Hope Hines, left, and Vicki Yates of WTVF-NewsChannel 5, hosted the Children's Miracle Network Telethon live from the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt.
photo by Tommy Lawson
Children’s Hospital benefits from Telethon’s record haul
Once the final tallies were in, the 23rd annual Children's Miracle Network Telethon broke all records, becoming the most successful installment ever.
The event raised $1,274,199 to help pay for programs at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. The CMN Telethon is a national fund-raising event for children's hospitals across the country. In Nashville, WTVF-Channel5 carried both the national programming and live reports from Children's Hospital.
The largest donors this year were Wal-Mart & Sam's Club which raised $295,711; Daily's, which raised $131,636; and Goody's, which raised $72,878.
“The thing that has touched me most in working on the CMN Telethon is seeing the way individuals in this community support their children's hospital,” said Katherine Louw, interim associate director of Children's Miracle Network. “Much of the money raised through CMN is raised a dollar at a time through paper sales, bake sales, golf tournaments and individual pledges. To think that in one year these efforts raise more than $1.25 million shows that each gift, no matter what size, makes a huge impact in the treatment of children.”
Vanderbilt students raised $100,696 in the VU Dance Marathon as one of the larger non-corporate donors. The funds raised in the CMN Telethon go to the Children's Fund, a major source of funding for hundreds of specialty programs run through Children's Hospital to treat everything from diabetes to spina bifida to heart defects.