"Chase helps Gift of Hope, an organ and tissue donor network, expand to a larger facility "

Alison Smith: The Gift of Hope was founded in 1986. It was an effort by local transplant centers to consolidate organ recovery efforts. Gift of Hope's mission is to save and enhance the lives of as many people as possible through organ and tissue donation. And it seems rather simple to say, but it's a very complex process and it involves so many people. It involves donor hospitals. It involves transplant surgeons. It involves physicians and hospital administrators, clergy, coroners, funeral directors and, I think most importantly, donor families. Those people who are willing, at the worst time in their life, to make a decision to save or improve the life of someone else.

Since its inception, Gift of Hope has provided organs to over 14,000 patients and hundreds of thousands of patients have received tissue transplants from the donors that we've recovered.

Our current facility in Elmhurst has gotten too small for us, so we were looking for some place that would allow us to further expand what we do. We needed to find some additional space that would enable us to do greater testing, to prevent communicable disease transmission from our donors to recipients; and we had to have more space in order to manage appropriately all the calls that we receive from the hospitals. Chase bank helped us in financing the new building that we have identified and are now currently remodeling and making suitable for the needs that we have.

Chase has been a partner of ours since, actually, Gift of Hope's inception. We were known as the Regional Organ Bank of Illinois at that point, so we've changed our name, but that relationship with Chase has remained a constant...investment banking, our investment management, our treasury services. Everything that we've done with Chase has been a positive for us and that was one of the reasons why it was easy for us to choose Chase as our partner in this new endeavor. They came to the table with a number of things that really made this work for us. A letter of credit to support our tax-exempt bonds, bond underwriting and investment banking services, and an interest rate derivative that really allowed us to move forward with the project.

Our new facility in Itasca is significantly larger than our current facility and it allows us to create, again, more efficiencies. The new facility also has a lovely area surrounding it. There's trees, a lot of green space. There's a gazebo in the back that people can have lunch...that really, I think, will enhance the quality of work life for our employees. We ask a lot of them so I think it's important that we give something back.

It's an unbelievable legacy that a loved one can leave to someone else. It focuses, I think, on our shared humanity. It doesn't matter what gender you are. It doesn't matter what race you are, but it connects us all. What a wonderful thing… to save the life of someone else when you're no longer here.