Foundation spotlight series: Cariboo Memorial Hospital Foundation

How long have you been with the Foundation?

Tammy: I’ve been with the Foundation for more than 20 years. We were a society at that time and soon after I joined, we applied for tax-exempt status with the federal government so we could become a charitable organization.

My son had been buried in an avalanche just before I got involved with the Foundation. He survived and he’s fine now, but it was a wake-up call for me that we needed certain things at Cariboo Memorial Hospital to provide adequate care to people in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. My son needed a CT scan because he’d been deprived of oxygen in the avalanche and, at the time, we had to go to Kamloops for him to get it.

Tell us about the focus of your Foundation and why what you do is important.

Tammy: Our goal is to ensure people in the Cariboo-Chilcotin receive prompt and adequate care. The government can’t provide everything to every location and we’re here to fill the gap and provide funding for medical equipment that reduces the need for people to travel for their care.

Our region is huge and travel is a barrier for some people. Not everyone has a family member or friend who can take a day off work to drive them to Kamloops or Kelowna and back, and travel is uncomfortable following surgery. I know that from experience.

This is how we look at where we’ll allocate funds. We want people in our community to have as many of their health-care needs as possible taken care of at home in their community.

Do you have any favourite fundraising campaigns current and past?

Tammy: Our annual Christmas gala is the thing that we’re particularly good at. We sell out before the tickets are even printed. It works well for us. We raise roughly $200,000 from that event each year. There are a lot of different fundraising platforms and opportunities available, but we find that one yearly event works best for us.

We do all our own work, we design and set up all the décor and props ourselves, so our expenses are very low. We have no paid staff, but we have a lot of friends and family members who show up and help out.

What are your words to live by?

Tammy: My dear, old aunty from Ymir, near Nelson, used to say, ‘Don’t sit back and wait for the government. If you want something, go get it yourself.’ That’s my attitude. We have a lot of great people in our Foundation and we’re not afraid to put the work in.

What are the Foundation’s total donations to Interior Health to date?

Tammy: It’s upwards of $4 million in the last 20 years. We keep better records now than we did back then, but I know our annual donations have gone from $80,000-$90,000 per year in those days to around $200,000 now.

We’ve contributed nearly $500,000 to surgical equipment in the last three years, we’ve fixed the roof on Deni House, and we helped rebuild the maternity ward in 2017.

We’re very proud of the progress we’ve made and of all the support we get from the community. Everything we do relies on cooperation and teamwork. So much of the credit is due to the people of Williams Lake and the Cariboo-Chilcotin region whose generosity makes everything we do possible.

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