Your Generosity Knocked Us Out!

One of the things I love best about my job as a hospital administrator is when I get to brag about the extraordinary level of philanthropic support our medical center has from the community. Grinnell Regional Medical Center is a community hospital and we are very proud of that distinction.

Give me a moment to brag, and you will see why...

• GRMC just completed the most successful annual fund drive in its history raising $378,166. (GRMC serves a six-county rural area of east central Iowa that includes about 19,000 households.)
• A goal was set to raise funds to purchase new anesthesia machines for the surgery department at a cost of $35,000 each. We actually planned to replace them over the next four years as funds were available. Our donors rallied around this campaign and $140,000 was raised to replace all of them now.
• Total giving to all campaigns, the annual fund, special events, grants, and memorial gifts was $731,599 in 2011.

We have amazing partners who are invested in the vitality of Grinnell Regional Medical Center. This community supports GRMC in many incredible ways.

This week, we had an open house reception for donors who donated toward the purchase of these anesthesia machines. I had a chance to visit with the representative of the company that sells this equipment. He made the trip from Minneapolis to be here for the open house. He was impressed and thrilled to be here.

He said what impressed him was that the people of the community raised the funds to make this happen. He also said that the size of the community surprised him. He shared that on his first trip to Grinnell, he expected the community to be much larger because of the hospital and the number of procedures (about 3,685 annually) that our surgery department performs, the reputation of Grinnell College, and the diverse industries located here. He talked about driving around town and being surprised that Grinnell wasn't larger than it really is because it certainly acts like a larger community.

Alex Anderson, one of our anesthesia providers, said it best, "Your generosity knocked us out." I couldn't agree more.