29
May
In the News: Ellis and Transfinder use crowdfunding for surgical center
- Category Featured, Announcements
From Albany Business Review
May 29, 2015
Written by:
The CEO of Transfinder Corp. teamed up with Ellis Medicine on a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a $19.4 million Center for Surgical and Interventional Medicine in Schenectady, New York.
CEO Antonio Civitella brought 150 executives, community leaders and technology workers to his company headquarters in Schenectady Thursday evening and raised more than $15,000 in 90 minutes. Civitella donated $7,500.
"This was an experiment to see what we could do to support Ellis and Schenectady," Civitella said.
Three weeks after Ellis Medicine celebrated the completion of its new $61 million Emergency Care Center, the region's third largest hospital system is raising money for a $19.4 million surgical center that will place cardiology, radiology, vascular surgery and cardiothoracic surgery care units in one area to improve care.
Civitella, who heads the school bus routing software company and sits on the Ellis Foundation, teamed up with Fundabilities, a crowdfunding site, to help Ellis kick off a campaign to raise money to finance the surgical center project, which is underway.
Thursday's event at Transfinder was part Civitella's ongoing efforts to bring more energy and attention to downtown Schenectady and to promote the efforts the NYBizLab business accelerator that he started to bring early-state companies to the city. The accelerator has signed two tenants and is in discussions with a few more. Fundabilities, the crowdfunding site that ran the Ellis fundraiser, also is interested in moving downtown.
Rick D'Errico, managing director of NYBizLab, said Thursday's crowdfunding event was organized to help the hospital attract a new group of donors who might not otherwise be on the hospital's radar when it comes to raising money for expansion projects.
