Hi all- At the Blackbaud Conference, Amy Crause and Cary Colwell had a session called Turning Patients Into Donors. Part of it was promoting their experience with Blackbaud Analytics, but the bulk of the presentation and ensuing discussion were really useful and substantive. At the end, I was wishing we could shift right into a roundtable and take a few more hours. This is clearly one of the most important topics for healthcare fundraising. I thought I'd take the initiative to start a topic here in the Forums in the hopes of continuing the discussion with those who were there and extending it to others who couldn't make it. We've all got some of the same challenges. I'm sure we've also all come up with some solutions we could share with each other. Thanks, Mitch Mitch Gibbs Director, IS Advocate Charitable Foundation

Thanks for your initiative! In Maine, state law doesn't allow the Foundation to even know who is in the hospital. I'd love to know what others are doing to help patients "raise their hand" so we can contact them. I'm in the process of totally revamping the Foundation brochure. The old one was a corporate structure overview--501c3 yada yada yada. The new one is called "Honoring Healthcare Heroes" and is all about helping patients say "thanks" by making a gift. Does anyone else have any ideas? Marc Marc A. Pitman Inland Foundation Waterville, ME USA http://inlandfoundation.org/  http://fundraisingcoach.com/

We are looking at bringing patient name and address into our system. Since this is a new initaitive for us, I would love some advice on qualifying the data...in other words is there a "standard" set of parameters? Example: no medicaid or self pay, etc? Also if the data has been qualified by the hospital, and only certain segments of the patient population are returned, what is the usual and customary next step?

Marianne - We solicited patient families by phone for the first time about a year ago as part of our public 100 year campaign. We have continued with this type of solication for this group because it was so successful. In the past, they were mailed to but we received little/no response to mailings. It's a bit of a long process, since the list has to go through 1/2 dozen hospital staff before it's scrubbed enough for us. They remove disgruntled families, those whose child died, anyone who receives money from our Uncompensated Care fund (our financial aid), anyone who's involved with our legal dept, and certain diagnoses (like sexual abuse). Once we receive the list, we merge/purge it against our donor files for those coded as Do Not Solicit, No Valid Address, Major Donors & people who've already made a campaign gift. I also remove any 18 year olds who are their own guardian but still receive services through our clinics; after getting a call from an irrate parent. Overall all we've had a positive response & grateful families have been a wonderful new acquisition for the Foundation. We also have a story project on our website & they are encouraged to share their story even if they cannot make a donation. Tracie Cassidy Database Coordinator Seattle Children's Hospital Foundation (206) 987-6833 [Email Removed]

 This is a very rich thread.  I am in the process of obtaining more details from a sister VNA (Visiting Nurse Association - home health and hospice care) about involving front line staff in the cultivation of grateful patients.  The Power Point slides which were shared with me - without benefit of the whole program - indicate that a general effort to educate nurses and aides about the importance of charitable contributions will probably fall flat.  But when staff are pulled into the loop after significant donations are received, they recognize how valuable their involvement was, and they are more willing to talk about charitable giving with patients - while still NOT soliciting.  I liked the reference to "Heroes" - this VNA's program called the staff "Heroes."  To Mark, I can't speak to Maine laws, but I know that HIPAA (sp?) privacy laws do NOT prevent the fundraising arm from receiving names and addresses for subsequent solicitation.  Tracie speaks well to the need for scrubbing.  Thank you all.  Betsy DeGory, VNA of Indiana County, PA

We are always looking to acquire new donors.  With access to what we call "grateful patients", those basically described in this thread as no bad debt or disgruntled folks, we try to time our mailing of the annual appeal with this list and it's worked for us for the past 2 years, beyond our expectations.  What has also been a wonderful program for us has been to initiate an employee campaign where we ask our own employees to be donors on an annual basis.  I highly recommend getting employees involved, then they are better advocates to outside donors.