YOUR
LEGACY
October 2014
University Hospitals Kingston Foundation Guide to Planned Giving
10
Ways to create your legacy
1. Prepare a Will. 2. Consider whether you’d like to make a difference in the health of our community by leaving a gift in your Will to the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation (UHKF) for one or all three hospitals. 3. Designate your gift to a specific clinical program or simply direct it to “highest priority needs.” 4. Concerned about what your final estate picture may look like? You can choose to leave a specific dollar amount or a percentage of your assets to UHKF. 5. Consider using assets for your legacy gift such as stocks and bonds, items that have accumulated a capital gain and will be taxed upon death. 6. Did you know that you can also name UHKF as a beneficiary of your RRSP, RRIF or pension plan? 7. You may also choose to name UHKF as the beneficiary of an existing life insurance policy.
Pamela Brooks has provided a bequest in her estate plans to recognize the great care that her twins Myles and Carter received in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Kingston General Hospital.
One request: “Just take good care of my boys” As a high school geography teacher, Pamela Brooks likes to reinforce how fortunate her students are to live in Canada. As a mother, she’s even more grateful that she lives close to Kingston, where we have easy access to come of the best medical care in the province. When her twin boys were born
in May 2008, each weighing a little over one pound, Pamela quickly learned to appreciate how fortunate we are that Kingston General Hospital (KGH) is one of only five centres that provides the highest level of Neonatal Intensive Care in Ontario. “We’re very blessed to live where Cont’d on page 4
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In this issue...
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What are your reasons to give?
“We began to witness a miracle “
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10 WAYS TO CREATE YOUR LEGACY 8. Consider purchasing a new life insurance policy naming UHKF as the beneficiary. 9. Encourage family and friends to leave gifts to UHKF in their Wills. 10. Ask your financial or estate planning advisor to include charitable giving as part of your financial plan and to incorporate charitable giving in their counsel to other clients. Most important – tell us at UHKF that you have thoughtfully donated to the Kingston hospitals with a bequest in your Will so that we may personally thank you and place your name(s) on our Evergreen Tree. There is a tree in each one of the hospitals to recognize that you are planning to leave the hospital a legacy gift.
SEAL OF APPROVAL:
INVESTING WISELY
The University Hospitals Kingston Foundation is accredited under the Imagine Canada Standards Program. Imagine Canada is the national umbrella organization for Canada’s charities. The Standards Program is designed to strengthen practices in five key areas: board governance, financial accountability and transparency, fundraising, staff management and volunteer involvement. The goal of the standards program is to increase transparency and capacity to strengthen public confidence in individual organizations and the charitable sector as a whole.
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What are your reasons to leave a legacy?
You’re unique. Every person who donates to the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation in order to make a difference in our hospitals is unique. And every gift is appreciated. We know that people give for many different reasons. As the holiday season approaches, UHKF is encouraging people across southeastern Ontario to think about their own personal reasons about why they support our hospitals. Pamela Brooks and Zoë MacKenzie share their reasons in this newsletter. Fourteen-year-old brain cancer fighter McKenna Modler of McKenna’s Dream shares her reason: to help other families with kids fighting cancer. What are your reasons? Your hospitals have been blessed with donations that have enabled new buildings such as the expanded cancer centre, purchased many pieces of important medical equipment, supported staff education and provided critical funding to enable research discoveries. Every day, we see the difference that you and people like you are making in the care of your families, your friends and your neighbours. According to LEAVE A LEGACY™ there are four main reasons why people choose to leave a planned gift through a bequest in their Will. They include: • To enrich people’s lives. Every day, people are helped and lives are enriched by the work of registered charities and foundations, and other not-for-profit organizations in our communities. For some, giving is a way to ensure their memory lives on. For many, it is a way of ensuring their favourite charity can continue its important work. • To provide support. Charitable organizations need financial assistance from people like you to continue their work. By making bequests and other planned gifts, you can continue to help organizations that are making an important difference in your community. What better way to thank people or organizations that have had an impact on your life, than to make a contribution from your estate through a bequest? • To leave a memory. Choosing to leave a gift from the heart brings meaning, dignity and purpose to a life well lived. Your gift is your opportunity to participate in the charitable and community work most meaningful to you, in a way that allows these important causes to be well supported now and long after you have gone. • To make a contribution for the future. In life, many of us require some kind of assistance, whether it’s physical, financial or spiritual. Perhaps you or a loved one were shown some especially compassionate care in the hospital. It is during life’s endeavours that we are often reminded that more could be done to continue personal philanthropy to support organizations that you value most.
“We began to witness a miracle” One donor’s legacy gift saved my granddaughter’s life I am passionate about my role as Associate Director of Planned Giving for UHKF. I know the difference that donors make in the lives of people in our community. I can confidently make that statement, because a legacy gift played a key role in saving the life of my own granddaughter. In 1998, my granddaughter Zoë MacKenzie, CPCA, was born three months premature Associate Director, Planned Giving at Kingston General Hospital. Her mother was critically ill with preeclampsia, otherwise known as high blood pressure during pregnancy. Her doctors knew the pregnancy could not continue without serious complications to both mom and baby if not treated quickly. I recall that day in July 1998, vividly. I was waiting in the hall outside of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for my granddaughter to arrive after her emergency birth. I heard a tiny little cry as the incubator was whisked by me. I caught a glimpse of her little face and tiny frail body. My granddaughter was born at 27 weeks and four days gestation, weighing one pound five ounces. It was the first of many critical hours to come. Three days later, our family was called into my daughterin-law’s room to be told the baby’s condition had deteriorated. We were told to do what we felt was necessary to prepare for what may be the worst outcome. My son called the same parish priest who had married them three years earlier. Our family gathered for the baptism and last rites of my three-day-old granddaughter. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I can still see the priest holding the tiny sea shell in the palm of his hand that held only a few drops of holy water for the blessings. I still see the frail little baby trying desperately to breathe. I can still feel the overwhelming weight of hopelessness and helplessness on my shoulders that day. While we were coming to terms with our grief, something special happened. A doctor took my son aside and told
him that there was a new intubating machine that had arrived recently. With his permission, the doctor would put my granddaughter on it to see how she would react. He explained that this machine wasn’t as forceful as the one she was on at the moment. Instead of pushing oxygen deep into her lungs, this machine would provide a short rapid pulse. The doctor warned my son the machine may not save the baby, but he felt it would be easier on this fragile little soul for the time she had left. My son agreed, and it seemed that with the blessing of the priest and this new ‘softer’ machine, that we began to witness a miracle. She seemed to calm down almost immediately and her colour turned to a beautiful shade of pink. For the first time, there was a feeling of hope, even though we had been warned otherwise. This new ‘softer’ breathing machine was a gift from an anonymous donor who had left a bequest for the NICU in their Will. Their desire was to buy a piece of needed equipment. What they purchased was so much more. My family will be forever grateful to this donor. Today my granddaughter is 16 years old, and is a healthy, happy Grade 11 student at Holy Cross Secondary School. She is a kind and sweet soul, who has brought so much joy into our lives. We will always be grateful to the donor whose legacy gift to NICU helped save Selena ‘s life and the lives of many others. Over the course of the past year at UHKF, I have heard countless stories about the difference that legacy gifts are making in our hospitals. I see it with the purchase of equipment, through staff education and in the funding of research. To all those who have or are about to consider giving a gift in a bequest in their Will to any of our Kingston hospitals, THANK YOU! For those who would like to know more about how to create a gift, I would be more than pleased to talk to you about how you too could make a difference with a gift in your Will.
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One request Cont’d from page 1
we live,” she says. While one of her twins lost his battle for survival, the other has thrived thanks to the specialty care provided at KGH and in clinics at Hotel Dieu Hospital. It is because of that care that Pamela plans to leave a portion of her estate to support the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at KGH. She is making a bequest in her Will to provide “more resources to help other parents help their kids be well.” “I appreciate the extra expenses involved in taking care of preemies,” she says. Her personal story is powerful. A single mom by choice, Pamela underwent in-vitro fertilization to become pregnant. Aside from heartburn, the first 23 weeks of her pregnancy were normal. But one day she noticed a bit of discharge and paid a visit to her obstetrician, Dr. Graeme Smith. He discovered she was dilated three centimetres and admitted her to KGH on the spot. Her mother was called immediately (filling the role of her significant other) and was able to stay on a cot in Pamela’s room. “That was extremely supportive and important to me,” Pamela says. “We didn’t request that from KGH staff; it was simply offered to us.” Then, two weeks into her stay, an early morning trip to the washroom raised
cause for alarm. “I called the nurses and when they examined me, they found I was eight centimeters dilated,” she recalls. “The decision was made - very rapidly, to have an emergency C-section.” As she was being wheeled down the hallway, obstetrician Dr. Julie Tessier asked Pamela if she had any questions. “I said, ‘just take good care of my boys.’” And she did. Dr. Tessier delivered Myles and Carter in the early morning hours and they were immediately whisked away to the NICU. Born at 25 weeks and one day, the babies were extremely tiny. They needed a lot of medical equipment to support their growth and to help their organs mature. Both boys underwent surgery to close a duct between their heart and lungs during their early days. Pamela was only able to hold Carter twice, once when he was about a month and a half old and the second time on July 24th, when he died in her arms. “Although it was heart-wrenching to say goodbye to Carter, I am grateful that he died surrounded by love and not alone in his incubator.” Carter was surrounded by many of his supporters including NICU nurse Rosemary, Dr. Smith and Dr. Maxine Clark. Pamela’s mother and KGH clergy were also there. Myles was in the NICU for four
months, finally going to his home in Napanee a few days after his original due date of August 21. He weighed an impressive five pounds. He’d also had three more surgeries — two for hernias and one for laser eye surgery. The Brooks family soon found themselves enveloped in the care, headed to Kingston for specialist appointments seven times a month for the first year-and-a-half of Myles’ life. Now, they go seven times a year. That includes visits to the Child Development Centre (CDC) at Hotel Dieu where staff have provided great care for Myles, beginning with the Infant Development Program. Developmental pediatricians, social workers, occupational therapists, child psychologists and physiotherapists have been attentive and generous in offering recommendations and support in navigating the often unpredictable, worrisome and delayed developmental path of a preemie. Our community is fortunate to have had the CDC providing care for the last 40 years. “Staff have always been very, very friendly, very supportive, and came to recognize both of us. They would use our names. Of the thousands of people who go through there, it was nice to have your name recognized and used,” Pamela recalls. “They don’t just take care of the individual, they take care of the family as well.”
For further information please contact: Zoë MacKenzie, CPCA, Associate Director, Planned Giving (613) 549-6666 ext. 4953 - zoe.mackenzie@uhkf.ca 55 Rideau St., Suite 4, Kingston, ON K7K 2Z8 Phone: 613-549-5452 - Fax: 613-549-5455 Email: foundation@uhkf.ca
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