Mercy Health Foundation

Mercy Health Foundation partners with Blackbaud for agile, integrated fundraising and accounting.

Mercy Health Foundation draws on a 200-year heritage that spans continents. Despite its rich history, the four-state hospital network needed modern cloud solutions to deliver the most effective healing ministry in the digital age.

Mercy Health Foundation supports a hospital system committed to delivering a healing ministry through a network of hospitals and clinics in four states. But as patient care continues to shift away from traditional settings and toward virtual visits, fundraising strategy must adapt.

Kathleen Stacker, manager of data administration at the St. Louis-based foundation, looks to Blackbaud’s flagship fundraising and fund accounting solutions to scale alongside her team in a changing healthcare environment. “The patient experience is different, and you can no longer really rely on the patient list from a hospital, because they may not actually be admitted,” Stacker said. “We have to find those patient prospects another way, and the products that Blackbaud provides allow us to identify and track those patients so that we can really segment them and do the best job in tracking them so that the major gift officers have a better success rate.”

Using Robust Data to Power the Most Effective Operation

Blackbaud’s integrated cloud environment for fundraising and accounting improves efficiencies and saves time for Mercy Health Foundation’s finance department each month, according to Stacker. “We have 20 different foundations that operate out of one system, so we’re much more streamlined in the way we process and close every month,” she said. “It has absolutely encouraged us to be more consistent with the way we enter our data, which has also made our reporting much more consistent because we’re now able to compare apples to apples.”

That consistency, in turn, translates to better data for fundraisers—and the flexibility of Blackbaud’s solution makes that information accessible in real time for the most agile and strategic conversations with supporters. “Having migrated to a cloud situation has made our gift officers more effective, and our leadership feels like they’re getting a lot more real-time support,” Stacker said. “If a major gift officer is out in the field, they don’t have to come by the office to get information; they don’t have to call in. The information is right at their fingertips, and they’re much more effective that way. They’re out in the field more because of that ability.”

Mercy Health Foundation looks for every opportunity to further improve data integrity. Blackbaud’s tools scan for address changes, supporter ages, and obituaries—key attributes that determine appropriate communications and help avoid uncomfortable mistakes.

“Because of our relationship with Blackbaud, Mercy Health Foundation has been able to streamline our processes,” Stacker said. “We are much more effective and efficient for our leadership, for reporting purposes, and for our major gift officers to be effective out in the field.”