Kaleida Health’s Giving Day FOR Kids is March 25 this year. It’s raised an impressive $1 million for Golisano Children’s Hospital of Buffalo (GCH Buffalo) since 2024—but it can be hard to imagine your dollars at work when you donate to a big organization like a hospital.
For the people who work there, though? The evidence is all around. Just ask nurse manager Audrey DeMaria.
DeMaria has worked for Kaleida Health for two decades. She’s managed 150 school nurses over 90 sites in the Buffalo Public School District, and since 2017, she’s been a nurse manager on GCH Buffalo’s 10th floor: the medical/surgical recovery unit.
“Donations help with the medicine, period,” she says. “It's ever changing, always improving. So all the time, all of those things have to be upgraded. It allows us to have updated equipment, and updated things for families.”
Those touches for patients’ families are small but mighty for parents whose kids might be admitted for days, weeks or even longer. Times are tough for everyone right now, DeMaria says, and the burden feels even heavier with a sick child.
"We help with parking or help with meals. We have free beverages and snacks downstairs,” she says. “Just easing the constant stress. We have families that have trouble putting food on the table, so a Tops gift card here and there. All through community philanthropy."
Some kids, particularly if they have a tracheostomy and need a ventilator, will be “frequent fliers” on the 10th floor throughout their lives because of the complexity of their needs. It results in a lifetime relationship, with caregivers even attending birthday parties and graduations.
“My nurses build really strong relationships with these families,” DeMaria says. “They're there with us till they're 21, so my nurses have taken care of kids at infancy with a trach, and at 14 they’re still here, and we're still taking care of them.”
The hospital’s Patricia Allen Fund and eponymous wing—named after Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen’s grandmother—as well as the recent $50 million donation from B. Thomas Golisano, which was the catalyst to the name change from Oishei Children’s Hospital to GCH Buffalo in January, are two more examples of major philanthropy at work.
All this community support, big and small, can be summed up in one crucial mission: helping to ensure every patient gets the expert care they need regardless of their ability to pay.
“A freestanding children's hospital is an amazing thing and a gift that, until you need the services, you probably don't know how much you need those services,” DeMaria says. “These donations help support specialized equipment, advanced therapies, family programs. It touches more people than you ever know, and the smallest and most vulnerable patients.”
