and give $250 quarterly instead of all at once.

Any way a donor wants to set up giving can fit into the campaign.