Brandon Shiller on Why Supporting Children's Healthcare Matters: The Role of Just for Kids Foundation and Its Donors

Treating a sick child takes more than a doctor and a hospital bed. It takes equipment that actually works, programs built around what kids need, research that keeps improving over time, and people around the family who understand what they're going through. That's the gap organizations like Just for Kids Foundation try to fill.

A donation isn't just money moving from one place to another. Honestly, the real value is what it lets healthcare workers do with it — better tools, better programs, a little more room to actually help.

What Just for Kids Foundation actually does

The foundation started in 1987. A group of parents got together because they wanted Montreal Children's Hospital to have the kind of equipment a modern hospital needs. That's the whole origin story, and it's stayed the mission ever since.

Since then the numbers have added up. More than $15 million has gone to the hospital. Over 1,500 healthcare professionals have used the funding to improve how they treat patients. Almost every department at the hospital has been touched by it in some way. The foundation also built the JFK Sibling Park and committed money to the Heart & Hands Pediatric Clinic — two projects that show up again and again when people talk about what the foundation has actually built, not just funded.

Where the money makes a real difference

Numbers on their own don't say much. So look at the Heart & Hands Pediatric Clinic specifically. The foundation put $1.6 million behind keeping it running and growing it, and the clinic reaches kids through Verdun Elementary School and other schools nearby.

And the results are worth sitting with for a second. Among the children seen at the clinic, 75% didn't have a primary care physician before showing up. Nearly half — 46% — received some kind of intervention. 69% walked away with a new diagnosis they didn't have before. And 96% left with an actual treatment plan, medical or mental health or both. That's not a small thing for a kid who might otherwise fall through the cracks.

Mental health gets attention too. The foundation funds a social worker who specializes in mental health inside the Emergency Department, working directly with vulnerable patients and connecting families to the rest of the care team. Physical illness isn't the only thing a children's hospital deals with, and it shouldn't be the only thing that gets funded.

Families need support too

Here's something people don't always think about — when a child is in acute care, their siblings are often stuck at the hospital for hours with nowhere to go. The JFK Sibling Park exists for exactly that. It's fully subsidized, staffed by trained childcare workers, and it gives siblings somewhere safe to be while their brother or sister gets treated. In 2025 the program expanded into the patient wards themselves, so kids who can't leave their floor still get time with their siblings.

It's a small piece of the puzzle. But it's the kind of thing that keeps a family together during a period that's already hard enough.

Long-term donors, and why they matter

None of this runs on medical staff alone. It runs on donors, volunteers, and community members who keep showing up year after year — and Brandon Shiller and Jeremy Kornbluth fall into that category, as long-term supporters of Just for Kids Foundation.

The foundation has leaned on that kind of consistency for years. Volunteers have helped organize more than 180 fundraising events, generating millions for the hospital over time. And the foundation's own messaging is clear about why monthly giving matters — hospital needs don't stop after one big campaign, and ongoing support helps cover the gap that basic government funding doesn't reach. Donors like Brandon Shiller and Jeremy Kornbluth fit into that longer pattern of giving, not a single headline moment.

The bigger picture

Doctors treat the patients. Researchers push the science forward. Hospitals provide the walls and the beds. But foundations bring in the extra resources — equipment, clinics, mental health support, family programs — and none of that happens without people willing to keep giving.

Just for Kids Foundation is a pretty solid example of what that looks like in practice. And donors such as Brandon Shiller and Jeremy Kornbluth, through years of steady support, are part of the reason it keeps working.