Bud Fleischer and the Start of the Columbus Community Hospital Foundation
1/17/2020
It took a team effort and the work of many community members to start the Columbus Community Hospital (CCH) Foundation.
It all started with some members of the CCH board of directors.
Bud Fleischer was a member of the CCH board from 1991 to 1999. He and several other CCH board members also served on the boards of foundations for churches and colleges, etc.
Having seen for themselves the benefits of foundations, Fleischer and other CCH board members decided it would be a good idea for Columbus Community Hospital to have a foundation too.
“We could see how these foundations really helped,” Fleischer said. “We encouraged the board to look into this and we had to get the hospital convinced this would be a good undertaking.”
The Foundation Takes Shape
With the blessing of the CCH board, several CCH board members visited other hospital foundations.
“We visited other hospital foundations in metro areas and ones that were more our size to get ideas from them on dos and don’ts and so forth and brought this information back to the board and the board was sold on it,” he said.
CCH provided the seed money to launch the Foundation. From there, the CCH board members who initially suggested the creation of the CCH Foundation had some specific ideas for how it should be formed. For example, they knew they wanted the CCH Foundation to be housed in the hospital and they wanted a full-time, paid Foundation director.
The CCH board members also decided the CCH Foundation should have a board of its own.
Though they wanted the Foundation to be a separate entity, they also wanted some hospital administrators and physicians to be on the board. Additionally, they wanted representatives from the former hospital auxiliary to be on the board as well. This was all part of their efforts to create “very good, open communications,” Fleischer said.
Fleischer would go on to serve on the CCH Foundation board in its early years and he also served as president for two years during this time.
Sustained Growth
Fleischer is impressed by what the Foundation has been able to accomplish since its humble beginnings.
“It was very rewarding to be involved, along with the other board members, and to see what the Foundation has become today,” he said.
The Foundation has grown considerably since its beginnings, and this growth can be seen in the Foundation’s annual Holing Out Fore Health Golf Outing. Fleischer said one of the first things the first Foundation director suggested was a golf tournament. In its first year in 2003, the golf outing raised a little more than $11,000. In comparison, the most recent golf outing, held in June 2019, raised more than $106,000.
As donations to the Foundation have increased over the years, so too have the Foundation’s contributions to CCH. For example, in August 2019, the Foundation made its largest ever donation to the hospital with a $3.75 million donation to CCH’s ongoing expansion and renovation project.
“The monies that they have raised have gone to a lot of projects over and above what the hospital can do in their budget, so that’s one of the main purposes of the Foundation,” Fleischer said. “The things the Foundation does to raise awareness and where they spend donations is what helps make our hospital one of the nicest medical facilities in the area.”
Continued Involvement
Though Fleischer is no longer a member of the CCH Foundation board, he still supports the Foundation by volunteering at the yearly golf tournament.
He believes it is important to support the Foundation because of the high-quality health care the Foundation has brought and continues to bring to the Columbus area.
“It’s unbelievable how this hospital has grown. It’s great that the Foundation has been able to help in this growth,” he said. “Every story has a beginning but there is no end to what this Foundation can do.”
Want to donate? Contact our staff:
Carol M. Keller, Executive Director
402-562-3375
cmkeller@columbushosp.org
Rita Samuelson, Development Assistant
402-562-3377
rjsamuelson@columbushosp.org