Fundraising Stars

"Pat pushed all areas of fundraising to continually fine-tune every mailing or donor interaction to address the most current news coverage, and all communications were honed to demonstrate the urgency of City Harvest's work," writes Jennifer McLean, vice president of program operations at City Harvest.

Patricia realized that fresh thinking would be critical to City Harvest's success and spearheaded a major campaign to spread the word. That included having the organization's executive director talk with reporters to communicate what City Harvest was seeing on the ground at emergency feeding programs; working with members of the board's development committee to each personally reach out to and forge deeper relationships with 25 donors; instituting a biweekly "Cup of Cheer" e-mail blast around the holidays to present positive stories of donor generosity; and positioning City Harvest to benefit from companies scaling back on holiday parties and gifts.

Her quick thinking and fearless approach resulted in City Harvest ending the year above budget and the previous year's actuals, enabling the operations team to rescue a record 27 million pounds of food.

"In particular, our direct-mail program ended the year more than $600,000 above goal, a remarkable success given the economy and the negative impact it had on many other organizations' programs," Jennifer writes. "By acting first and staying on point throughout the year, Pat was able to make sure that if donors were able to give, they would understand why they should choose City Harvest."