2025 Reflections
We want to share the incredible impact your support has had in 2025 for nearly 700 patients and their families as they navigate end-of-life. Your generosity has enabled lasting wishes to be granted, provided comfort items and grief support, fulfilled patient needs not covered by insurance, enabled Virtual Reality experiences, and offered Love-You-Forever Bears.
Your gifts truly empower our Elara Caring Hospice Foundation to carry out our mission of providing physical, emotional, spiritual or social assistance to hospice patients and their families.
Supporting Patient Needs:
Thanks to generous givers like you, we were able to provide for 207 patient needs for support and comfort items not covered by Medicare or insurance. Assistance with utilities, rent, safety equipment, scooters, comfortable recliners and lift chairs, wheelchair ramps, and emergency home repairs helped ease the burden on patients and their families at end-of-life.
Granting Lasting Wishes
Your gifts enabled 36 patients to have their Lasting Wish granted! From a wedding celebration and photo session with a granddaughter, to a trip to the zoo with a dolphin encounter, to a seafood boil dinner with extended family, to a VIP NBA basketball experience, the variety of experiences and joy these granted wishes sparked is infectious, creating treasured memories!
Providing By Your Side and Child/Teen Bereavement Comfort
Your generosity enabled over 200 kits to be distributed to patients and their families. Our BYS Kits enable comfort for patient and family during those final transitional days. Our Child and Teen Kits offer age-appropriate resources to supplement Elara Caring’s Bereavement program with tangible support.
Enabling Love-You-Forever Bear Condolences
With your support, we were able to share Love-You-Forever Bears with over 100 families to enable patients to leave a lasting recorded message or heartbeat to their loved ones. Most families request several bears, making these treasured friends the unofficial mascot of our ECHF Foundation.
Looking Ahead to 2026
We are eager to grant more Lasting Wishes in 2026 and are starting the new year off strong by granting a patient’s wish to have a VIP experience at MonsterJam!
We hope you will join us in supporting experiences such as this. The average cost for granting each wish is $420 and we hope to grant over 50 wishes in 2026, totaling over $21,000. Should you wish to make a positive impact by sponsoring a wish, we invite your support below.
We are also thrilled to launch a new “Honoring Veteran’s Kit” complete with resources and items that both honor and support our veterans as they reflect back upon their military experience at end-of-life. This new offering aligns with Elara Caring’s Front & Center program ensuring our service members’ unique physical, mental, and emotional care needs are met. Our anticipated investment to successfully launch this new program is $5,000. If you are grateful for the freedom we enjoy and wish to thank a veteran for their service with a tribute gift, we invite you to do so below.
With Sincere Gratitude,
Tara O’Rourke, Executive Director
Support ECHF in 2026
What is the Elara Caring Hospice Foundation?
A 501(c)(3) charitable organization that provides physical, emotional, spiritual or social assistance to hospice patients and their families.
We Invite Your Continued Support