Good stewardship makes great business sense. It’s cheaper and more profitable to keep current donors happy than to recruit new ones. Designing a great stewardship programme means thinking about what’s important to your donors. By giving supporters a great experience, and demonstrating how their support has had an impact, they are more likely to continue to donate and fundraise for your cause. Hospital charities are the envy of the big, more established charities. I’m told this all the time. Not only do we have easy access to warm prospects (people who have an emotional connection to our cause - our patients) but we have easy access to our beneficiaries (the hospital) which means we can easily offer ‘show and tell’ to our donors. I think this is my favourite part about working in an NHS hospital!

Over the last 14 years I have hosted stewardship events which have surprised and delighted donors because we could give them a ‘peek behind the curtain’ and show them interesting things. It soon dawned on me that inviting people to see interesting things at the hospital was also a way of meeting prospects for the first time. Where they would readily accept an invitation to see a surgical robot in action but would never accept a college dinner invitation because they can do that any time they like!

Here are some examples of how we’ve used our secret ingredient to inspire and delight donors:

1. An evening visit to theatres to see the surgical robot in action - a demonstration by a surgeon and donors could have a go at the robot - stacking sugar cubes!
2. An interactive session about blood pressure research where donors could see their carotid artery on an ultrasound
3. A visit to the dusty hospital basement to ‘tour’ the Archives - to see old uniforms, patient records written in the 1950s, old prosthetics and surgical instruments
4. A tour of the Maxillofacial and Prosthetics department to see how our Prosthetists design uber realistic new noses, eye sockets, fingers and nipples for patients who’ve lost parts of their body to cancer or trauma.
5. A visit to the 3D printing laboratory (funded exclusively by a donor) which prints models from patient scans to help surgeons doing reconstructive surgery to plan their operations in advance.
6. A tour of the MRI and PET CT department. Donors love seeing scans and understanding how they’re analysed.
7. A visit to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit on a Saturday and a mock-up of a NICU cot with a baby mannequin to understand early brain development research.
8. A tour of the Radiotherapy department to understand how the huge machines are set up for patient treatment.
9. A tour of the basement labyrinth underneath our working hospital to really see ‘behind-the-scenes’
10. A tour of the hospital’s art collection with the Head of Art.
11. Visits in groups of 2-3 to our Children’s Wards

I’ve learned over the years what works and what doesn’t - by trial and error! These stewardship events are just one layer of our overall stewardship plan. They are nestled alongside a flagship lecture event which is usually delivered by an esteemed professor. But remember that donors really really love meeting doctors, nurses, matrons, anaesthetists and surgeons - people who work directly with patients. Yes they like hearing about research but what lights up their gratitude is to meet people who are caring for patients every day.

Not only do donors love these opportunities but we have found that when hospital staff meet donors, it lights them up too! They start to understand philanthropy, it infuses them with positivity and they tell us that they would love to do more. So do ask your staff help you arrange fun events - those are the ones your donors will never forget - your secret ingredient!