Building a Modern Grateful Patient Fundraising Program at WCH

Location

Wooster Community Hospital
Partner

Angela Rincon
Director of Philanthropy
Partnership success

From Spreadsheets to a Modern Grateful Patient Program

A One-Person Office, A Mission to Build

Angela’s path to healthcare philanthropy was shaped by her diverse experience in annual giving, major gifts, stewardship, and national fundraising leadership at institutions such as Boston University, Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals. She entered Wooster with deep, well-rounded knowledge.

“The fundraising program didn’t exist when I first arrived,” Angela said. “So I built it from the ground up. And it’s good that I had experience in all the other areas of fundraising along my career, because it really gave me the infrastructure to know how to do what I am doing now.”

But building from the ground up meant starting with very little.

“When I first came, there was really no way to even know who the donors were here at the hospital, none,” Angela said. “Previously, they’d been tracking everything in an Excel spreadsheet.”

Laying the Foundation: Systems, Tools, and Community Insight

Angela’s first steps after joining the team were to gain a better understanding of the community that Wooster Community Hospital served.

“One of the first things I did when I first arrived here was to start talking to people, specifically community leaders, to find out what perceptions they had about the hospital,” Angela said.

That grassroots engagement was paired with infrastructure planning. One of her first technical decisions involved selecting a CRM platform. The team initially chose Raiser’s Edge due to internal familiarity, but Angela quickly encountered challenges.

“It was not very intuitive… As a fundraiser, you could enter information very easily, but extracting it was hard. You almost had to be tech-y to navigate in there,” Angela said.

After her initial contract period, she transitioned the hospital to DonorPerfect, a platform she found more compatible.

“I think this is probably the easiest fundraising software to work with, because it’s so user-intuitive and it’s pretty easy to navigate as well.”

Searching for Better Tools

Even with DonorPerfect in place, prospect research continued to be a challenge.

“I started off with Wealth Engine; it was a pretty decent scoring system for prioritizing our prospects,” Angela said. “Then I made the switch to DonorSearch. I was spot-checking some of the ratings they had provided and found inconsistencies. So I moved to another tool called iWave, which has since become Kindsight. That was definitely better.”

Angela first met London Automation co-founders Michael London and Brandon Danner through their shared Cleveland Clinic connection; Brandon reached out to Angela to meet for coffee.

“When we met, they were telling me about the software, and they showed me how they came up with their algorithms to score donors and prioritize lists for fundraisers. This helped to maximize their time and fundraising results. I just thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool.’”

At the time, Angela didn’t yet have the budget to make a change. However, the idea stayed with her, and she began advocating for London Automation amongst her peers, like at Aultman Health.

“[Aultman Health] had some big fundraising goals and wanted to engage new prospects and to prioritize existing ones,” Angela said. “I shared that there was a great company that they should look into.”

Change in Leadership, A New Direction

Angela’s opportunity to partner with London Automation arose following a leadership transition.

“When the hospital president retired, I was given the opportunity to bring Michael and Brandon in to do a presentation to our new president. He was very receptive to how things could be done differently and better for the hospital,” Angela said.

The case for automation became clear in both strategic impact and cost-efficiency.
“The software itself would automate a lot of the things that were taking up a lot of my time, and it would cost less than hiring a person with benefits and everything else,” Angela said. “It made sense for us to make the investment.”

London Automation began implementation shortly thereafter.
“They started working on the transition of all my data so that everything could be automatically updated in my DonorPerfect database.”

“They Took the Hesitation Right Out of the Equation”

Bringing AI and automation into a small, community-focused hospital came with a unique set of challenges, especially around trust, compliance, and data privacy. As the hospital’s fundraising leader, Angela had to connect with internal stakeholders, from the WCH president to the IT team, and navigate unfamiliar territory with confidence.

That’s where London Automation’s healthcare experience made the difference.

“Because they've worked in healthcare, they understand the nuances of some of these different organizations and what hesitations or concerns they might have about how data is handled,” Angela said. “They do a really good job of talking to you, not just to me, but to the hospital president and our IT folks, in a way that is reassuring.”

From early conversations through implementation, Angela says the London Automation team exceeded expectations.

“The team is amazing in terms of its flexibility and its willingness to sit down with you and explain things. Very supportive and patient… completely professional, and with very high standards.”

When it came to compliance, the team’s clarity and rigor helped clear internal roadblocks.

“They had depth of experience and were trustworthy; they established that from the beginning,” Angela said. “Their understanding of HIPAA and the fail-safes that are built into the London Automation tool assured us that our information would be handled in a very judicious and responsible way.”

Her takeaway was clear: what could have been a difficult leap for a smaller organization became a seamless process.

“All those things that would make a smaller hospital concerned, they took them right out of the equation.”

Looking Ahead: "More Efficiency, More Focus”

Now that London Automation is integrated into her workflow, Angela is already seeing the difference, and she’s just getting started.

“For me, it’s simplifying the amount of time on administrative tasks,” Angela said. “So many of the systems and things that were time-consuming for me, like address and phone updates and verification of deceased records, are now happening automatically. That used to take me hours to do… hours.”

Those administrative hours, once drained by manual data cleanup, are now being reinvested into strategic, mission-driven work. With London Automation, Angela has a clearer path to prioritization and personalization.

“What's really great about the software is the rating system. It clearly shows you where you should focus and where you’ll have the best success with the prospects you’re working with… Perfect, easy, uncomplicated,” Angela said.