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Executive Director of Donor Engagement

 

Providence

From the start of Katie's career at Providence, she has demonstrated a deep commitment to Providence and to philanthropy. When she joined Providence in 2011, she hit the ground running on the special events team, refining operations and building strong relationships with key volunteer leaders and clinician partners. She moved into the director of special events role within one year and began critical work to unify the 10 Providence foundations in the Oregon region around common event metrics, industry best practices, and proven strategies for fundraising events.

As the need to expand the reach of philanthropy for Providence grew, so did Katie's role. In 2015, she took on additional responsibility to lead centralized stewardship efforts for the 10 foundations. In 2016, a company reorganization required the foundation team to respond quickly to backfill resources for foundation communication and stewardship support.

Katie stepped up again, taking on additional responsibility to build what would become the donor engagement team from scratch. Katie built out a comprehensive donor engagement plan to support all 10 foundations in Oregon, aligning messaging with donor interest and significantly increasing the number of donor touches throughout the year that share stories of impact powered by donations. Her team also provides support to gift officers throughout the state, creating cases for support, impact reports and other tools to enhance the major and planned gift programs at Providence.

This work, under Katie's leadership, played an instrumental role in growing both fundraising revenue and donors counts for Providence.

In 2017, Katie joined the Providence Foundations of Oregon regional leadership team. From 2019 to 2022, Katie was a principal architect of strategic planning efforts, including reorg planning and COVID response strategies. She participated in regional administration leadership meetings to advocate for long-term philanthropy strategy and necessary resources to reach new levels of philanthropy across the state. She served as a strategic voice on the Oregon leadership team and a partner to the regional chief philanthropy officer, Kelley Buechler, to grow campaigns and improve alignment of regional priorities with philanthropy.

In 2022, Katie earned her Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) credential, demonstrating her professional knowledge in and commitment to excellent and ethical fundraising practices.

In 2023, she was tapped by Providence's Office of Philanthropy as Executive Director of Donor Engagement to scale critical donor work beyond Oregon, extending her purview across foundations in Washington, Montana and Texas, increasing the size of her team.

Katie is a servant leader focused on building high-performing, highly engaged teams, and her teammates speak highly of her collaborative and inspirational leadership style. She is driven by a deep-rooted commitment to the work of Providence, having experienced care firsthand. Both of her sons were born at Providence, and one spent five weeks in the NICU. Her mom received cancer treatment at Providence.

She has said, "It’s an honor to support fundraising efforts for the groundbreaking research and compassionate care taking place at Providence. Our donors are helping us save lives – it’s truly inspiring work."

I started my career in the event production world, working for a small shop to produce festivals, corporate events, and nonprofit fundraisers–basically everything but weddings. The nonprofit events were my favorites. I loved creating memorable shared experiences, telling powerful stories to inspire donations in the room, and building community around so many important causes. That work led to supporting the production of Providence’s largest fundraiser in Portland as a contractor for a few years. When a chance to join the Providence team fulltime opened, I was already hooked on the mission–I couldn’t say no.

Because the need is great, and the work is deeply rewarding. Healthcare philanthropy has the power to improve health equity, increase mental health resources, speed advancements in cancer research and cardiac care, expand emergency services, and so much more. This is important work, and it is personal work for me as well. I’ve been a patient myself, my oldest son spent his first five weeks in the NICU, and my mom received her cancer care at Providence. And for all donations have done, there is so much more to do. I feel lucky to do work I love alongside truly inspiring people that make such a positive difference in our world.

Several years ago, I was asked to build what would become the donor engagement team at Providence in Oregon from scratch. At the time, we had two event coordinators, a stewardship coordinator, and me to support ten foundations across the state–and no marketing/communication resources. Over the next few years, we built up the team, created our philanthropy brand, launched a new website, expanded our donor engagement strategy to better support our major gifts team, improved the ROI of our events (and sunset a few), and increased donor communications statewide. I learned so much throughout this journey and in January of 2023, I was asked to scale this Oregon work across a wider footprint.

I am deeply passionate about improving treatment options for patients with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and heart disease. The cancer treatment my mom received in 2018-2019 was good–it gave us more time with her–but it wasn’t enough. And yet, her treatment was better than what was available even just a few years before. I have seen how donations can accelerate research, and I want to help increase philanthropic investment so that my boys have as many years with me and with my husband as possible. I want the thousands of families who face diagnoses each year to have more time with those they love. I want to help find cures.

Growing up, my dad would always say, “It’s all about relationships.” Of course, he was right. Healthcare philanthropy, especially in large organizations, is complex. There are several critical stakeholders to consider in our work–both inside and outside the hospital. Developing strong relationships, making connections with clinicians and administrative leaders, and building bridges between departments will make the path to success easier, the shared achievements greater, and the job way more fun.

Fun Fact

I’ve been playing music since I was little. After college, I played bass in a punk/ska band with my husband. We did a couple short tours and had fun pretending to be rock stars for a few years. We still jam in the living room while our two young boys jump around with us.

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