You & WRHN Foundation. Together.
Improving access to care, closer to home.
IMPACT REPORT 2025/26
CONTENTS
1
- Mission. Purpose. Values.
- A message from our board chair
- A message from our CEO
- One foundation. One purpose.
- Board of Directors
- Your impact at a glance: revenue, grants & locations
- Volunteer / donor spotlight: Michele Way
- Sponsor spotlight: Allan Bush
- Patient spotlight: Jeff's story of giving back
- WRHN by the numbers: care stats & accomplishments
3
- Equipment, programs & resources you supported in 2025/26
- Caring for Waterloo Wellington & beyond
- Top fundraising priority: next-generation cancer care
- Physician recruitment: building tomorrow’s care teams
- Top fundraising priority: cardiac cath lab expansion
- Top fundraising priority: medication management system
- Top fundraising priority: bringing neurosurgery back
- Healthcare innovation: building through CareNext
- Transforming care with a bedside swallow test
MISSION
Our mission is to fuel innovation, connection, and impact in healthcare through the power of giving.
PURPOSE
WRHN Foundation exists to inspire community involvement and ownership of healthcare – bridging funding gaps so everyone can access exceptional care closer to home.
VALUES
Our values reflect not just on where we are going – but how we got here through trust, transparency, collaboration, innovation and excellence.
A message from our board chair
Tobi Day-Hamilton
A year ago, two foundations made a bold decision to join together as one, creating the Waterloo Regional Health Network Foundation.
The amalgamation was more than an organizational change. It was a commitment to our community and to a shared vision for a future of exceptional healthcare in Waterloo Region and beyond.
Change is never easy, but when the mission is as important as healthcare, it is worth every bit of the effort. By joining together, we created a stronger Foundation with greater ability to bring our community together, amplify philanthropy and help build the healthcare system our growing region needs.
Thank you to every donor, every volunteer, and every community partner who stood with us. Your generosity is helping WRHN provide exceptional care close to home for the 1.4 million people who rely on our health network.
The impact of your support reaches beyond the care delivered today. It helps our teams access the technology, equipment and resources they need, while creating opportunities to innovate and prepare for the future.
As Waterloo Region continues to grow, so too does our responsibility to ensure our community has access to exceptional healthcare. WRHN Foundation has an important role to play in making that future possible.
Together, we can build a healthcare system that is stronger, more innovative and ready to meet the needs of generations to come.
On behalf of the entire Board, thank you for your trust, your generosity and your belief in what we can achieve together.
The foundation has been laid. Now, together, we will build the future.
Tobi Day-Hamilton
Chair, WRHN Foundation
Board of Directors
Board of Directors
A message from our CEO
Doug Earle
People often ask me what brought me back to Waterloo Region. The answer is simple: it's the incredible impact WRHN has on our community — made possible by you, our donors.
When I was named CEO of Waterloo Regional Health Network Foundation in Oct. 2025, I returned to the place where my fundraising career started 30 years ago, to the place I called home through University, and to the place where I forged friendships I still carry.
Nearly one year later, I thank each of you for welcoming me back, and for proving what I always knew about Waterloo Region: that the people here care deeply, and they work together to improve our community.
Over the past year, our first as WRHN Foundation, we've taken great strides together to improve access to exceptional healthcare.
Every dollar you donated in 2025-26, every event you attended, every time you shared your story as a grateful patient or proud donor, you helped advance care at WRHN. It’s no coincidence WRHN was named a top hospital in 2026, or that it celebrated clinical firsts in cardiac, cancer, kids care, and more. Our accolades and achievements only happen when our community bands together to help fuel the work of our care teams.
We’re coming off a great year. But our work is not done. As our population grows, your help is needed to support exceptional healthcare close to home for our friends, families, loved ones, and neighbours.
Thank you for your generosity and support in 2025-26. Let’s keep working together to build a healthcare system for today’s needs — and tomorrow’s growth.
Doug Earle, CFRE
Chief Executive Officer
WRHN Foundation
WRHN Foundation
You & WRHN Foundation. Together.
One foundation. One purpose.
In our first year as Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN, pronounced “wren”) Foundation – following the April 2025 merger of St. Mary’s General Hospital and Grand River Hospital – donors like you helped us build a stronger foundation to improve access to care closer to home.
In 2025, more than 17,000 donors helped WRHN Foundation raise more than $26 million to fund equipment and programs that 1.4 million people rely on at WRHN.
Behind those dollars, WRHN is making sure more people get the right care, at the right time, in the right place. Since the merger, patients have spent less time in hospital overall with inpatient stays down 11 per cent and emergency department (ED) stays down seven per cent. Days spent waiting in a hospital bed for other care options fell 28 per cent, freeing beds for more complex cases. Ambulance crews transfer patients 45 per cent faster, putting paramedics back on the road sooner. And WRHN is doing all of this while its EDs are seeing 35 per cent more patients each day than they were built for.
Thank you for supporting WRHN Foundation in its inaugural year. The generosity of donors like you bridged the gap between government funding and the equipment and programs that bring care to life. Donors like you put advanced tools in the hands of our care teams, funded research and specialized programs, upgraded spaces, and supported training and innovation so WRHN can keep improving the way it delivers care.
We accomplished a great deal in our first year. But the work is not done.
This region has outgrown its aging hospital buildings, and we need a healthcare system that can meet tomorrow's growth. That means reimagining care across WRHN’s hospital sites, community locations, and partnered hubs, and planning Waterloo Region's new hospital bordered by Bearinger and Westmount Roads.
A growing community needs more access to the kind of care you helped build in 2025. Let’s continue to build a healthcare system that leads – together.
You & WRHN Foundation. Together.
Board of Directors
The WRHN Foundation Board of Directors is a prominent group of dedicated volunteers who are leaders within our community: experts in business, medicine, law, finance, and beyond. They bring that experience to every decision and champion WRHN across the region. The Foundation is deeply grateful for their dedication and commitment to healthcare in Waterloo Region and beyond.
Tobi Day-Hamilton
Chair
Darren Johnston
Vice Chair
Neil Duffy
Treasurer
KP Anand
Board Member
Sarah King Brohman
Board Member
Krystal Darling
Board Member
Jonathan Dunlop
Board Member
Shereen El Feki
Board Member
Amber French
Board Member
Ron Gagnon
Board Member
Dr. Neil Naik
Board Member
Meredith Weldon
Board Member
John Tyrrell
WRHN Foundation Board Member 2019-2026
We extend our thanks to community and business leader John Tyrrell for his commitment and service as a board member from 2019 through to June 2026. He continues to support us through our finance, investment and audit committee.
The power of community
Every donor, every volunteer, every gift helped power exceptional care at Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN) today – and shape its future for tomorrow.
Total revenue
$
0
M
Fundraising
$16.5M
Lottery
$2.9M
Investment
$6M
Other
$717K
WRHN @ Chicopee
formerly Grand River Hospital - Freeport Campus
WRHN @ Queen's Blvd.
formerly St. Mary's General Hospital
granted to WRHN to fund equipment, programs, and resources & associated hospital lottery partners.
$
0
M
WRHN @ Midtown
formerly Grand River Hospital - KW Campus
Volunteer / Donor Spotlight
Michele Way
Volunteer / Donor Spotlight
Michele Way
Think about empowered and exponential giving, learning, and being part of grassroots healthcare.
Michele Way
Volunteer Co-Chair, She Shares Women's Giving Circle at WRHN Foundation and Chair, Patient and Family Partnership Council at WRHN
Way sits on both sides of healthcare here: on the Patient and Family Partnership Council, shaping how patients and families experience care, and with She Shares, funding the equipment those same teams depend on to deliver care.
She Shares began in 2017 with five women. Today, more than 100 members pool their donations for equipment the hospital could not otherwise purchase. They fund the items people often don’t think about – bladder scanners, centrifuges, morgue stretchers – that impact patient care every day.
Members hear directly from WRHN teams and vote on where their donations go, making the giving circle a unique philanthropic force where women use not only their resources, but their voices too, to help transform care.
Members hear directly from WRHN teams and vote on where their donations go, making the giving circle a unique philanthropic force where women use not only their resources, but their voices too, to help transform care.
“There are not many other ways to donate and see
exactly where [your donation] is going,” Michele says.
Sponsor Spotlight
Allan Bush
Sponsor Spotlight
Allan Bush
When one person steps forward, an entire community can move forward together.
Allan Bush
Senior Wealth Advisor, CIBC Private Wealth Wood Gundy, WRHN Ambassador
When it comes to strengthening healthcare close to home, Allan Bush believes leadership means stepping forward.
As a longtime community leader and passionate advocate for Waterloo Regional Health Network, Allan understands that exceptional healthcare is built through partnership. That's why, in the fall of 2025, he proudly became the Presenting Sponsor of WRHN Foundation's signature fundraising event, The Greatest Gift Gala.
For Allan, it’s about ensuring families have access to exceptional healthcare close to home, today and for generations to come. By investing in local care, he is helping create a stronger, healthier community where patients can receive the treatment they need, close to the people and places they love.
Patient Spotlight
Jeff Weddig
Patient Spotlight
Jeff Weddig
When I looked around the Cancer Centre and saw the patients there and the equipment they needed, it was a real eye-opener.
Jeff Weddig
Cancer patient at WRHN
The cancer was already at Stage 4 when Jeff Weddig finally went in for a prostate exam. Through 11 rounds of radiation, his support network and his care team at WRHN made all the difference in his care.
Last November, Jeff organized ‘Swing for the Screen’ – a fundraiser at a golf simulator to not only raise money for the Cancer Centre at WRHN, but to encourage others to get screened for prostate cancer.
His goal was to raise $10,000. Instead, he raised nearly $25,000, and he’s planning on making Swing for the Screen an annual event.
That’s what happens when a community is inspired by one person’s remarkable journey – and, in Jeff’s case, the exceptional care that kept a father, husband, friend, and teammate going strong.
Our impact at a glance
A foundational year for WRHN
Building on more than 90 years of partnership, St. Mary’s General Hospital and Grand River Hospital came together in April 2025 to form Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN) — a single organization focused on delivering more connected, supportive care.
Donor generosity helps WRHN update, replace and expand the equipment, services and spaces that improve access to care today — while planning for tomorrow’s needs.
Unique patients
0
Patient visits
0
Emergency visits
0
Births
0
Surgeries performed
0
A year of firsts
- WRHN became the first centre in Southern Ontario to perform endoscopic spine surgery, allowing patients to undergo major procedures through a 7mm incision and return home the same day.
- Performed Ontario’s first SmartSync MRI for cardiac device patients, launching a breakthrough non-invasive cardiac radiation therapy program, and performing cardioneural ablation for vasovagal syncope—making it only one of a few globally to perform this procedure.
- In a groundbreaking collaboration, the pediatric team delivered the first ketamine therapy for youth mental health, improving quality of life for young patients and paving the way for broader access to this transformative therapy.
- The WRHN Regional Cancer Centre launched a pharmacist-led oncology clinic, transforming breast cancer care improving access, efficiency, and personalized care through a made-in-Ontario approach.
- WRHN is among the first in Ontario to implement a surface-guided radiation therapy tool paired with a linear accelerator (LINAC) machine. It provides real-time motion tracking to continuously monitor patient positioning and ensure maximum treatment accuracy.
Recognized among Canada's best for exceptional care
- Recognized among the top 100 hospitals in Canada by Newsweek-Statista.
- Earned accreditation with Exemplary Standing across all acute-care sites, the highest possible rating from Accreditation Canada (January 2026).
Rooted in Care. Building for Health.
- Advanced planning for Waterloo Region's new hospital in Waterloo, WRHN continues to work with the Ministry of Health for approvals.
- Continued planning for redevelopment @ Midtown, expansion at WRHN @ Chicopee, and maintaining WRHN @ Queen’s Blvd.
- Advanced the CareNext Collective in partnership with the University of Waterloo, driving innovation by bringing partners together with frontline healthcare to reinvent care delivery.
You & WRHN Foundation. Together.
- UP NEXT
Explore stories of gratitude and giving, and see our donor spotlight, "Investing in care. Investing in community."