Lessons from the field with Erin Thompson of Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin and Adrian Stover of GOBEL.
Most health systems know they should be doing more with grateful patient philanthropy. Fewer know exactly why their programs stall or what they need to do differently to drive growth.
In 2022, F&MCW engaged GOBEL to build a best-in-class and scalable Grateful Patient and Family Philanthropy Program. While the institution demonstrated a strong commitment to philanthropy, several persistent challenges had limited prior attempts to gain traction and return on investment. One of the primary barriers was inconsistent physician and clinician engagement, coupled with limited awareness of how to identify and refer potential donors. Patient referrals were few and far between and lacked strategic segmentation, making it difficult for gift officers to prioritize outreach. Reporting and performance metrics were still evolving, with limited standardization in the early stages. Additionally, capacity constraints in both data operations and frontline fundraising limited the team’s ability to pilot new strategies or assess impact in real-time.
In our recent webinar, Turning Gratitude into Growth: Strategies for Grateful Patient Program Success, Erin Thompson, Director of Foundation and Healthcare Philanthropy at Froedtert & The Medical College of Wisconsin, and GOBEL’s Adrian Stover walked through how, together, they overcame previous challenges and built a program that has raised more than $12.5 million since FY24 with 93 clinician champions engaged and an average gift size of $246,716.
Gratitude Is a Clinical Strategy
Grateful patient philanthropy is not about identifying people with money and asking for gifts. It is about recognizing that patients who experience excellent care are often genuinely moved to give back, and that if your organization does not create a way for them to do that, you’re limiting the opportunity to create a meaningful opportunity to advance your mission.
“Philanthropy is an integral part of the patient’s clinical experience – not a transaction, but a continuation of the care journey. When patients want to express gratitude and we don’t receive it well, we’re not just missing a gift. We’re missing a moment that matters to them.”
— Erin Thompson, Director of Foundation and Healthcare Philanthropy, F&MCW
This distinction matters because it changes how you train your team, how you talk to clinicians, and how you measure success. A program built around transactions will always feel transactional. A program built around gratitude that sees every referral as a patient who wants to be heard scales differently.
The Third Attempt Was the One That Worked: Here’s Why
Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin had tried to build a grateful patient program twice before. Both times, it was not successful.
What was different the third time was not just the partnership with GOBEL, it was the infrastructure underneath the program. Specifically: a clear key performance indicator framework, defined accountability, and a dashboard that streamlined metrics.
“Once we had clear goals — and a way to see whether we were hitting them — the team stopped guessing and started performing.”
— Erin Thompson, Director of Foundation and Healthcare Philanthropy, F&MCW
That shift, from effort-based to outcome-based, is one that GOBEL sees play out across health organizations of every size. The teams that thrive are not necessarily working harder than the ones that stall. They are working with clearer line of sight to what matters.
The KPIs That Actually Drive Performance
Adrian walked the audience through the specific metrics that anchor the F&MCW program and, more importantly, how to think about them. Not every metric is created equal. Some are leading indicators; some are lagging. The goal is to build a dashboard that tells you where to focus right now, not just how you did last quarter.
“The question we always ask is: what number, if it moved, would move everything else? For most programs, it’s qualified referrals. If you get that pipeline right, the rest tends to follow.”
— Adrian Stover, Associate Vice President, Philanthropy Services, GOBEL
THE CORE KPI FRAMEWORK
The four metrics the F&MCW team tracks most closely — and that GOBEL recommends as a starting framework for any grateful patient program:
- Referrals: Number of patient referrals identified and cleared for outreach. This represents the top of the funnel, and the most consequential number to move.
- Champions: Number of clinician champions identified and actively engaged. This reflects the human engine that drives referral volume and quality.
- Asks: Number and dollar value of solicitations made to qualified prospects. This captures the activity metric that connects pipeline to results.
- Gifts Closed: Number and dollar value of gifts closed in the period. This is the metric that leadership will use to understand the ROI of every activity above it.
Adrian emphasized that the right number of KPIs to start with is fewer than you think. “Start simple, prove it works, then build.” Teams that try to track everything often end up managing the dashboard instead of the program.
The Clinician Engagement Problem — And How to Actually Solve It
If referrals are the most consequential number, clinician engagement is the most consequential behavior. It is also the hardest to build and the easiest to lose.
The F&MCW team went from zero to 93 active clinician champions. That did not happen by asking clinicians to add one more thing to their day. It happened by making the case so clearly and so consistently that referring patients became the natural thing to do, not an extra obligation.
“Clinicians don’t refer because we ask them to. They refer because they understand what it means to their patients, and because they trust that when they make a referral, it’s going to be handled with the same care they put into their clinical work. That trust takes time to build. Once you have it, it compounds.”
— Erin Thompson, Director of Foundation and Healthcare Philanthropy, Froedtert & MCW
Adrian added a structural point: the programs that maintain clinician engagement over time are the ones that close the feedback loop. When a clinician makes a referral and later hears what happened, a story, a gift, a patient’s gratitude expressed, that reinforces the behavior. Without closing that loop, even the most enthusiastic champions fade.
The Hard Parts Nobody Talks About
These aren’t hypothetical challenges, but rather are the things that slow down real programs at real institutions.
Clinician availability: Competing clinical priorities do not disappear because you have built a champion program. Sustainable engagement means building true partnership with clinicians.
Prospect qualification: Knowing which patients are philanthropically ready requires data infrastructure that most institutions are still building.
Staff turnover: Development officer attrition is a real threat to relationship continuity. The programs that thrive are the ones with documented processes and shared institutional memory, not the ones that rely on any one person.
Data infrastructure: An accurate dashboard requires clean data, clear definitions, and cross-team alignment. You do not need to wait for perfect data to start, but you do need a plan to get there.
Seven Lessons That Will Save You Years
“A dashboard does not change culture — people do. Data helps us see the opportunities to care, connect, and inspire philanthropy. But it’s the people who act on it that make the difference.”
— Adrian Stover, Associate Vice President, Philanthropy Services, GOBEL
- Leadership support is not optional. Executive champions don’t just open doors, they signal that philanthropy is part of institutional culture. Without that signal, adoption stays inconsistent no matter how exceptional your program design is.
- Consistent training beats a strong launch. The teams that sustain momentum are the ones still training in year three, not just at kickoff. Regular refreshers keep the why front and center, not just the how.
- Start simple, then build. Launch with three or four meaningful KPIs and resist the urge to measure everything. Adoption grows when the framework is clear.
- Celebrate early wins — LOUDLY. A referral that becomes a gift is a story. Tell it. Recognition reinforces behavior and it costs nothing.
- Transparency about data builds trust. Define how data is collected, used, and shared before you launch a dashboard. Teams that trust the data use it.
- Embed the dashboard into existing workflows. A dashboard that requires new behavior rarely survives. One that lives inside the meetings and reports people are already in gets used every week without anyone having to remember to open it.
- Build real feedback loops. Give your team structured ways to tell you what is missing from the metrics. The people closest to the work almost always know what is broken before leadership does.
Watch the Full Session
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