Mountain Valley Hospice
Gloversville, New York
www.mountainvalleyhospice.com 

After serving the end of life and palliative care needs of the residents of Fulton, Montgomery, Hamilton and parts of Saratoga counties in upstate New York on a shoestring budget for 15 years, it had become clear to the leadership of Mountain Valley Hospice that a crying need within the community was going unanswered.

Each year, Hospice was attempting to care for dying patients who had no able family to help provide care in the home, no family locally, or a lack of family and friends willing to assist. Some patients were without homes at all. Mountain Valley Hospice recognized that it had to do something. After considerable planning and deliberation, the construction of a freestanding hospice house in Gloversville was the answer.

Mountain Valley Hospice had a moderate fund raising history. In the late '80s it raised seed money in order to start the organization. Since then, MVH established two annual golf tournaments and an annual dinner. The organization had no development department or professional fund raising staff.  Faced with a $2.6 million cost for land acquisition and construction of the new house, MVH engaged Ghiorsi & Sorrenti, Inc. to conduct a campaign planning study to determine if funds could be raised to support the project. There were challenges – including a lagging regional economy, competition from a recently-completed hospital campaign (also a GSI client), lack of a major gift fund raising history and the need to explain to the community that hospice care extended beyond the home. Extensive analysis uncovered that, indeed, a campaign could be undertaken.

MVH’s Executive Director, Nancy Dowd, was intimately involved in the campaign from day one. As the only Executive Director MVH has ever known, Dowd’s credibility with the institution proved highly beneficial when she began recruiting the all-important campaign committee. Not one community leader turned down the request to work on the campaign. Most important was the enlistment of the campaign chairwoman, Ellen Wood. Wood’s husband, Jerry, was a prominent area attorney for decades as well as a hospice patient before passing away. The campaign’s honorary leadership included relatives of hospice patients and longtime supporters, Elaine Hoye and Marilyn Kemp, as well as one of the founding fathers of the organization, Richard Hathaway.

Led by the steering committee and MVH’s administrative leadership, the campaign’s quiet phase was more successful than anyone had ever expected. A campaign goal of $2.3 million was set based upon the early results of the effort. GSI directed the campaign from start to conclusion with Chris O’Connor, Vice President & Managing Director, overseeing the effort.

While five six-figure gifts (the first gifts of this size in the organization’s history) were secured during the campaign, MVH was also particularly proud to say that every employee of the organization made a gift to the initiative. Ultimately, their efforts were rewarded when the campaign reached the $2.3 million goal.