PITTSBURGH - The charitable foundation building the new $473 million Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh hopes to raise about $20 million by selling the naming rights to the facility, which is set to open in 2008.

"It could be a company, it could be a foundation, it could be an individual," DeAnn Marshall, executive vice president of the Children's Hospital Foundation, said of the marketing effort. "It's so preliminary, I can't speculate as to where it might lead."

It's not uncommon for hospitals to sell naming rights.

In 1994, the company that brought America the G.I. Joe doll paid $2.5 million for the naming rights to Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, R.I., which is also home base for the toy company. Hasbro raised another $2.5 million to help build the hospital and continues to help it raise money.

"Our company was born in Rhode Island and this is our hometown," said Wayne Charness, Hasbro's senior vice president for corporate communications. "This wasn't about marketing for Hasbro. This was about being a great neighbor."

Barbie's parent company pledged $25 million in 1998 to support what is now known as Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA in Los Angeles. Drug-maker Bristol-Myers Squibb donated $5 million to a New Jersey hospital now named for that company, as did the brokerage firm identified with Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in New York.

Some hospitals are named for celebrities who do good deeds, too.

The Chris Evert Children's Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. is named for the tennis star who was born there and who now is an outspoken advocate of children's health and welfare. In Maine, a philanthropist donated $3 million dollars on the condition that Barbara Bush Children's Hospital be named for the former first lady.

Lawrence McAndrews, president of the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions said hospital naming rights are a win-win proposition: hospitals need money and donors need or want positive publicity.

"Children's hospitals have pretty good panache ... Catholic saints get good play on these, followed by philanthropists," McAndrews said. "People have been doing this for a long time, it's just how much it costs that's changed a little."