Over the years, Ivy Health teammates have packed care kits for veterans, filled food pantries, built play sets for kids facing cancer, assembled coding computers, and even built prosthetic hands. Different projects, same idea: when there’s a chance to help, we show up.
“Serve Others” is one of our values at Ivy. But like most good things, it means more when you can actually see it.
Sometimes it looks like hundreds of teammates working side by side at a leadership meeting. Sometimes it’s a clinic collecting food for a pantry down the street. Sometimes it’s a group of people with a box of parts, a set of instructions, and a pretty good reason to get to work.
Over the years, Ivy teams have found a lot of ways to give their time, energy, and attention to people who could use a hand.
Supporting Those Who Served
At Ivy’s 2024 Directors’ Summit in Washington, D.C., 675 teammates spent part of the event supporting veterans experiencing homelessness.
Working with Impact 4 Good and Veterans on the Rise, the group assembled 1,780 hygiene kits, 85 blankets, and 85 sets of hats and gloves for the Stand Down for Homeless Veterans program. Teammates also raised more than $40,000 forFisher House Foundation, which provides housing for military and veteran families while a loved one receives medical care.
It was a big room full of people doing very practical things: packing supplies, writing notes, making donations. Nothing flashy. Just useful.
A Lot of Food Barrels. Even More Generosity.
The Ivy Abundance of Barrels food drive was built around a pretty simple plan: put collection barrels in Ivy clinics and let local communities take it from there.
They did.
In 2022, donations from teammates, patients, and families reached nearly 450 community organizations across the network.
What we like most about that effort is that it stayed local. Clinics supported food pantries, churches, and organizations in the places they knew best.
Being part of a large network can create a lot of reach. Being rooted in local communities helps make that reach matter.
A Place to Just Be a Kid
Ivy teammates have also partnered with the Roc Solid Foundation to support children and families navigating pediatric cancer.
Fundraising through Ivy initiatives helped support custom backyard play sets, and teammates volunteered on builds for families going through treatment.
There are plenty of serious things competing for a family’s attention during cancer treatment. A backyard shouldn’t have to be one of them.
A play set can’t change what a family is going through, but it can give a child a place to climb, swing, laugh, and do something wonderfully normal for a while. That counts for a lot.
Computers, Coding, and a Little Curiosity
At another Ivy leadership gathering, teammates traded laptops and meeting notes for screwdrivers and computer parts.
Together, they assembled 94 coding computers for youth-serving organizations, including 50 for Orlando After-School All-Stars. The remaining computers went to organizations connected to other Ivy communities.
The idea was to give more kids a chance to explore coding and STEM. Maybe it sparks a future career. Maybe it just sparks curiosity. We think both are pretty good outcomes.
And Yes, We Really Built Prosthetic Hands
One of Ivy’s earlier service projects is also one of the hardest to forget.
Through a partnership with Hands of Gratitude, Ivy clinic directors worked together to assemble more than 60 prosthetic hands for people around the world.
Teams built the devices, decorated the carrying cases, and sent them on to people they would likely never meet.
There’s something powerful about that. You start the day with a table full of pieces. Someone else ends up with a little more independence.
There’s More Than One Way to Show Up
None of these projects look especially similar, and that’s probably a good thing. Communities don’t all need the same kind of help, and service shouldn’t come with a template.
What matters is noticing where you can make a difference and being willing to do something about it.
For Ivy teammates, that has meant feeding families, supporting veterans, creating places for kids to play, opening doors to technology, and building something useful with our own hands.
We call the value Serve Others. Most of the time, it just looks like people helping people. And we think that’s exactly how it should look.