Flexible Funding
Care, heal, teach, discover: Flexible funding makes all this possible. Over the past year, discretionary gifts have allowed us to meet the most urgent needs of our patients exactly when they needed us most. Whether advancing genomics to stop deadly mutations, delivering medicine that treats the whole child, or helping struggling families cover the basics, your support ensures that kids always come first. Here’s how:
Every day, scientists at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals take on the toughest challenges in pediatric medicine so kids can get back to being kids. Discretionary funding has helped spark precision cures for aggressive childhood cancers, breakthrough gene editing research that could cure sickle cell disease, and vaccines that are protecting millions of lives. Flexible donor support fuels innovation at its earliest, most fragile stages, when bold ideas need a champion and the potential for impact is enormous.
UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals are not only world-class centers of pediatric excellence — we’re also a safety net lifeline for Northern California families. Nearly half of the patients who visit our San Francisco hospital, and more than 70% in Oakland, are uninsured or underinsured. Flexible investments make millions of dollars in free and discounted care possible, ensuring that all kids have a fair shot at healthy futures.
Great healthcare is about more than great medicine. It’s about ensuring that families have what they need during the hardest moments of their lives. Flexible funding empowers our social workers to provide critical, often life-changing support, including vital medical equipment, transportation, lodging, food assistance, supportive counseling, and family therapy.
These resources lighten the financial and emotional load so families can focus on what matters most: helping their children heal.
Our Child Life Programs — art and music therapy, our hospital school, and our beloved facility dog program — nurture the emotional resilience that help kids heal. When families reflect on their hospital experience, they consistently say one thing got them through: child life. “Medical treatment was just one piece of the healing puzzle,” says Dawn, whose daughter underwent cancer treatment. “Child life gave Scarlett these precious, magical, simple moments of joy and laughter.” These transformative services aren’t covered by insurance. They exist because of donors who believe every child deserves comfort and hope, even amid illness.