Los Angeles Children’s Hospital Receives $38.3M Donation
Officials at Children's Hospital Los Angeles announced yesterday that a local philanthropist has donated $38.3 million for research at the facility, representing the "largest estate gift ever to a U.S. children's hospital," the Los Angeles Times reports. The money was donated from the estate of Fern McAlister, who died in February. McAlister and her husband Harold created two trust funds in the late 1960s with the intention of donating a portion of that money to the children's hospital after their deaths. Harold McAlister's fund donated nearly $9 million after his death in 1981. The Times reports that the McAlisters' gifts total more than $100 million after factoring in interest earned on the money. Fern McAlister had requested that the money be used for basic and clinical research. The hospital plans to use the donation to expand current programs for cancer, gene transfer, organ transplants and diabetes and for recruiting visiting scholars to do research. According to the Seattle-based Woodmark Group, a not-for-profit organization that encourages such donations, gifts to children's hospitals have "risen dramatically" over the past 10 years, with 21 U.S. children hospitals receiving an average of $23 million each in 2000, compared to $7.2 million in 1990 (Nguyen, Los Angeles Times, 5/3).
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