Gift Designations
If you desire, you can focus your charitable gift on a specific area within Mary Bridge. Listed below are most of the funds established by the Mary Bridge Children's Foundation to receive charitable gifts:
Where the Need is the Greatest
This is a general fund for unrestricted donor gifts that can be used to cover the cost of any programmatic, equipment, or staff needs at Mary Bridge, particularly if there is a shortage of funds available from other sources. Needs are addressed through allocations by the Mary Bridge Children’s Foundation Board of Directors.
Cancer
Cancer Program
This program provides testing, evaluation, and treatment services for children who suffer from cancer.
Leukemia Program
A part of the Cancer Treatment Program, this program is focused on treatment and services for children with leukemia, the most common form of juvenile cancer.
Oncology Family Support
This fund provides non-medical assistance for patients and families served in the hematology/oncology clinic. These funds can pay for transportation, housing, utilities, food, and other assistance for families when their child is going through cancer treatment. These funds cannot pay for physician bills or be paid directly to a patient or family.
Frankie’s Fund – a permanent endowment fund in honor of Frankie Potis. The interest from this fund flows to Oncology Family Support.
Red Box
A toy box is provided for children who visit the Pediatric Oncology Clinic. A child will receive a token for each visit. When they have made four visits, they may exchange their tokens for a gift from the box.
Pediatric Oncology Charity Care
This fund provides families with direct assistance with their medical bills, after insurance has funded care. Many families have high deductibles and/or quickly reach their insurance maximum.
Milgard Family Endowment
A permanent endowment fund with interest income flowing to the Pediatric Oncology Charity Care fund.
Cardiac
Cardiology Program
This program provides testing, evaluation, and treatment services for children who suffer from any type of heart condition or abnormality (including open heart surgery). It also includes a state-of-the-art Cardiopulmonary Stress Exercise Lab used for evaluation, diagnosis, and therapy for children in the program.
Center for Childhood Safety
Childhood Safety Program
This program includes all Mary Bridge prevention and safety related community outreach activities. The Center provides safety information and injury prevention services directly to families, serves the community as a resource for children’s safety issues, and advocates for the promotion of children’s safety and wellness.
Car Seat Loaner Program
This program loans infant, toddler, and special-purpose car seats to families who are unable to purchase them on their own or need them on a temporary basis.
Bicycle Helmets
Custom-fit bicycle helmets and safety education for children and adults. Each helmet is individually-fitted for maximum benefit.
Charity Care
Free Care Fund
Gifts to this fund are used directly to help underwrite the care for children whose families cannot pay all or most of the expenses related to their child’s medical care.
Charity Care Endowment Fund
This endowment fund supports the central mission of Mary Bridge: to provide care for all children, regardless of ability to pay. At any given time, approximately 40 percent of the children at Mary Bridge cannot afford to pay for part or all of their care. Held in perpetuity, interest income from this fund ensures that Mary Bridge has resources to underwrite the care for every child who needs help.
Child Abuse
Child Abuse Program
This program provides medical treatment, social work support (available 24 hours a day), and intervention services for victims of child abuse and their families.
Sexual Assault Intervention Program
This program provides medical exams and treatment for children who are victims of sexual assault, as well as confidential social work services, advocacy support, and community referrals for the children and their families, with the ultimate goal of stopping the cycle of child sexual assault.
Safe Shores Fund
This fund provides emergency funding to support non-clinical needs (housing, clothing, food, etc.) for children and families cared for by the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Intervention Program.
Parenting Partnership
This fund assists new mothers with medically fragile neonates who are going home to socially vulnerable environments with two years of intense in-home social work intervention. This program has received national awards for innovations in child-abuse prevention.
Critical Care and Trauma Services
Critical Care Fund
This unit provides intensive medical and nursing care through a collaborative, multi-disciplinary team of medical professionals who are specially trained to care for children with life-threatening illnesses or injuries. It encompasses surgery, emergency, and intensive care services. Donor gifts help fund equipment, ongoing staff education, uncompensated care, and support services for children and their families.
Emergency Care Program
This program supports the operating and equipment needs of the Emergency Department, which receives more than 29,000 visits a year and is one of the busiest in Washington State.
Family Support Services
Child and Family Life Services
This program embodies Mary Bridge’s philosophy of family-centered care. It provides services to help make a child’s experience in the hospital as non-traumatic and positive as possible, for both the child and the family. It includes elements such as playrooms and play therapy, the Family Resource Room, special visits by local personalities and children’s characters, pre-surgery tours, and holiday observances.
Helping Hands
This program provides vouchers for food and gas and prescriptions for families who need emergency assistance while their children are at Mary Bridge.
Parent Apartments
Mary Bridge has eight apartment units across the street from the hospital where parents can stay at no charge while their children are receiving treatment. The cost of maintaining and operating these apartments is covered through community donations.
BRIDGES: A Center for Grieving Children
BRIDGES serves families with children between the ages of four through 18 years who have experienced the serious illness or death of a parent or sibling. BRIDGES provides grief education and twice-monthly support groups for families. Grief counseling is available to help children and adults cope with loss and grief. The aim of BRIDGES is that no child will grieve alone.
Bridges Endowment Fund
The interest from this fund, established by the Kennedy Family, supports the BRIDGES Program.
Nursing
Jo Backus Memorial Scholarship Fund
In honor of her dedication and service as an inspiration and role model for all, the Jo Backus Memorial Scholarship Fund has been created. Contributions to this fund will be awarded to nurses wishing to further their pediatric education or to serve children through health-related outreach.
Specialty Care Clinics
Asthma Education Program
This program offers individualized education for children with asthma and their families to help them learn how to cope with this condition and to increase their awareness, confidence, and self-management skills in dealing with asthma.
Children’s Developmental Therapy Services
This program provides occupational and physical therapy and orthotic services for children with all types of developmental issues. Therapists see children both in the hospital and in the ambulatory clinic setting. This program includes the Grateful Parents Fund, which provides scholarships for therapy sessions for children whose families are unable to pay.
Diabetes Education Clinic
This program provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to treatment for children with diabetes, with a goal of improving the child’s and the family’s ability to successfully manage the disease. It includes clinic visits as well as many educational opportunities for children of varying ages and their families.
Neonatal Follow-up Clinic
This program provides identification and early intervention services for infants and young children who may be at risk for developmental delays or disabilities related to events in the prenatal, perinatal or postnatal periods.
Neurodevelopmental Program
This program brings together medical professionals from many specialty areas to develop a multiyear, interdisciplinary evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment schedule for children with neurological impairments or disabilities.
Nutrition and Growth Program
This program provides a multidisciplinary approach to the care and treatment of children diagnosed with failure to thrive syndrome, with the goal of identifying such children as early as possible and intervening to help children grow and develop to their full potential.
Psychology Services
This program provides a variety of diagnosis and therapy services for children with behavioral problems or other psychological-based issues. It also offers experienced psychologists to assist in other clinical areas, including most chronic health conditions.
Speech and Hearing Program
This program provides evaluation, individual and group therapy, hearing aid fitting, parent education and training, and free screening for children from birth through age 18 who have problems with speech, hearing, and language development.
Teresa's Fund
In Loving Memory of Teresa Simek
Teresa's Fund celebrates the lives and abilities of children facing health challenges by funding events and activities designed to encourage Mary Bridge patients and families to share their experiences, to create a sense of belonging, and to encourage the joys of youthful imagination and mastery.
If you would like additional information on these funds or if there is a program you would like to support and you cannot find it on the list, please call Mary Bridge Children’s Foundation at 253-403-1264. We will be happy to help you.
Thank you for your generosity.