SGCMH At 50 Years: Friends Foundation Provides Financial Backing For Hospital

One reason Ste. Genevieve County Memorial Hospital has not only thrived but grown over the past 50 years has been the tremendous community support it has received.

Funneling much of that support into funding has become the province of the Friends Foundation.

Formed in 2003 by a diverse group wanting to see the hospital grow, it has continued to excel as the hospital’s chief fundraising arm.

 “It was a group of community and hospital individuals who kind of came together who wanted to raise funds for a capital campaign that the hospital ran to help enhance more services,” said Holli Ledbetter, Foundation director.  

The Friends Foundation raised funds to renovate the emergency room and the surgery center and to overhaul the main hospital entrance, among other projects.

Currently the hospital’s Legacy Campaign is the group’s focus. It is geared to raising funds for a new two-story medical office building with a drive-through pharmacy on the first floor.

A second phase will convert the current medical surgery unit to a women’s wellness center.

“With the Legacy Campaign, we really hope we can take what we’ve done in the past and build that up to this new building,” Ledbetter said, “and kind of continue that legacy throughout the hospital, in having a stamp on all those major renovations and additions.”

See complete story and more coverage of the hospital’s 50th anniversary in the April 10 edition of the Herald.