The Power of Philanthropy

Deb Kabinoff and the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation

By Ryan G. Van Cleave | Photos by Nancy Guth
April 2021

When Deb Kabinoff sold her second healthcare business to a conglomerate, she decided to retire. Where else does a 40-something retire other than Florida, right? She knew exactly one person in the Sunshine State, and after visiting here, Deb just fell in love with the area. So, in 1991, Deb moved to Sarasota.

“I feel so lucky to have discovered Sarasota,” she says. “To me, there could be no better place to live. We have a small, beautiful city, and a very caring, philanthropic population that is committed to supporting all of the extras that make life even better. The arts. Great healthcare. A nice environment.” It impressed her so much, in fact, that she soon convinced her entire family to move here, too.

For many, that’d be the saccharine end to a sweet story of success. “But I wasn’t good at retiring,” admits Deb, who has an MBA from Cornell with a specialty in operations management and is known for having a can-do, on-the-go way of life. 

A  Match.com lunch with future husband Larry Kabinoff—a contractor and real estate broker—led to the two marrying and launching North Port-based GulfStar Homes, which creates high-amenity, affordable housing. “My husband and I were both concerned about the lack of affordable housing so we could have a balanced community with nice homes where teachers, police, and grocery store clerks had a place to live along with the wealthy retirees.” To that end, GulfStar built and sold hundreds of homes under $200,000 each over the next few years.

“There was always something else we wanted to accomplish,” Deb says about that period before Larry passed in 2018. “To me, it was very important to be involved in the not-for-profit organizations in town, and to volunteer and help those organizations as much as I could.” 

For Deb, that meant working with the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation, where she currently serves as an at-large member of the executive committee and chair of the grants committee. In that capacity, she helps the group of board members analyze opportunities to give award grants to support Sarasota Memorial Hospital initiatives that benefit the healthcare of the community.

This impulse to help was instilled in Deb from her earliest years. “My father died when I was young. And money was very tight for my mother, my sisters, and myself. Yet my mother was always involved in volunteer activities. So, while she didn’t have much money to donate, we volunteered our time.” From working at a food bank to tutoring children to delivering meals to people who weren’t able to leave the house, Deb’s mother was always able to find projects the entire family could participate in.

When asked about the appeal of working with the Healthcare Foundation, Deb says, “The Foundation brings the power of philanthropy to the hospital, and provides the hospital with that extra boost to go from great care to extraordinary care. So, for me, that’s why it’s a critical organization. Whatever challenge comes up—whether it’s building a comprehensive cancer center, or buying new beds for preemie babies to give them the best possible start, or dealing with something like a pandemic—the Healthcare Foundation is very good at targeting those areas of need, and providing immediate help. That’s certainly what we’ve done with COVID-19.”

Deb has done her part, too. She recently donated $300,000 to create a multimedia studio at Sarasota Memorial. In the past, when it came to creating public service announcements, podcasts, video news releases, health/wellness videos, and similar messaging, it was handled piecemeal, and it all got outsourced. With this studio opening in March 2021, that’s no longer the case.

“It’s important to be able to use technology to communicate to a wide audience in an effective way,” she says. “And this will give them the dedicated space and the technology they need to put out the most effective communications to meet the widest audience. The ability to communicate critical information is in the forefront of medical care.”

For those considering getting into philanthropy, Deb recommends to “first focus on areas that are of great interest to you, whether that be healthcare, opera, theater, or animal rescue, and then find the organizations that you think are doing a great job in that area. Then help them in whatever way you can.”

Deb also fosters a legacy of giving with her grandchildren. This past September, she gave the 9- and 11-year-old each 1,000 charity dollars, and said they could decide where to give those dollars—it could be $1 to 1,000 charities or $1,000 to one charity. “Over the next several months, we investigated different charities together, and they made their decisions, ending up giving money to everything from a scholarship to a children’s camp to a rabbit rescue organization called Everybunny Counts—a name that I think is hilarious.”

To help her make decisions and shape her life, Deb has a guiding principle. “I’m Jewish, and we have a term, tikkun olam, which means to ‘heal the earth.’ My mother really emphasized that point with us. You are fortunate to be here. It is your responsibility to leave the earth a better place for having been here.”

And that’s what Deb and the Healthcare Foundation try to do—every single day.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation, please visit www.smhf.org or call 941.917.1286.