The largest gift in Boston Children’s Hospital’s history did not start with the full ownership group. It started with one co-owner and his wife.
Rob Hale and his wife, Karen Hale, gave $100 million, money the Boston Globe reported was first announced last December to help build the hospital’s new pediatric behavioral health campus in Brighton. The rest of the Celtics ownership group then matched it. The hospital announced the combined total on Thursday, October 29, 2026: more than $200 million from the Celtics ownership group and the Boston Celtics, in association with the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation.
Half the record came from one family. The other half came from about two dozen owners deciding to follow them. Neither the team nor the hospital would disclose individual amounts beyond the Hales’ share, the Globe reported.
The money has five named jobs. It will help build what the hospital calls the nation’s premier pediatric mental health facility, with earlier help for children in crisis. The behavioral health campus in Brighton carries a $640 million price, according to the Globe. The gift will also pay for research into new therapies for childhood diseases and into the childhood origins of adult diseases, advanced training for pediatric nurses, an innovation fund for new ideas in children’s health, and family programs built around healthy lifestyles in local communities.
Dr. Kevin Churchwell, the hospital’s chief executive, said the gift’s significance would be “measured not by the record it sets, but by the lives it will save.”
Bill Chisholm, the Celtics’ chairman and governor, framed the gift as part of what the team is for: a legacy that is more than what happens on the court, and a commitment to the next generation in Boston and beyond. “We all win when we invest in our children’s futures,” Chisholm said.
Hale spoke from the wards, not the boardroom. He said he had seen firsthand the work the hospital does for patients and families, and that the gift would help advance research, expand access to care and improve children’s lives for years to come.
The gift sits on top of the Shamrock Foundation’s ordinary giving, not in place of it. The foundation gave about $7.5 million last year to roughly 500 nonprofits across New England, according to the Globe. Two hundred million dollars is about 27 years of that pace, given in one announcement.
The announcement morning had a room of its own. On Thursday, October 29, four former Boston Children’s patients, Aileen, Matteo, Malcolm and Kole, spent the morning at Celtics practice at the Auerbach Center. They toured the training facility, received team-signed basketballs, and joined a shootaround with Mike Conley. Head coach Joe Mazzulla brought them into the film room to introduce themselves to the whole team, and guard Payton Pritchard took one of them one-on-one. Jordan Walsh, the organization’s 2026 Community Champion Award recipient, rebounded and shot with them. Mazzulla said the visit showed that “our impact is so much beyond basketball.”
The team marked the gift where its fans could see it. For Friday night’s home game against the Chicago Bulls at TD Garden, the ownership group and the organization donated tickets for more than 100 Boston Children’s patients and their families. The patients were set to line the court in front of the players during the national anthem, and the Celtics were to wear shooting shirts signed by the four former patients who had visited practice.
Churchwell had the last measure of the money: families come to the hospital in their most challenging moments, looking for answers for their kids. The record will sit in the hospital’s books. The work it pays for will sit in Brighton, in laboratories and in the training of the nurses who meet those families at the door.
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