Corewell Health
Employing Enterprise-Grade Blackbaud CRM to Meet Growing Needs and Amplify Fundraising Success
Healthcare Organizations
It’s the technology adapting to us instead of us
adapting to the technology to be successful.”
As Corewell Health grew to be Michigan’s largest single-state health system—with nearly $15 billion in annual revenue—the leaders of the system’s philanthropic foundation knew they needed to scale up with a CRM built to handle their more than 1 million constituents. As a long-time Blackbaud customer, leadership was already familiar with the power of the fundraising software. Based on their growing needs, they knew that the enterprise-grade capabilities of Blackbaud CRM would help them amplify the fundraising success they had already achieved with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge.
Foundation advances to enterprise-level CRM
to further grow health system’s impact
Since 1993, Corewell Health Foundation has been funded by the generosity
of donors to deliver “personalized healthcare made simple, affordable, and
exceptional.” Formerly known as Spectrum Health Foundation, the nonprofit
health system’s fundraising network is made up of the Helen DeVos Children’s
Hospital Foundation and six community hospital foundations. Their mission is
to raise, oversee, and allocate funds to ensure that patients and their families
receive the quality care they expect and deserve.
As Corewell Health evolved into a more complex organization with multiple
locations, the foundation’s leaders conducted a competitive analysis to
determine which CRM system could scale to meet these growing needs.
With over 60 active users across multiple departments and locations, the
ability to have a holistic view of constituents was crucial in the decisionmaking process. After carefully considering other CRM systems, they decided to migrate from Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge to Blackbaud CRM, fundraising software for enterprise-level organizations.
“We wanted a 360-degree view of constituents and to truly operate in a
single environment with data and reports that we trust will drive our efforts
to deliver better outcomes,” said Greg Workman, director of strategic
operations and finance. “We couldn’t find anything on the market better
than Blackbaud CRM.”
Blackbaud CRM allows organizations to easily manage data privacy and
security with advanced single-sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and
payment card industry compliance. Workman explained that Corewell
Health is a very transparent organization and because he can actively
manage who has access to what data, they can operate and collaborate
more efficiently. “We’re able to be more strategic, and it optimizes staff’s
efforts because they aren’t overwhelmed by data or reports that are
irrelevant to their work,” he said.
“Blackbaud software makes it easier for us to bring people closer to Corewell Health and better steward our current constituents.”
Deepening Connections to Increase Impact
Corewell Health Foundation uses the direct marketing tools within Blackbaud
CRM to segment, track, and deliver communications for fundraising events
and giving days. While raising funds is important, the top goals for these
events are engaging with donors, educating and creating awareness, and
deepening connections with Corewell Health. The team uses Blackbaud CRM
direct marketing tools to drive its digital strategy and gain insights into how
all their different efforts work in concert to increase engagement.
“Blackbaud software makes it easier for us to bring people closer to Corewell
Health and better steward our current constituents,” said Workman. “We
have a really lean team and Blackbaud CRM enables us to more effectively
manage the core business functions because of the level of automation we’re
able to create.”
Corewell Health strives to provide the best patient experience possible.
With Blackbaud CRM at the heart of its foundation’s fundraising operations,
leadership can be more efficient with the funds allocated for philanthropy
with it only costing them less than 20 cents to raise one dollar. “We’re
operationally more efficient because we place focus on what we can
automate and use technology to foster collaboration amongst our team,” said
Workman. “And because we can easily segment, target, and focus more on
the high-value opportunities, we’re achieving more support for our mission.”
“We’re operationally more efficient because we place focus on what we can automate and use technology to foster collaboration amongst our team.
Tailoring Technology to Drive Innovation
Open REST APIs make it easy to develop applications and extensions to tailor
Blackbaud CRM to organizations’ specific needs. Corewell Health leverages
these APIs and has a robust integration via Epic, its patient platform, to
connect and engage with constituents. “The openness of Blackbaud CRM
allows us to securely integrate with other software and customize it to our
specific needs to drive innovation and advance our technology vision,” said
Workman. “It’s the technology adapting to us instead of us adapting to the
technology to be successful.”
Corewell Health also enables collaboration across different teams and brings
together disparate systems with Blackbaud CRM. Corewell Health leveraged
the team at Omatic Software, part of the growing Blackbaud Marketplace,
to be their partner for custom development, largely focused on integrations.
As with many hospital foundations, Corewell’s IT resources are limited. To
reduce IT staff burdens and further expand and extend the capabilities
of Blackbaud CRM, leadership migrated the software to Blackbaud Cloud
Operations powered by Microsoft Azure. With the Blackbaud Cloud Portal,
admin users can easily deploy customizations directly without additional IT
support, greatly reducing the burden on their IT team.
“As a forwardthinking healthcare organization, we’re constantly thinking about what other tools we should be using. And because of the open APIs, the possibilities are limitless.”
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