Northwell Health has exceeded its $1 billion fundraising goal and now aims to raise another $400 million.
The New Hyde Park-based health care network raised $1.02 billion by this summer, six months before its own end-of-year deadline, Northwell is due to announce Thursday.
Nearly 170,000 individuals, foundations and corporations contributed to the effort, called “Outpacing the Impossible: The Northwell Campaign.” The donors included 11,000 Northwell employees, who donated more than $15 million. The network is the state’s largest private employer, with 80,000 workers. More than 32,000 gifts came from first-time donors last year, Northwell said.
The outpouring of donations “says a lot about the communities that we serve,” Brian Lally, chief development officer at Northwell, said in an interview. “When COVID hit, communities responded in a way that was absolutely touching.”
The funds have had a “profound impact” on Northwell hospitals, he said.
The $1 billion raised in the last six years includes $412 million for building projects, such as the Petrocelli Advanced Surgical Pavilion under construction at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, the Katz Women’s Surgical Center at Glen Cove Hospital, the recently opened Damaghi Family Surgical Operating Complex at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park and the Entenmann Family Campus and the Bohlsen Neurosciences Center at South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, among other facilities.
The remaining funds support programs throughout Northwell, including $61 million to help establish the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.
The donations have “significantly boosted advancements in research, education, prevention and treatment,” Northwell president and CEO Michael Dowling said in a statement.
The next phase of fundraising will focus on health disparities, cancer and mental health care, including a new 104-bed psychiatric facility that will connect Cohen Children’s Medical Center with Zucker Hillside Hospital in Queens, Lally said.
The fundraisers help support initiatives such as the breast cancer surgery program at Glen Cove Hospital, said Brooke Mills, who had preventive double mastectomy surgery at Glen Cove last year, after she learned that she was at high risk of breast cancer due to a mutation in a gene known as BRCA.
The surgeons gave her their cellphone numbers so she could ask questions after business hours, and a nurse brought her home-cooked food since her family members could not visit her in the hospital due to the pandemic, said Mills, who lives in Woodmere with her husband and three children, ages 9, 12 and 13.
“They go so above and beyond what is normally considered the standard of care,” said Mills, a sales director at a medical device company. “They really go the extra mile to make sure the entire person is treated, from a psychological and physical perspective.”