Grateful Patient and Families Philanthropy Programs
What would you give if someone touched your life in a remarkable way?
Grateful Patient Philanthropy Programs are built on the foundation of patients giving back to those clinicians who touched their lives in a memorable and meaningful way. Through compassion and kindness, clinical caregivers are incredible life lines to those in need. Clinicians give hope, and in the circumstances where hope sifts away, they are there to reach out with a comforting touch. A grateful patient philanthropy program offers patients and families an outlet to heal, and a chance to support the healthcare institution that helped them through one of the most difficult times of their lives.
Watching someone you love suffer is never easy but excellent clinical care and compassion help alleviate the burden to both the patient and family member. Being the recipient of such care and compassion can create a sudden outpouring of gratitude. Innumerable acts of kindness entwined together make a patient and family member feel cherished and make a healthcare system feel benevolent.
- the specialist who calls a patient at home even though it is his precious day off with his family
- the exhausted nurse on an understaffed ward who takes time to hold a patient’s hand
- the entire team who make a patient feel valued as they tweak a medication dose and make him feel more comfortable in his final days
These transactions are intangible because they have nothing to do with numbers but everything to do with compassion. For these individuals, experiences like these create an opportunity for a philanthropic gift. The donor’s gratitude is in direct response to the high quality, clinical excellence, and exceptional experience they have had in the course of their healthcare encounter (Stewart et al. 2011).
That’s why it is essential to create a grateful patient and family philanthropy program that is focused on building a culture of gratitude across the organization. Everyone whose work touches the patient must understand that their work has the potential to create gratitude, and this gratitude may find expression in a philanthropic gift. The key is to recognize, accept, and welcome the gratitude being expressed and to know how to refer that patient to the philanthropy office.
Ultimately, an integrated grateful patient and family philanthropy program creates the environment and relationships which drive exceptional care and generate more philanthropic revenue for the organization. Through these additional resources, healthcare institutions may find a pathway to support investments in the people, programs, facilities, and technology they need to create sustainable organizations in the future.
At Gobel Group, we change how clinicians think about philanthropy. We educate clinicians on how to recognize opportunities for patients and families to express their gratitude through giving.
Create an attitude of gratitude, and watch everything change for the better!
