Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation
Keeping Pace with Growth
The Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation has served families of New Brunswick, Canada, for more than 30 years, with a vision of inspiring the power of community to transform healthcare. The Foundation has raised more than $85 million to date to provide world-class equipment, patient comfort, research, education, and mental health programs for the largest hospital in the Canadian province.
As the hospital grew, so did the complexities and challenges of managing the Foundation’s accounts. The organization needed to effectively communicate financials to a variety of people—staff, management, a finance committee, and a board of directors—all of whom required different levels of detail. This task became even more complicated with three main funds and multiple endowments, all in the same database.
Over time, managing the Foundation’s financials became increasingly time-consuming and required more personnel, which also made the process prone to human error. The organization wanted a new way to quickly and efficiently enter, analyze, and report data that would align with existing staff and databases while keeping pace with business and growth.
Discovering an Easier, More Accurate Solution
The leaders at Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation sought out an accounting solution that would not only increase the efficiency of data entry, but also integrate with its fundraising solution for fast and seamless reporting. Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® and Blackbuad Raiser’s Edge NXT® provided the robust tools that the Foundation needed. According to Sandra Clark, the Foundation’s director of finance and administration, the potential to reduce the time required to accomplish tasks became clear immediately.
“The budgeting features are very user-friendly,” Sandra said. “It allows me to easily enter our budgeted amounts by account number and distribute the monthly budgeted figures in a variety of ways.”
The Foundation expects 18% of donations in the first quarter, 15% in the second quarter, 36% in the third quarter, and 31% in the fourth quarter. Sandra said Blackbaud’s solution proved especially helpful for variance reporting.
“We do variance reporting—so, for that to be meaningful, revenue and expenses have to be recorded in the periods that you expect them to occur,” Sandra said. “The budgeting capabilities in the solution are very flexible in the distribution methods.”
