Fundraising By Design
I’m in the process of putting together a trend report on children’s hospital design, which we’ll be featuring in our May/June issue of Healthcare Design. And while my sources have filled me in on topics ranging from how to design for multiple age groups to the move toward collaborations in operations, there’s one question I kept coming back to: Why do these projects continue to pop up across the country while the rest of the healthcare sector hasn’t quite seen that same kind of growth?
And what it seems to boil down to is fundraising. While donors take on a significant role in projects across the board—including general adult acute care—it’s children’s hospitals that tend to attract and maintain a solid philanthropic base to help make way for all kinds of new projects and initiatives.
I was reminded of that recently when I saw a post on Twitter from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus that offered a neat example of how design and fundraising can actually intersect.
The hospital was sharing “Farewell to 15,000 pounds of Miracles,” a blog from Donna Teach, chief marketing and communication officer, who writes of the hospital’s fundraising “wallscape.” The 15,000-pound installation spanning an entire side of the building is touted as the most complex outdoor display ever created in Columbus, and certainly as one of the largest in the country.
Highlights of its design include hanging monkey bars suspended between wings of the building, children atop a monstrous teeter-totter, and a gigantic slide that appears to be transporting its occupant right down the exterior to land softly on the street below.
Dubbed “Miracles at Play,” the wallscape is nearly 150 feet tall and 21,000 square feet overall, with each child featured about four stories tall.
The installation was designed by Engauge and donated by Nationwide Insurance, and over the past two years the program behind it raised $100,000 for the hospital. But, now, the display is reaching its end and a new one is in the works.
You can check out images of the new and old installations in the image gallery. And if you have additional examples of design playing a role in the fundraising process, share them here. Also, be sure to check out the children’s trend report coming in the May/June issue, which will include a look at the expanded Nationwide Children’s Hospital campus.