Finance Crunch For Elder Care

With celebrities such as actor George Clooney, Paramount Pictures President Jim Gianopulos and former DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg on its board of directors, Motion Picture and Television Fund isn’t your average nonprofit organization. “We’re not-for-profit,” explained MPTF Chief Executive Bob Beitcher, “so we have the benefit of having the financial support of the industry. We don’t have to do what others do to be profitable. We have the benefit of funded programs.” The fund’s operations include a 250-bed hospital, seven primary care health centers, a 186-unit retirement community providing independent and assisted living, a free-standing child care facility and a total staff of 500. The organization’s hospital ranks No. 4 on the Business Journal’s list of Assisted Living Facilities, ranked by licensed bed capacity. Since 2012, Beitcher has run an ambitious $350 million fundraising campaign, led by Katzenberg and Clooney, to provide a safety net for some of the 75,000 baby boomers anticipated to retire from the entertainment industry in the next two decades. High-rollers such as David Geffen, Barry Diller, Tom Cruise, Steve Bing, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Thomas Tull and John Wells contributed money, and Beitcher called MPTF Foundation Chairman Katzenberg “the fundraising engine” for the cause. Katzenberg’s annual 2003-launched “Night Before the Oscars” remains one of the main MPTF fundraising events. Additionally, Samuel Goldwyn Foundation made history when the family foundation contributed a single gift of $55 million. Even these headline-grabbing contributions, however, do not make fundraising a slam dunk, Beitcher said. “The reality is we are fortunate to work in a hugely generous and profitable industry, but our members have many, many competing philanthropic causes that compete with ours — their own foundations, political campaigns, their schools and their children’s schools,” he explained. While the $350 million campaign has been accomplished, the organization’s next goal will be its Centennial Campaign, marking the 100th anniversary of the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in 2021. The yet-to-be-specified fundraising goal will be “a combination of covering ongoing operating shortfalls and focused on re-imagining the campus,” Beitcher said. A $15 million gift from Kirk and Anne Douglas toward this campaign will be applied toward the creation of Kirk Douglas Care Pavilion, a 50-bed memory care unit. “Some of the buildings on campus are just old and need to be replaced,” Beitcher said. “We need more assisted living beds, contemporary units.” Jewish Home Another Valley nonprofit, Jewish Home for the Aging, has a reach “from Lancaster to Long Beach,” said Molly Forrest, who runs the organization’s Eisenberg Village and the 108-unit Fountainview at Eisenberg Village, both in Reseda. The Village ranks No. 2 on the Business Journal list. Since starting her career in 1972, Forrest has seen two trends in the senior population that affect nursing homes and assisted living facilities. People are living longer and as a result there are more seniors to care for. “When I came, we had about 500 seniors, average 80 to 90,” she said. “Today, we expect 4,500 this year in residence. We now have 1,200 and the average age is 90.” In addition to its assisted living facilities, the Village also runs the Joyce Eisenberg Keefer and Mel Keefer medical center, a psychiatric hospital and hospice beds for skilled nursing care. The Brandman Centers for Senior Care has 249 total beds and the Mark S. Taper, devoted to short-term rehabilitation services, has 105 beds. There is currently a $250 million campaign underway to modernize and build new facilities on the Taper’s 3-acre campus. “It’s been going on for the past 10 years, with $10 million and $12 million a year,” Forrest said. “We are planning to build in late 2019.” On an operating basis, “the payments for California’s nursing care is generally flagging other states,” she said, adding that the shortfall totals range from $20 to $30 to several hundred dollars a day per patient. “It takes a lot of donors to (bridge the gap).” Unlike the Motion Picture and Television Fund, the Jewish Home doesn’t have a strong powerline to Hollywood philanthropy. “The entertainment industry gives to the Motion Picture home,” she said. “We don’t get philanthropists from there.” Beitcher, at MPTF, said “We have a laser-like message. The success we’ve enjoyed in this industry is built on many others who haven’t had the same success, and it’s our obligation to support them. A lot has changed in this industry, but it still comes back to the same basic message.”