$40 million latest gift from philanthropist Tom Golisano to children’s hospital raises his giving well over the billion-dollar mark

Tom Golisano, the Paychex founder, entrepreneur, and longtime philanthropist, has committed $40 million to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, a gift that will rename the hospital’s nationally recognized heart care and surgery program the Golisano Pediatric Heart Institute and position Vanderbilt as the coordinating center of a new pediatric cardiac consortium.

The Vanderbilt gift is one of six awards announced September 10 as Golisano expands the Golisano Children’s Alliance to 21 children’s hospitals nationwide.

The newest round totals $225 million, following a $403 million founding commitment in October 2025 and a further $125 million investment in April 2026.

Together, Golisano has now directed $753 million to the Alliance, making it one of the most ambitious privately funded collaborations in American pediatric medicine.

At Monroe Carell, the money carries implications well beyond a new name. The hospital will help establish a consortium designed to link pediatric heart programs across Alliance member institutions, creating a framework for clinical learning, research, data sharing, and the spread of evidence-based practices.

The premise is straightforward but consequential: a child’s access to advanced cardiac expertise should not depend entirely on geography, institutional scale, or a family’s ability to travel long distances for specialized care.

“My hope is that no family, no matter where they live or what they can afford, has to travel far or wonder if their child will get the best care available,” Golisano said in Vanderbilt’s announcement.

The alliance model, he added, is intended to generate collaboration and innovation that can expand access to highly specialized pediatric services.

The choice of Monroe Carell gives the effort a significant clinical base. Vanderbilt’s pediatric heart program is among the nation’s longstanding centers for congenital heart disease and pediatric heart transplantation.

It serves more than 20,000 children annually through 10 satellite clinics in Tennessee, performs more than 500 cardiac surgeries each year, and completed 19 heart transplants in fiscal 2026, according to Vanderbilt. Its work spans fetal diagnosis, childhood treatment, and the transition to adult cardiac care—an especially important continuum for patients born with congenital heart disease, many of whom require lifelong follow-up.

Carlos Mery, chief of pediatric cardiac surgery, and Larry Markham, chief of pediatric cardiology, said the investment would help create a distinct model of collaboration among pediatric cardiac programs, speed innovation in transplantation, and improve long-term outcomes for people living with congenital heart disease.

Vanderbilt Health President and CEO Jeff Balser said the gift would support new treatments for complex conditions while enabling the hospital to share advances across the Alliance.

For Golisano, the Vanderbilt award is the latest expression of a philanthropic strategy increasingly built around networks rather than isolated gifts.

The Alliance’s hospitals retain their local identities and clinical responsibilities, but the model asks them to collaborate around shared problems: recruiting and retaining specialists, supporting families, improving access to subspecialty services, pooling knowledge, and moving promising practices more quickly from one community to another.

Monroe Carell is expected to serve as the central convener for the new cardiac collaboration, a role that could make Nashville an important national hub for pediatric heart research, education, and care coordination.

The $40 million commitment also illustrates the scale of Golisano’s giving in the past two years.

In September 2024, he announced $360 million in awards to 82 nonprofit organizations in Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse, New York.

That announcement brought his lifetime giving to $775 million, nearly doubling his prior total. The package included a $52 million award to the B. Thomas Golisano Foundation, lifting its investment assets to $120 million and increasing its annual grantmaking capacity from roughly $3 million to more than $5 million.

The Foundation, established by Golisano in 1985, has made supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities a defining part of his philanthropy. Its work supports organizations and systems seeking to improve healthcare access, employment, education, housing, recreation, and community participation for people with IDD.

Golisano and his Foundation have committed more than $145 million globally to inclusive health and social inclusion, including $67 million to Special Olympics, the Foundation reports.

His support for children’s health has been equally enduring. Golisano’s gifts helped establish or expand children’s hospitals that bear his name in Rochester, Syracuse, and Southwest Florida, and his more recent national investments have extended that footprint nationwide.

At the University of Rochester Medical Center alone, his personal and foundation giving has approached $100 million.

That includes a $14 million gift in 2002 that helped create Golisano Children’s Hospital, a $20 million gift in 2011 for a new hospital building, a $5 million commitment in 2020 for the Golisano Pediatric Behavioral Health and Wellness Center, and a major 2024 commitment supporting the Golisano Institute for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

The Alliance itself has accelerated the momentum. It began in October 2025 with a $403 million commitment, expanded in April 2026 with $125 million for three additional hospitals, and has now reached 21 members through the latest $225 million round.

Golisano’s personal investment in the Alliance stands at $753 million, and its long-term objective is to grow to 40 children’s hospitals.

The breadth of that record makes an exact “sum” more meaningful than a simple total.

Public statements now place Golisano’s lifetime philanthropy above $1 billion—a total that encompasses direct personal gifts, foundation commitments, multi-year pledges, and investments in institutions across healthcare, education, disability inclusion, and community life.

The most defensible current formulation is therefore that Golisano has given or committed more than $1 billion overall, including $753 million to the Golisano Children’s Alliance, more than $145 million for inclusive health and social inclusion, and nearly $100 million to the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The Vanderbilt award adds a new dimension to that record. Rather than simply underwriting a program at one hospital, it seeks to build infrastructure for shared pediatric cardiac expertise across a widening national network.

For families confronting a child’s heart condition, the promise is that a breakthrough, protocol, or specialist insight developed in one Alliance hospital can travel farther and faster—helping reduce the distance between medical innovation and the children who need it.