Concentrated, Creative Outreach

“Many of us at ADA have undergraduate or volunteer experience in art,” says Elly Brtva, managing director of individual gifts, who has been with ADA for five years and previously had been with the National Alzheimer’s Association for seven. “We’re creative. We have a ‘Sponsor a Research Project’ where we ‘name’ the project in [a donor’s] honor. This allows us to have a great stewardship plan, which includes visits to ‘their’ lab, special evening dinners with the researcher, etc. We’ve also designed the Pinnacle Program Project, which allows donors who give $3 million the opportunity to help us craft a project that deals with diabetes,” she adds.