Established in 1982, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre Foundation is the fundraising arm for Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Barrie, Ontario. RVH is the largest health centre in Simcoe Muskoka with over 380 physicians, 2,500 employees and 850 volunteers providing care and services for almost 500,000 residences. Services include cancer care, stroke services, orthopedics, intensive care, mental health and interventional radiology. The foundation provides funding to improve patient care through the purchase of medical equipment and technology, operating programs and capital projects.

As of 2017, the priority needs of the health centre, as identified by RVH Foundation, are: Simcoe Muskoka Regional Cancer Program; Cardiac Program; Child and Youth Mental Health Services; Women’s Cancer Services; Teaching and Research; and Equipment and Technology.

The foundation reports that RVH was the first hospital in Canada to purchase the Robotic Intravenous Automation System (RIVA). This machine was funded by the foundation and ensures the safety and accuracy of chemotherapy doses during treatment. It also reduces the risk of exposure to hazardous drugs and repetitive stress injuries for pharmacy technicians.  

RVH opened its 32-bed Cardiac Renal inpatient unit and Cardiac Care Unit in 2012. Prior to this, the foundation reports that North Simcoe Muskoka was the only region in Ontario that did not provide advanced cardiac services within its boundaries, redirecting about 3,000 local patients to Newmarket for procedures. With the new cardiac program in place, the foundation estimates that 2,861 cardiac catheter procedures and 1,017 percutaneous coronary interventions are performed annually.

Next, RVH foundation will raise funds for two new cardiac catheterization labs to provide more advanced cardiac diagnostics and interventions, including angioplasty and angiography. The foundation aims to raise $25m in 2017.

RVH Foundation is a big-cap charity with $6.8m in donations and special events fundraising in F2016. Fundraising and administrative costs were reported together by the foundation and were 20% of revenues. As such, for every $1 donated, 80 cents went to the cause. This falls within Charity Intelligence’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

The foundation has funding reserves of $38.4m, of which $5.6m are donor-endowed. Excluding donor-endowed funds and assuming a 5% rate of return on investments, the charity can cover programs and grants to the hospital for 51 years based on F2016 spending levels.  Using the average spending over the past years, the foundation can cover 26 years of funding.

This charity report is an update that is currently being reviewed by RVH Foundation. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on June 14, 2017 by Juliana Badovinac.