THUNDER BAY – Sisters Paulette Howe and Suzanne Gribben are the lucky winners of Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation’s $965,715 50/50 draw.
“Are you kidding me?” Howe said, reached by phone on Friday by foundation president and CEO Glenn Craig.
“Oh my God, I’m just completely stunned. Oh my goodness. This is just amazing. I’ve never won anything in my life.”
The prize, which grew by more than $300,000 in the final 36 hours of the six-week contest, went beyond the wildest dreams of foundation management, who when it launched were hoping to get into six figures, the goal to try to make up some of the money lost in 2020 when traditional fundraising events had to be cancelled or moved online.
Craig said the final number was staggering.
“To be completely honest, we were blown away by the success. We kind of joked about it, when we first launched this, talking about the world juniors and their numbers,” Craig said. “We were hoping to get into the six figures, but we’re pretty darn close to seven figures, so we’re thoroughly surprised.”
Craig said in a typical year, the hospital foundation raises about $5 million, but he added they were facing about a $2-million shortfall from 2020, when the pandemic hit.
This will go a long way to helping fill that gap, Craig said.
“This is really huge for us, because as we’re coming up to the start of the second year of the COVID pandemic, we’ve already cancelled the Bachelor of Hope Auction, we’ve cancelled the Motorcycle Ride for Dad, the Luncheon of Hope and the Save a Heart Ball,” he said.
“We’re now cancelling the second time around, the Bachelor Auction. These events, along with other community events, raise about a million dollars net for the foundation. We had a million-dollar hole that we needed to fill because we spend at the hospital between $8 million and $10 million a year, every year, on replacing capital.”
Much of it is spent on equipment, like stretchers, ventilators or ultrasounds.
“We needed that money, so this has gone a huge way at filling that gap.”
Craig said while he hopes to bring back many of the cancelled events, there’s a never-ending need for funds at Thunder Bay Regional, money needed over and above the provincially mandated budget.
The raffle will continue monthly, with draws occurring on the final Friday of each month. Craig said he hopes the momentum carries on in March.
“The March draw is March 26. We seeded the pot with $5,000 already, but I’m sure by the end of the day we’ll be well past that. Somebody’s going to have a very lucky March,” Craig said. “We really don’t know what’s going to happen in March. People know about the raffle and we hopefully have a lot of returning customers.”
