Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation receives record $10 million donation

The Minnesota-based Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation has received a record $10 million donation that will help the nonprofit support loved ones of people receiving treatment.

The donation from the Maryland-based Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, announced Friday, is the largest gift Hazelden Betty Ford has received in more than seven decades. It will kickstart a $100 million fundraising campaign to launch the new Hazelden Betty Ford National Center for Families and Children.

"We can provide healing for the entire family, and it's going to help outcomes for everybody," said CEO Dr. Joseph Lee, who's led the organization since 2021. "We're going to deliver the kinds of wraparound family services in an innovative way that I think will make a real difference."

Hazelden Betty Ford is the largest nonprofit provider of addiction treatment and mental health services in the country, and among the largest nonprofits in Minnesota.

The new center won't be a specific place, but rather initiatives online and at facilities in the seven states where Hazelden Betty Ford operates; training more clinicians in evidence-based family treatments; and scaling up family programs to be incorporated as part of treatment.

"When family members are involved, outcomes are better, and the quality of life for those family members also improve," said Lee, who was a child psychiatrist before moving into leadership roles. "Having experience with thousands of families, this is the kind of stuff — innovative ways of helping families and the whole system — that I really dreamed of and wished we could always provide."

More details about the new model will be released later, but Lee said it will ensure that family members receive help and education when their loved one goes through treatment.

The record-breaking donation for Hazelden Betty Ford comes after the Center City, Minn.-based foundation received a surprise $8 million donation from an Illinois family last year — then the largest single donation to the organization. The nonprofit, which started in 1949 and merged in 2014 with the California-based Betty Ford Center, is trying to attract major donors as part of an effort to drum up more philanthropic support.

"We are evolving as an organization. We're meeting our communities' and our patients' needs in a different way. And donors want to help us do that and expand our work," McGinley said. "What this gift allows us to do is innovate in ways that wouldn't have been possible without it."

Most of Hazelden Betty Ford's revenue comes from patient services to support a $218 million annual budget, but Lee has said philanthropy needs to play a bigger role in revenue as the cost of services and demand for help rises. As drug overdoses and mental health issues balloon, the organization is now working with more than 25,000 people a year in Minnesota, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Washington — about 20% more people than in 2017.

In 2020, Hazelden Betty Ford quietly launched an eight-year, $500 million fundraising campaign to expand programs and improve equity in treatment. McGinley said the nonprofit raised $15 million in 2021, $30 million in 2022 and $11 million so far this year.

The goal to raise $100 million for the new National Center for Families and Children — which will support technology, staffing, programs and some capital improvements — is part of that overall $500 million campaign. McGinley and Lee said they hope the historic donation will inspire more generosity.

It's personal work for Abby Moffat, CEO of the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation and Spencer's daughter. Moffat sought help from Hazelden Betty Ford's family program years ago and said it was life-changing.