KRH Foundation celebrates 20 years

Last week, the Kalispell Regional Healthcare (KRH) Foundation celebrated their 20 year anniversary. Back in March 2000, the Foundation was created as a way to bridge the gap between the rising cost of specialized medical equipment, nursing education, facilities and programs and shrinking federal funding. At the time, the hospital knew of willing donors, but didn’t have the proper set up to get them involved. In the past 20 years, donors have contributed over $40million to a variety of major campaigns through the KRH Foundation:

2006: Image-guided radiation therapy ($800,000)

2007: Winkley Women’s Coach (1,000,000)

2007: Bass Breast Center (1,000,000)

2009: Montana State University-Bachelors of Nursing at Kalispell Campus ($500,000)

2016: New Emergency Department (14,000,000)

2017: Cole’s Hybrid Operating Room (1,000,000)

2018: New A.L.E.R.T. helicopter (4,000,000)

2019: New mobile mammography unit (1,020,000)

The KRH Foundation has come a long way since those days in the early 2000s. The A.L.E.R.T. Banquet in 2002 brought in $65,000. In 2019, the same Banquet brought in $295,000. The endowment has now grown to $4,169,000 and annual fundraising has reached over $5,000,000 in past years. The next step for the KRH Foundation is to support the efforts for Montana Children’s, focus on strategic service line projects, continue to secure the future of A.L.E.R.T., and to invest in the youth development program.

"Over the course of the last 20 years, our employees, medical staff, and community made all of this happen,” says Tagen Vine, president of the KRH Foundation. “We are incredibly fortunate to have such generous people all around us. We are grateful to everybody who has been a part of our story during the first 20 years!”