2014 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence On the Edge Winner: Geisinger Health System

On the Edge
Employee Campaign
Geisinger Health System
(Submitted by Geisinger Health System)

The Numbers
Recipients: 19,975
Response rate: 23 percent employee participation
Total cost: $56,013
Income generated: $3,071,000
Average gift: $1,909
Cost to raise a dollar: $0.02

Part of a long-running Centennial Campaign, the Geisinger Health System Employee Campaign took center stage in 2013 when Lucille Tarin, senior director of resource development at Geisinger, realized that many of the organization’s employees weren’t even aware that their workplace had a foundation, according to Heather Wiley Starankovic, associate vice president in Geisinger’s office of institutional advancement.

Tarin created multiple teams to address the wide range of Geisinger staff and potential donors. These included executive leadership, nursing, staff and physician campaigns, for example. Each group had its own co-chairs and volunteer base, and was trained to do solicitations and stewardship. Then each came up with strategies to entice its members to give.

While this campaign isn’t particularly edgy in terms of technology or risk, or wackiness, our judges were impressed that Geisinger took such a methodical and strategized approach to employee giving. And that it recognizes the importance of employee giving when so many organizations seem content to leave staff donation money on the table.

But what really earned the campaign this award are the incredible participation rates. Overall participation is 4,700 (23 percent), but executive leadership and physicians executives have 100 percent participation, and physicians have 60 percent. Our judges noted that buy-in has to come from the top, and Tarin and her team at Geisinger certainly seem to have that.