The First Step to More Meaningful Donor Conversations? Practice.
1. The Customer: PeaceHealth Philanthropy
PeaceHealth is a not-for-profit health system serving communities across the Pacific Northwest. Their philanthropy team plays a crucial role in supporting life-saving care by building deep, trust-based relationships with donors. With a major campaign underway and hundreds of high-potential donors to engage, the team needed a way to build skills, confidence, and consistency across a growing team of gift officers.
2. Turning Fundraising Pressure into Confidence
The PeaceHealth philanthropy team was navigating high-stakes donor conversations, often without the benefit of consistent coaching or practice. Like many healthcare fundraising teams, they relied heavily on experience and instinct – but without a structured way to build and reinforce essential skills.
Traditional training wasn’t scalable, and fundraisers often disqualified leads too quickly due to lack of confidence or messaging support.
3. Exploring Options, Looking for More Than Just Training
The team explored conferences, peer coaching, and consultant-led workshops. But while these supported individual philanthropy officers, they didn’t create team-wide consistency – or offer the day-to-day practice necessary to build lasting habits.
What PeaceHealth needed was more than learning. They needed an environment to build confidence before the ask – to practice, fail safely, and build confidence in real-time without pulling fundraisers out of the field.
4. The Discovery: Authentic Connection Through Practice
Inspired by Mallory Erickson’s coaching work and her book, “What the Fundraising,” the team discovered a transformative approach: fundraising success comes from building real, authentic and aligned connections. With Practivated, fundraisers gain a supportive space to practice meaningful donor conversations, guided by AI-driven feedback, personalized coaching, and insightful team analytics. Rather than thinking about fundraising as a performance, it helps fundraisers foster genuine relationships, boosting confidence, and making each donor interaction truly impactful.
5. The Solution: Practice-Driven Growth with Practivated
PeaceHealth rolled out Practivated’s team solution across its philanthropy team, giving fundraisers access to:
- Donor Simulations based on real-life portfolios
- Coaching with Tivy, an AI-powered assistant that gave feedback on ask effectiveness, relationship building, and alignment
- Email and Messaging Tools to develop more donor-centric communications
- Reflection Boards to support internal learning and culture-building
Meet Tivy:
In their first month, usage and engagement soared:
- 140+ simulations completed across the team
- Sessions averaged 7+ minutes, showing deep, sustained engagement
- The longest coaching session with Tivy last 28 minutes and 19 seconds
- Coaching sessions helped fundraisers draft real-life donor emails, prep for meetings, and reflect on conversations afterward
6. Implementation: A 4 Week Activation Onboarding To Integrate Fundraising Practice Into Strategic Workflows
What stood out most wasn’t just the tool – it was how PeaceHealth’s leadership made it stick.
They integrated Practivated into weekly team rhythms and strategic planning
They created team challenges and peer reflection rituals
They encouraged vulnerability and experimentation
One month in, leadership noted a clear shift in confidence, creativity, and collaboration.
7. The Results: Confidence, Capability, and Campaign Momentum
In just 30 days, PeaceHealth saw meaningful outcomes:
Measurable Growth
Emotional Impact
Fundraisers reported greater clarity in donor meetings
Team collaboration increased through shared learnings
Confidence shifted from isolated individuals to a team-wide culture
What’s Next In PeaceHealth’s Donor Engagement Strategy?
The team has identified over 1,000 high-potential donor contacts through DonorSearch. These individuals have a history of giving, a medical experience with the organization, and a high DSAI (Donor Search AI) score, but only 12% are currently in portfolios.
The opportunity is to use Tivy to develop creative, effective outreach strategies to qualify and engage these prospects and bring new donors into their donor file. The coaching from Tivy is anticipated to help reduce early disqualification and increase engagement with new potential funders.
8. Why It Matters: Empowering the People Behind Philanthropy
At PeaceHealth, the fundraising team is bringing hope, healing, and peace to patients and their families – by building trust, translating impact, and creating human connection in every conversation. With Practivated, they’ve built a foundation of confidence and clarity that’s already shaping the success of their next major campaign.
Ready to Build a More Confident Fundraising Team?
📅 [Schedule a Demo] Talk with a member of our team about how to get started, or sign up for a free trial!
