2024 Spring Journal Feature: National Grateful Patient Day Success
Steven L. Dasher, CFRE and Nicole T. Papst
Published: 07/17/2024
Get a glimpse into the pages of the spring 2024 Healthcare Philanthropy journal.
National Grateful Patient Day Yields Higher Fundraising Results than National Doctors’ Day
By Steven L. Dasher, CFRE and Nicole T. Papst
With healthcare philanthropy’s focus on grateful patient fundraising via referral programs and direct marketing acquisition (e.g., direct mail and email appeals), many hospital foundations participate in National Doctors’ Day fundraising campaigns. Although several organizations have yielded admirable results, not all experience overwhelming success. Authors Steven L. Dasher, CFRE, and Nicole T. Papst share their success in shifting focus from honoring physicians to highlighting gratitude.
This white paper outlines one organization’s experience in prioritizing National Grateful Patient Day over other nationally designated days reserved for fundraising that many deem over-saturated, such as National Doctors’ Day, Giving Tuesday, and National Nonprofit Day.
Incorporating National Grateful Patient Day into your annual fundraising strategy may boost your results and add qualified prospects to your mid-level and major giving pipelines, while allowing your entire team to experience transformational success in curating gratitude.
Association for Healthcare Philanthropy Community Huddle Sparks New Idea
Fostering ideas in a supportive environment, the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy’s Huddle frequently offers fresh ways of researching fundraising opportunities and best practices. Recently, a community discussion showcased a healthcare philanthropy organization that was attempting to move away from their Giving Tuesday solicitation model and focus on National Grateful Patient Day, September 7. Furthering this intrigue, our Donor Relations Liaison watched an AHP-sponsored webinar where participants discussed their results and strategy around this day of giving.
After bringing this idea to our team’s attention during a planning session, we decided to integrate National Grateful Patient Day into our fiscal year plan as part of our grateful patient acquisition and sustained giving strategy. Our team prioritized these efforts over a Giving Tuesday initiative and, along with National Doctors’ Day, decided to focus on identifying and cultivating patient gratitude, rather than honoring a physician or caregiver.
These efforts included a direct mail appeal with renewal, active donor, and acquisition segments; a coinciding three-part email appeal series; system-wide collaboration through multiple philanthropy departments; and brand growth (marketing). Other components included volunteer engagement opportunities via a phone-a-thon, major gift officer engagement with prospects, and securing a match donor opportunity.
National Doctors’ Day Results Fall Flat
As many organizations have recently surmised, many Giving Days often utilize flashy social media strategies and heavy use of graphic design to tell a story, but the results often do not correlate with the efforts due to an over publicization in the market.
By shifting our organization’s focus from simply recognizing a caregiver to expressing gratitude, we were able to capitalize on what is at the heart of philanthropy’s role in society: providing an authentic opportunity for someone to say thank you in a meaningful way, while making a positive difference.
National Grateful Patient Day 2023 Yielded Positive Results for Our Department
More than $86,000 was raised representing 110 individual gifts. Included in these results were four major gifts received in response to direct mail appeal and a gift match opportunity provided by a hospital board member. Additionally, 10 mid-level gifts were received.
While the metric, total number of gifts, is relative to the organization’s size, our team was pleased to see how many of these were representative of new donors. Fifty-six individuals were first-time donors to our organization, and 30 individual caregivers were honored.
On National Grateful Patient Day, our team hosted board members and volunteers at our facility to make phone calls to current donors, hospital board members, and auxilians. These efforts yielded more than $7,000 and allowed our volunteers the opportunity to connect directly with grateful patient donors and to hear their compelling testimonies firsthand.
The concurrent email appeal amassed more than $7,800 in the two weeks leading up to September 7.
As a comparison, our organization’s Doctors’ Day solicitations raised less than $10,000 from 97 gifts, and more than 50 new donors. While half of these gifts represented support from new donors, the gift amounts and response rate from existing donors were significantly lower than National Grateful Patient Days.
Conversely, our organization’s National Grateful Patient Day results were reflective of Doctors’ Day results for our system office foundation, which has historically had more success from a Doctors’ Day appeal. Much of this has been attributed to their utilization of a donor acquisition model employed by SHARP. However, our market has failed to achieve comparable results.
Who is Our Audience?
Piedmont Athens Regional is one of northeast Georgia’s largest nonprofit hospitals and joined Piedmont Healthcare in 2016. The 427-bed acute care facility serves a 17-county region with a population exceeding 607,000. The region is largely rural and centers around Athens-Clarke County which holds the distinction as among the poorest counties of its size nationally. Piedmont Athens Regional provided more than $204 million in uncompensated care in FY2021.
While our open rate for e-newsletters hovers just above 50%, our market hasn’t responded favorably to email solicitations in the past.
Direct Mail is Not Dead Yet
By implementing a grateful patient donor acquisition strategy and segmenting our audience by payor type (excluding Medicaid, self-pay, and charity care), patients 65+ years old, and geographically within Georgia, we were able to target a population that had previously not responded favorably. Although this strategy is similar to what we previously applied to Doctors’ Day, the notable shift is that of our message: gratitude far outweighs physician recognition.
In Summary
For organizations looking to revitalize their acquisition and renewal strategies with brand alignment, National Grateful Patient Day offers an opportunity to engage with current, lapsed, and prospective donors through a marketing campaign celebrating gratitude.
Our shift in focus from honoring a caregiver with a gift to expressing gratitude for care increased our annual sustained giving results by 174%.
These efforts were not simply a direct mail solicitation but encompassed an email solicitation, major gift strategies, volunteer engagement, and an all-around full team effort including hospital and board leadership.
Want More?