Ochsner Health Streamlines Giving Program for 40,000 Employees with Omatic Cloud

Organization Background

Ochsner Health is a hospital system that provides comprehensive health services in Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Gulf South. Its Philanthropy Services department supports the fundraising goals of the institution, facilitating donations from Ochsner constituents including thousands of patients, volunteers, and employees.

Challenge

Ochsner Health had a manual and time-consuming process for transferring gift data records to its accounting platform, Lawson. Ochsner struggled to support complicated donation opportunities, including its employee giving program. The team hoped to simplify gift processing through integration, but a successful implementation had to address the following concerns:

• Disconnected Systems and Incompatible Data Formats: Ochsner was in the process of migrating to Raiser’s Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT and needed a way to integrate both platforms. The team had to ensure that the data generated by one system was compatible with another system—a manual formatting process that was both time-intensive and susceptible to human error.
• Outdated Staff Records for Employee Giving Programs: Hospital staff were some of Ochsner’s most reliable donors, with many taking part in the hospital’s employee giving program. Ochsner’s annual giving team struggled to keep track of staffing changes for 40,000+ employees every month due to lack of integration between the hospital’s HR portal and Raiser’s Edge NXT, resulting in less timely and ineffective solicitations.
• Limited Financial Accounting Resources: The advancement office at Ochsner relied on the hospital’s central accounting department for fund accounting information. Without a dedicated philanthropy accounting team, the advancement staff had to depend on colleagues outside of fundraising for donor data, fund balances, and information on the use of donor funding, creating delays in reporting and limitations for stewardship communications.

Solution

Ochsner sought a solution that could help them streamline the movement of data between platforms, leading them to adopt Omatic Cloud.

• Automated Data Imports for Efficient Employee Giving Campaigns: With Omatic Cloud, Ochsner easily set automation rules to import employee data in the right format for various systems. For Ochsner’s employee giving campaigns, the team was also able to set rules that automatically converted employees’ donated PTO time to dollar amounts and set up pledges—a process that wasn’t possible before Omatic.
• Seamless Data Flows Across Accounting, Donor, and Staffing Databases: After implementing Omatic Cloud, Ochsner had the ability to centralize staff records and gift records, and—most importantly—the team was able to send all records to Raiser’s Edge NXT with ease. For the first time, Ochsner had a 360-degree view of staff and donor engagement and fund usage without relying on central accounting teams.

“We haven’t had a single complaint about outdated information since we started using Omatic.” – Sarah Henry, AVP Philanthropy Services 

Results

After implementing Omatic Cloud, Ochsner Health had greater visibility into their donor data and fundraising efforts leading to:

• Improved Efficiency, Reduced Staff Time: Omatic Cloud helped Ochsner Health streamline the gift administration process significantly, reducing a 15-step upload process to a simpler five-step procedure. A data transfer that used to take 30 minutes now takes five minutes of staff time. With Omatic Cloud, staff were able to focus less on manual tasks and more on uncovering strategic insights that can be gleaned from donor behavior.
• Targeted Donor Outreach: With more current and reliable data on supporters and employees in Raiser’s Edge NXT, development officers at Ochsner can carry out more strategic outreach. Tailored solicitations based on a constituent’s role, location, and employment status are now far more effective in raising funds.
• Accurate Data for Better Impact Reporting: The new seamless connection between Raiser’s Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT, and the Lawson accounting database made it much easier for advancement staff to know the status of gifts and balances to report back to donors quickly with confidence. By having access to reliable gift accounting data, the team can share relevant updates on how their money has been spent towards the mission.

“[Data importing] is easy now. With Omatic, you put the file in, and it spits back out in the way it needs to be formatted.”  – Laura Demalas, Philanthropic Service Coordinator

“We can now report back to donors who have set up a fund on what the fund’s balance is or what has been spent from that fund, which was a blind spot for us before.”  – Sarah Henry, AVP Philanthropy Services