St John of God Foundation reflects on 30 years of funding healthcare services in WA.
St John of God Foundation has distributed more than $75 million in community donations over the past 30 years to improve healthcare for Western Australians.
Established in 1994 as the philanthropic arm of St John of God Health Care, the Perth-based foundation funds and supports the healthcare organisation’s hospitals, services and patients.
It has grown to become the seventh-biggest philanthropic foundation in the state, according to Data & Insights.
In the 2024 financial year, St John of God Foundation distributed $10 million to its partner healthcare organisation, supporting its 27 facilities across WA, Victoria, NSW and New Zealand.
Bianca Pietralla became the foundation’s chief executive in September 2018 and said reaching the 30-year milestone in June presented an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the past and gain inspiration for the future.
“We exist to transform healthcare through personalised patient treatment and leading medical research,” Ms Pietralla told Business News.
“We serve the patients and clients of St John of God Health Care, the broader community of Australia and then, through research, the global community as well.
“We’ve actually seen an overall growth in our giving, mainly from major donors, trusts and foundations, particularly here in WA.
“For us, and for foundations like St John of God Health Care, during times of economic downturn it’s really important we take a long-term view of our relationships and we diversify our fundraising sources, so we’ve had a big focus in that area.”
Ms Pietralla nominated the construction of St John of God Community Hospice in Murdoch, which opened in 1998 to aid the demand for more palliative care beds south of the river, as a highlight of the foundation’s work.
“That was fully funded through a community campaign,” Ms Pietralla said.
“Then, twenty years later, that hospice was refurbished into a transformational healing space and that, again, was funded through donations from the community.
“Another significant campaign was the Bendat Family Comprehensive Cancer Centre at St John of God Subiaco Hospital.
“That was actually a groundbreaking achievement. It was Australia’s first private comprehensive cancer clinic and, again, was funded through philanthropy.
“We’ve also had a large involvement in research projects that improve our clinical outcomes for patients and contribute to the global body of knowledge.
“Our research is really a catalyst for change and a lot of the research we do is in oncology, but we do research in other areas.”
St John of God Foundation launched its Gifts of Hope program in 2020, which supports patients undergoing cancer treatment.
“I was incredibly proud to launch our Gifts of Hope program … [which] provides one-off funding to just take the burden off those patients a little bit,” Ms Pietralla said.
“We’ve funded seventy-five of those in the last three years or so.”
Dedicating more energy and resources into creating long-lasting impacts for people was a priority for St John of God Foundation, she said.
“We really need to focus on providing long-term opportunities to people to make a difference,” Ms Pietralla said.
“For us, we’ve focused more on our relationships: both existing and establishing new relationships with a longer-term vision.”
Funding challenges in the wider healthcare sector remained, she said, given increasing demand for and cost of services.
Ms Pietralla said the foundation was exploring ways to close this gap.
“We have an ageing population, a changing population in terms of migration trends, increased consumer demands, and healthcare transformation in terms of technology,” she said.
“A lot of [the issues] are macro challenges, so they’re really more in the healthcare realm as opposed to impacting just the foundation specifically.
“But ... [we’re] looking at how we can help reduce the burden on funding by creating those transformational opportunities for philanthropy and government and corporate partners to get involved.
“In collaboration with St John of God Health Care, the foundation is leading the discussion about how philanthropy can play a role in shaping the future of healthcare, across all the communities we serve, but in WA as our home state, especially.
“We currently have somewhere between $150 [million] and $200 million worth of projects requiring support in our three-year pipeline that need philanthropic investment.
“St John of God Health Care has certainly committed to investing in that changing landscape of healthcare, but we need to look for the support of philanthropy and government to partner with us in that space.”
Ms Pietralla’s vision for the foundation involved increased focus on funding service advancements to support the next era of healthcare in WA.
“There are five key areas we need to build our capacity in,” she said.
“We’ve got research and education, cardiac centre, cancer services, robotics and surgery, and maternity and neonatal care. Those are the biggest focuses for us.
“The vision of the foundation is to advance healthcare for future patients and their communities; thinking about what success would look like for us in walking into one of our hospitals or services in five years.
“It would be that we’ve opened new and improved healthcare services, [that] we’ve implemented advanced technologies to help patients with cancer, with heart disease and other illnesses.
“[That] we’ve contributed to the global body of research that focuses on better ways to prevent, treat, diagnose and live with disease, we’ve built the capacity of the next generation of doctors and nurses through scholarships and other grant funding, and that we’ve supported our healthcare system for some of the most disadvantaged people in our communities."
