Shopify CEO donating $26-million to children’s hospitals through Thistledown Foundation

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Shopify Inc. SHOP-T +5.99% increase

chief executive officer Tobi Lutke and his wife Fiona McKean said Thursday that they would donate $26million to a Canada-wide network of children’s hospital foundations through their private charitable organization.

Thirteen acute-care hospital foundations will receive $2million each, including those of the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, and the BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.

Ms. McKean and Mr. Lutke worked with two organizations, Canada’s Children’s Hospital Foundations and Children’s Healthcare Canada, to coordinate the new hospital funding. The gift, they said, is intended to help children affected by the pandemic both directly and indirectly, including those whose access to child development, mental health, and surgical services has been affected by the pressure COVID-19 has put on health care systems.

 

How Shopify’s CEO and his wife pivoted their charitable foundation to fund COVID-19 efforts

“We must prioritize innovations in pediatric care as we start envisioning how our post-pandemic healthcare institutions and systems will evolve,” Ronald Cohn, CEO of the Hospital for Sick Children, said in a press release.

The donation is also timed with Saturday’s National Child Day, which raises awareness of children’s rights, including protection from harm. In the release, Ms. McKean said that “our hope is that children across Canada will have the best possible care to enable them to feel better soon and get back to the important job of being kids.”

She and Mr. Lutke first endowed their philanthropic organization, Thistledown Foundation, with $150million in 2019. They initially planned to fund decarbonization initiatives but changed tack in the early weeks of the pandemic, making donations tied to research and the sourcing of personal protective equipment.

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