BEDFORD – With the closure of Ascension St. Vincent Dunn Hospital, the St. Vincent Dunn Hospital Foundation, which raised funds for special projects at the hospital, is disbursing its final cash assets to Lawrence County nonprofits.
Six nonprofits will receive a share of the remaining $500,000 held by St. Vincent Dunn Hospital Foundation.
- Stone City Alliance for Recovery and Hope Inc. which operates the Men’s Warming Shelter, $200,000. The shelter provides overnight shelter, food, clothing, transportation, health care and other services. The shelter served 80 men in the 2021-22 winter season. Fifty men found jobs and 35 moved into housing. The shelter also houses SPIN, (Supporting People in Need) which provides meals, laundry and showers to anyone.
- Becky’s Place, $100,000. The shelter for women and children provides year-round services. In 2021-22, Becky’s Place served 91 clients. Services include shelter, food, clothing, transportation, case management, access to health care, counseling, life skills training and special services for children and seniors.
- Hope Resource Center, $100,000. HRC provides free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, parenting classes and STI testing and treatment. The clinic provided 5,000 client services in 2022, a number that continues to grow each year. In 2016, HRC provided 600 client services.
Other social service organizations receiving gifts:
- Bertha’s Mission, $25,000. Outreach kitchen provides free meals and annual community dinners at Thanksgiving and Easter. The agency served 15,514 meals from January to October 2022.
- Lawrence InterFaith Endeavor, Bedford – $25,000 and Mitchell – $25,000. LIFE provides emergency food assistance every 30 days as well as assistance with rent and utilities.
- Society of St. Vincent de Paul, $25,000. Operates a thrift store and assists people in need with rent, utilities, mortgages, transportation and medical care.
The nonprofits were chosen because their mission is in line with the hospital’s mission to serve the poor and vulnerable.
Charles Edwards, president of the St. Vincent Dunn Hospital Foundation, said board members spent considerable time discerning how best to distribute the funds and ultimately followed the hospital’s mission of serving those most in need.
“These gifts will have a tremendous impact,” Edwards said. “The board felt strongly that our plan for the funds should line up with the mission.”
Board members are Byron Buker, Blaine Parker, Dr. Kim Scherschel, George James, Debbie Bauer, Everett Southern and Dwight Moore.
News of the gift left April Haskett, executive director of Hope Resource Center, speechless. “With Dunn Hospital closing, we have gotten so incredibly busy,” she said. “I can’t begin to imagine what a difference this will make.”
The designated nonprofits all do some sort of fundraising or grant-writing to keep their operations going, but those efforts can be hit or miss and require a commitment of staff time and resources. These gifts from the foundation come with no strings attached.
“To receive a gift like this, it’s beyond amazing,” Haskett said.
Hope Resource Center hosts a fundraiser banquet each year, which brought in $106,000 in 2022. Haskett said that was the most successful dinner to date, with previous dinners raising between $30,000-$70,000.
“Planning a banquet is months of work and it takes quite a bit of money to put on a banquet,” Haskett said.
At a time when client services are seeing a huge surge since the hospital and the only birthing center closed, the gift will allow the clinic to expand services to meet the need. Haskett said demand for ultrasounds has increased to the point HRC is training two additional nurses to provide ultrasounds.
She said women are coming to HRC wanting confirmation of their pregnancy and to find out how far along the pregnancy is. They also need prenatal care resources. Some have expressed concern about having to leave Lawrence County to deliver their babies.
“For some clients, driving to Bloomington may as well be Chicago. We’re seeing a lot of women who say, ‘What do I do?’” she said. “We reassure them that there is a group of physicians moving next door to us.”
Southern Indiana Community Health Center will open an office providing primary care and obstetrics in Lincoln Plaza this spring.
Funding for projects
The Dunn Hospital Foundation formed in 1971 as a fundraising arm of the hospital. For years, it hosted the Holiday Village vendor fair, a golf tournament and spring dinner/dance.
Debbie Bauer served as Dunn Foundation treasurer since 2006 and worked at the hospital 47 years. She said some of the projects the foundation funded included the renovation of the emergency department, 3D mammography, a new ambulance, remodel of the lab waiting room, new furniture in the front lobby, additions to the chapel and bedside trays for patient rooms.
More recently, the foundation purchased Stryker 4K towers used by surgeons ($180,000) and a telemetry system to monitor patients in the ED and med/surg floor ($49,000).
Men’s Warming Shelter, Becky’s Place
The gift to the Bedford Men’s Warming Shelter comes at a time when the shelter recently bought, renovated and opened a new shelter at 1414 H St. The overnight shelter is open during the winter months, and case management, with an emphasis on finding the men permanent housing and the means to live independently, is offered year-round.
SARAH, which oversees the shelter, took on debt when it bought the building and is currently raising funds to pay off the loan.
Edwards, who also serves on the SARAH board, said the gift from the Dunn Foundation will ensure that the shelter’s doors remain open.
Heather Flynn is the shelter’s executive director.
“Our community was devastated when we found out St. Vincent Dunn was closing. So many people in our county were born there and were healed there,” Flynn said. “It’s amazing to think of the impact the hospital had on our community and now in closing, the hospital will continue to make an impact on the lives of the next generation. This money will really change lives.”
The $200,000 gift will be used to pay down part of the renovation costs and for shelter operations.
“With this great blessing, we can continue to grow,” she said. “This money opens so many doors.”
The SPIN program supports unhoused individuals and those who have homes, but lack electricity, running water or money to wash their clothes. SPIN provided nearly 700 client services in 2022.
When Corrina Hayes, Becky’s Place program director, got the call from Edwards about the gift, she was so stunned, Edwards thought she had hung up.
“Honestly, I’m still really speechless,” she said.
As a nonprofit that in its early years struggled to raise funds to cover payroll, a gift so generous brought Hayes to tears as she described what it means.
“What makes it so emotional for me is we didn’t have to fill out an application and send in 40 documents, it wasn’t a referral for a grant that we might or might not receive,” Hayes said. “It’s knowing they believe in the work Becky’s Place is doing and they believe in us so much that they were willing to give us this big donation when it could’ve gone to another nonprofit. It’s such a huge honor for this place, the staff, the residents, the volunteers that their work speaks for itself.”
The COVID pandemic was a difficult time for the shelter. For two years, it couldn’t have its Mardi Gras Shelterbration fundraiser, Christmas open house or Thanksgiving run/walk. There was also the challenge of isolating residents who tested positive for COVID and having enough staff in the building while also following COVID protocols.
The shelter also lost one of its biggest supporters when St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church’s Father Rick Eldred passed away suddenly in March 2020.
“Father Rick would be so happy for us receiving these funds,” she said.
Edwards and Bauer said it was vital that the funds that were raised by the community stay in the community. Both pointed to the efforts of foundation members past and present as well as Leslie Mullis, who served as foundation director for many years, for their stewardship of the foundation’s assets. Edwards said dissolving the foundation was a complex legal process and Bedford attorney Dave Smith was instrumental in working with the board.
The Dunn Foundation will also endow a scholarship at Bedford North Lawrence and Mitchell high schools and will present gifts to Agape House, Lawrence County Cancer Patient Services and the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence County.
Dunn Hospital History
Dunn Memorial Hospital, as it was known for many years, had its beginnings in 1904 when it was established as the Lawrence Hospital. The hospital was moved to its current location and, following a gift of $15,000 from Moses Fell Dunn, the hospital was expanded. In 1924, it was named Dunn Memorial Hospital.
In 1939, the hospital association transferred the hospital properties to Lawrence County and construction began on a new 50-bed hospital.
Expansions continued over the next several decades to include emergency rooms, radiology and lab facilities and adding additional patient floors, increasing capacity to 137. Other services that came online were dialysis, cardiac rehab, birthing center, home health, physical therapy, walk-in clinic, cardiac catheterization and medical transportation.
In 2006, Dunn became a 25-bed critical access hospital.
In 2010, it was acquired by St. Vincent Health and renamed St. Vincent Dunn Hospital. Ascension, its parent company, was added to its name in 2018.
Ascension announced it was closing the hospital Sept. 16, 2022. Hospital operations ceased Dec. 16.
