St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Bridgeport, CT - $40 million and Counting
Old Fashioned Stewardship + Innovative New Strategies = Campaign Success
www.stvincents.org

Take some long-standing donor relationships and skillful stewardship, mix in some new and creative strategies and confident solicitation by dedicated staff and volunteers, and you have the recipe for capital campaign success. Welcome to St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, CT.

Founded 105 years ago and located in Connecticut’s largest city, St. Vincent’s is a 397-bed institution with a medical staff of approximately 540 and some 2,300 employees. Recognized for cancer care and cardiovascular services, St. Vincent’s is one of only 17 hospitals in the United States with Acute Myocardial Infarction (heart attack) survival above the national average; its outcomes rate is the best in Connecticut. It is also in the top 10% of all hospitals for Cardiovascular Care and is a designated stroke center. True to the mission of its founders and sponsors, the Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent’s provided more than $18.3 million in benefits to the community last year. The Medical Center is a member of Ascension Health, the nation's largest Catholic and largest nonprofit health system.

Thirty years from its last campaign, St. Vincent’s engaged GSI in 2006 to conduct a campaign planning study and to provide campaign direction. Connecticut’s #1 cardiac hospital had its services located in fragmented spaces. The same was true for ambulatory surgery. The Emergency Department was undersized and approaching capacity in space designed in the 1970s. One of the State’s premier cancer programs, funded in part by the unique Swim Across the Sound, was spread out not only in the Medical Center but at multiple sites, making “one-stop shopping” for diagnosis and treatment planning during one of the most stressful times in a person’s life virtually impossible.

The answer was to build on the existing footprint, replacing some small outdated buildings with a four-story, comprehensive, interdisciplinary cancer center that would also include part of the expanded ED, which would triple in size. This new construction opened the door for renovating and reconfiguring the Medical Center’s main floor, which, in turn permitted the clustering of cardiovascular and ambulatory surgery services as destinations unto themselves. It would also make the facility more efficient for staff and more user-friendly for patients and their loved ones.

In all, the project would add or renovate 250,000 square feet of space – the equivalent of half of St. Vincent’s total space – at a cost of approximately $145 million. The St. Vincent’s Medical Center Foundation was challenged with raising $42 million, or more, of the total. Ron Bianchi, Corporate Sr. Vice President and President of the St. Vincent’s Medical Center Foundation, eagerly accepted the challenge. His three decades at St. Vincent’s provided the foundation and relationships that are crucial to fund raising success. According to Bianchi, “The Medical Center has always had wonderfully generous friends and outstanding volunteers to whom we are most grateful. We were confident that we could mount a successful campaign. However, $42 million was uncharted territory for us and we knew we would have to rely on ‘tried and true’ approaches as well as find some new ones. We also were blessed to have two outstanding leaders on our Foundation Board, Chuck Mattes and Jim Stapleton, who co-chair the campaign.”

St. Vincent’s did have many friends and benefactors, but had never sought gifts in the magnitude required to raise $42 million. Relationships developed and nurtured over the years combined with the fund raising axiom that the best prospects are donors, resulted in meetings with special friends early in the project’s planning process to invite their investment in it. The result was 10 gifts of $1 million, or more, the largest in the Medical Center’s history totaling $21 million, including a lead gift of $5 million. Those responsible for the 40+ events associated with the Swim Across the Sound committed an additional $7 million over five years for the Cancer Center. Internal support included nearly $3 million from St. Vincent’s employees, $3 million form governance and $1.1 million from contract physicians. This classic “top-down, inside-out” approach resulted in commitments totaling $35 million toward the overall $42 million campaign goal.

In today’s challenging times, “thinking outside the box” is a requisite for campaign success. Early in the campaign, St. Vincent’s President and CEO, Susan Davis, RN, Ed.D., and Bianchi challenged the 18 members of her senior staff to collectively pledge $1 million. Through gifts of cash and unaccrued vacation time, this challenge was met. Next, senior staff challenged middle management and the general employee base to match them. The outcome? As noted, St. Vincent’s employees committed more than $2.9 million to the campaign. “From top to bottom, our staff believes in our mission and core values,” Dr. Davis says. “Their extraordinary generosity is manifested in a myriad of ways, and we look forward to recognizing our staff’s deep commitment to St. Vincent’s by dedicating the new main lobby in their name.”

In addition to St. Vincent’s senior staff, the campaign’s earliest donors were the members of the Foundation and Medical Center boards, six of whom are Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent’s sponsors. “The boards are chosen for their leadership capabilities and philanthropy is an important part of the equation,” noted campaign co-chair Chuck Mattes. “Our board members have collectively invested nearly $3 million in support of this project. These significant gifts made it easy for me, Jim Stapleton and our Campaign Steering Committee to go into the community to share St. V’s story and seek support for the campaign and the future of healthcare in our region.”

As the campaign’s volunteer leadership introduced, cultivated and solicited new groups of prospects, the Foundation’s staff worked with the project’s general contractor, Gilbane Construction of Providence, RI to create a philanthropic partnership in addition to the business partnership. This effort resulted in a pledge from Gilbane, as well as the commitment to work with the sub-contractors – once all contracts were negotiated – to involve them in the campaign. This new approach has turned out to be a case history unto itself and has resulted in commitments of more than $300,000.

Careful attention to the stewardship, involvement and cultivation of donors, along with creativity have resulted in an enormously successful campaign which, despite the economic downturn, has already garnered gifts and pledges totaling more than $40 million, as of February 2009. Having the opportunity to serve as St. Vincent’s campaign counsel is a point of pride for GSI. We look forward to its successful completion as St. Vincent’s continues to solicit on behalf of its current and future patients by Building on a Tradition of Trust: The Campaign for St. Vincent’s Medical Center.