We recently had the opportunity to sit down with our clients at WellStar Health System – Mary Anne Ericson, Director of Foundation Operations and Gene Weeks, Development Director. They shared their recent inspirational (and practical!) story of the wonderful synergy created when gift officers and operations partner together with clinicians and follow Gobel Group’s Grateful Patient Program. They received a $100K gift within the span of two months! As Gene succinctly stated, “the program works.”
Highlights of this exciting story:
- Mary Anne built out the fundraising system to capture, segment, and track prospects for the Grateful Patient Program
- Gene worked with one of WellStar’s doctors, Dr. Cooper, to learn which of his patients were expressing gratitude
- Gene passed a name to Mary Anne who uncovered – through their implemented Grateful Patient Program – that this person gave $50 awhile back, had since lapsed, and now was deemed to have high capacity and high gratitude
- Having this reason to reach out, Mary Anne sent an introductory letter
- Gene did background research and spoke with the patient via phone
- Gene met with the patient and learned he had a lot of gratitude for Dr. Cooper who had performed open-heart surgery and saved his life
- Gene scheduled another in-person visit where the patient re-stated his gratitude, and Gene shared some opportunities for conveying that gratitude via gifts
- Gene met one more time with the patient to share various ways he could convey his gratitude for Dr. Cooper’s work
- The patient texted Gene shortly thereafter stating what he wanted to donate from his donor advised fund
- Gene went that day and got a pledge agreement signed
- WellStar received a check for $100K – it is being directly applied to cardiovascular components of the new ED/Trauma Center and the patient will also have naming rights for one of the trauma rooms
The best part of this success story is that WellStar would not have reached out to this patient except for the fact that he was identified in their Grateful Patient Program pipeline as someone with capacity and gratitude.
In Mary Anne’s words this “would not have happened if it hadn’t been for the program.”
They had no other way of getting this individual’s information or being able to gauge his interest without the partnership with Dr. Cooper, wealth screening his referrals, support from Operations, Gene building the relationship, and then implementing the Gobel Group process.
In addition, the entire process was speeded up as Gene and Mary Anne reviewed the list from Dr. Cooper of 28 grateful patients. Gobel’s process showed them what to look for in a patient and thus how to target the ones that really had the potential for major gifts. The discipline of the process put a much higher ROI on Gene’s time as he knew who he should be calling and the best next steps.
Since fully implementing Gobel’s program in December 2017, WellStar not only received this large gift, but also several smaller gifts from new donors across several gift officers.
Gene’s final thought shared with us was that “anything is possible if you follow the format.” It was also inspiring to hear how Mary Anne now “gets really excited about who comes through” the Grateful Patient Program each day. The entire team at WellStar Health System can anticipate only more good surprises like this $100K gift.
