May 20, 1999 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis has found an effective way to solicit its own employees for gifts:
ALSO SEE:
Innovative Fund-Raising Efforts Are Low in Cost and High on Appeal
by piggybacking onto a campaign that the local United Way had held at the hospital for years.
The idea stemmed from hospital fund raisers’ concern that the institution’s 6,000 employees were already getting too many appeals from local charities. So when starting its new employee-giving effort, the hospital simply included its appeal in the United Way drive to avoid burdening workers with a separate request for money.
Now, instead of being asked to give a percentage of their paychecks to United Way, the employees are asked to make a gift to the United Way of the Mid-South, the hospital, or both.
Hospital fund raisers knew that United Way officials would worry that gifts to United Way would plunge once employees had the option to give to their own institution. But they figured that United Way could benefit too.
To that end, they promised United Way to increase the number of hospital volunteers working on the campaign, from the 30 who had worked on the previous United Way drive to more than 150 in the campaign for both organizations. And they extended the campaign’s promotion period from two weeks to three.
Fund raisers also promised to publicize United Way’s work throughout the year, not just during campaign-promotion time. They also agreed to organize tours of United Way-supported charities for hospital employees.
The first joint campaign at the hospital raised more than $332,000. More than 1,800 employees pledged $190,000 to the hospital, and 2,100 pledged $142,000 to United Way. That was a drop from the $183,000 donated to United Way in the previous year.
However, in October, during the hospital’s second combined campaign, $155,000 was pledged to United Way, an increase of $13,000.
Says Dottie Jones, vice-president for marketing at the United Way of the Mid-South: “If it hurts in the short term, we realized that it would be better in the long term to run one campaign.” She adds: “Long term, we want employees to hear about needs in the community at one time, so you don’t have people being solicited and then feeling like they were not told about all of their options later on when another drive comes along.”
For more information, contact Darin Hollingsworth, Development Officer, Baptist Memorial Health Care Foundation, 899 Madison Avenue, Memphis 38146; (901) 227-7129; e-mail: darin.hollingsworth@bmhcc.org.
