Scripps Hospitals Hit Halfway Point in $100-Million Drive

Just two years after beginning the largest fund-raising effort ever launched by a community hospital in the United States, Scripps Memorial Hospitals are halfway to the $100-million goal.

The achievement puts the nonprofit hospital at the head of a pack of San Diego medical institutions that will be asking wealthy donors over the next several years to foot the bill for new facilities that hospital revenues can no longer underwrite. The trend will intensify in the next few years, fund-raisers predict.

It’s a matter of survival, explains James L. Bowers, executive director of the Scripps Memorial Hospitals Foundation.

“The hospitals that are going to remain, and the hospitals that are going to be strong, will be those who really develop intensive fund-raising programs, and have good endowment funds. And very few of them do today,” Bowers said.

As governments and insurers have cut back in recent years on how much they will pay for hospital services, hospitals have been caught in an increasingly tight budget squeeze. The reimbursements leave little room for revenues to finance the costs of construction and new equipment, administrators say. In addition, federal funds are no longer available to pay for hospital expansions.

The Scripps Memorial foundation so far has raised $50.7 million toward its $100-million “Fund for Greatness,” the foundation reports.

Half of the total will pay for capital improvements, including a new hospital in San Marcos and doubling of the size of Scripps’ Chula Vista hospital. The rest will be used for an endowment whose income will pay for capital expenses.

The latter feature makes the 10-year fund drive unusual among those held by hospitals in that endowments are more characteristic of universities.

In size, the Scripps Memorial effort is also vastly larger than anything being attempted at other community hospitals. Sharp Memorial Hospital, for instance, last spring launched a $15-million drive for funds to build a women’s hospital.

But it won’t be long before the Scripps Memorial effort loses the distinction of being the largest nonprofit fund-raising drive ever undertaken in San Diego.

Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation is readying plans to announce a $125-million fund drive in the fall for the La Jolla medical and research institution, said David Mitchell, director of development.

Unlike Scripps Memorial, however, the research foundation is able to tap corporate funding sources that a community hospital cannot.

For that reason, Scripps Memorial has concentrated its efforts at raising money on wealthy former patients who feel an emotional attachment to San Diego or the hospital that helped them get well, Bowers said.

A truism of fund raising is that 90% of the money comes from 10% of the contributors, he noted.

One of the largest single donors to Scripps Memorial was James George Scripps, nephew of the hospital’s founder, Ellen Browning Scripps. A resident of Washington state and Del Mar, he left the hospital newspaper stock that is expected to yield about $6 million when sold, Bowers said.

But the pool of San Diegans or frequent visitors who can afford to give million-dollar donations is limited, fund-raisers acknowledge.

Of about 20 recent donations to Scripps Clinic greater than $1 million from individuals, only three or four were from the San Diego area, Mitchell noted.

San Diego-connected donors will be seeing more of community hospital and other fund-raisers in the next few years, said Michael Bever, assistant vice chancellor for development at UC San Diego.

“Private source funds are becoming more important all the time for nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education,” Bever said. “There is now and will continue to be increasing competition for donations.”

John Colonghi, director of development for UCSD Medical Center, is cautiously optimistic.

“We’re not exactly swimming in it here. San Diego does not have a very big donor base,” Colonghi said. “So, at some juncture, I’m certain that we’ll run into a dry period. But, interestingly enough, something will happen. The very first gift I ever got in my life as a development officer was from a bag lady. So you just don’t know. You just have to keep looking.”