Saint Francis Manchester has a campus at 65 W. Clopton St. (Images courtesy Saint Francis Manchester)
A nonprofit assisted living facility in South Richmond is hoping to grow its footprint and its offerings.
Saint Francis Manchester announced Wednesday the formal launch of a roughly $10 million public capital campaign geared toward enlarging and renovating its income-based assisted living complex at 65 W. Clopton St.
The announcement comes amid the nonprofit’s ongoing construction project to renovate, add more bathrooms and a memory care-focused unit to its existing campus.
Executive Director Bruce Slough said the nonprofit has already closed on around $14 million of donations geared toward the first three phases of the ongoing construction.
He said those phases, and a three-story expansion that would be made possible if the nonprofit can raise the additional $10 million, would help it meet the growing need in the area for lower cost assisted and memory care living.
Saint Francis Manchester, which celebrated its 50th birthday in recent years, is licensed by the state to provide assisted living primarily for low-income seniors, including room and board, laundry, food services and medication administration.
The facility accepts Medicaid-eligible residents and works with Virginia’s Auxiliary Grant program, which provides a monthly cash stipend for low-income individuals in licensed assisted living facilities.
Initiated by Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, the Catholic Diocese of Richmond founded Saint Francis Manchester in the 1970s as the Bainbridge Catholic Home, which originally encompassed a 5,000-square-foot building with eight beds that had previously served as a maternity home for “unwed mothers.”
Bruce Slough
The organization continued to grow over the years and today has three additional buildings and around 110 bedrooms and 60 bathrooms total. Though the organization has a Catholic affiliation, with a chapel and chaplain, many of its residents are not Catholic.
The nonprofit routinely partners with area organizations such as Feed More and also receives all of the retail proceeds from Thrifty Sisters, a thrift store at 8911 Patterson Ave. in Henrico. Slough said the thrift store finances “at least a quarter of our deficit.”
He added that the nonprofit has seen a significant gap between state subsidies and its costs, increasing the pressure for the nonprofit to provide quality care at the facility.
“As a board, we recognize that if we continue to depend on the subsidy for our top-line, moving-forward revenue, that’s a going-out-of-business thing,” he said. “(Subsidies) give us about $2,000 per month per person. … What it costs us to make payroll and pay (for power) and the city for water and gas is about $4,200 a month per person.”
He added that, along with continuing to serve low-income seniors at the facility, Saint Francis Manchester also has been looking to target the “forgotten middle”— the population of middle-income seniors who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid care assistance but may struggle to afford private assisted living.
Some rooms at Saint Francis Manchester include private bathrooms, while others include either Jack and Jill-style bathrooms or bathrooms shared among a few residents. More private bathroom offerings is a need Slough said the organization is hoping to provide.
“What we’re trying to do is change our campus that was built in the ’50s, ’60s and early 2000s so that we can say, ‘Yep, we can give your mother a private bathroom,’” Slough said.
Saint Francis Manchester set out several years ago to make a roadmap of what phased construction work needed to be done on the campus, with cost estimates for the total project coming in at $15 million in 2024.
The first phase of the project, which began last November and is nearly complete, included a bedroom renovation in some of the buildings. The phase also included new flooring, lighting and art in some common spaces.
Seven bedrooms that had not been used since the COVID-19 pandemic and were originally in the home for unwed mothers have gotten new, private full bathrooms. A building also has gotten a new elevator and an expanded multipurpose room.
The home recently started the second phase of the project, which includes renovation of the 30-bedroom, 15-bathroom “front door” building on the campus, called Sullivan Place, which will be turned into a 28-bedroom, 28-private bathroom facility. Tentative completion is expected sometime next year.
As for the third phase, the nonprofit announced at a Nov. 11 unveiling that it will also be expanding into the memory care business, dedicating one floor of one of its existing buildings for an 18-bed unit to people with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive impairments.
“That’s a different world from assisted living. It’s a stretch for us, but it’s not unprecedented. In fact, it’s fairly typical that assisted living (residents) go into memory care. It’s certainly different regulations and requirements. It’s different staffing, there’s a whole different cost structure. But there’s such a need for it,” Slough said.
The phase also will include a new communal area and a new main entrance to the campus, including extending the parking lot and creating an exit from the campus onto Bainbridge Street, with a covered drop-off and pick-up area.
Slough added that the nonprofit hopes to begin working on that phase not long after completion of phase two.
The general contractor on the overall project is locally based Conquest Moncure & Dunn Inc.
The assisted living facility began quietly raising funds a few years ago for the overall construction project. Thus far, it has raised nearly $14 million, which Slough said will completely cover the three phases of construction.
“Our capital campaign is beginning the public phase. These things always start with what we call the ‘silent phase,’ where you call your friends, your board members … and we’ve been blown away with how people have responded,” Slough said.
Yet Slough said the nonprofit has been eyeing a further three-floor expansion to the Sullivan Place building, which the $14 million would not be able to cover. That led to the public announcement of a capital campaign Nov. 11.
“All of these renovations, including the memory care, it’s in the bank, we got it covered. But, to do the (three-floor) expansion, we’re probably going to need another $10 million,” Slough said.
“We’re hoping with this public phase, it’ll be an introduction to people who may be able to help us with the $10 million, but we didn’t know them, they didn’t know us,” added Saint Francis Manchester board member Cindy Joyce.
Saint Francis Manchester opened as Bainbridge Catholic Home in 1973. In 1978, it was renamed Saint Francis Home before rebranding to its current name in 2022.
The nonprofit has about 50 employees. According to its most recent public financial reports issued to the IRS, Saint Francis Manchester operated with $5.07 million in revenue and $5.08 million in expenses in 2025.
Also in the area, foster care nonprofit HopeTree Family Services cut the ribbon on a 7,500-square-foot office on Midlothian Turnpike, while first responder-focused nonprofit Valor RVA recently took on its first full-time executive director.
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