GiftWorks Story: Myasthenia Gravis Association of Western Pennsylvania July 27, 2009

Read Barbara’s account of a smooth transition to GiftWorks, one that didn’t overwhelm her staff; but enabled her organization to benefit from the GiftWorks features immediately.

The Myasthenia Gravis Association of Western Pennsylvania (MGA) has been serving the Western Pennsylvania community for nearly 55 years. The organization has received immeasurable support from numerous volunteers over its rich history. Many thanks to Bob and Sylvia for developing an Access Database many years ago to track not only donations, but also patient outreach and impact.

In its effort to meet the needs of patients, family members, and the medical community, staff researched a more efficient way to address the specific responsibilities set forth by the organization’s mission. The mission of the Myasthenia Gravis Association of Western Pennsylvania is to address the social and emotional needs of all persons affected by myasthenia gravis and to disseminate educational information to persons with myasthenia gravis, their families, the medical community and the general public. Staff and board members determined that the organization needed an advanced, yet conservatively priced database to manage the directives designated by the mission.

Once the research was complete, no doubt was left that GiftWorks was the best product to meet the needs of the patients and community at large. As the records from the Access Database assimilated cleanly into GiftWorks, staff members were thrilled by the user friendly environment in which to manipulate the data. The small staff attended web-based training modules and have become familiar with the integrated “Help” section. When more extensive configuration and disaggregation is require, staff members do not hesitate to contact the knowledgeable and friendly technical support team.

Since acquiring the GiftWorks program, our patients and supporters have benefited in numerous ways. The ‘group’ designation list is our friend. Staff has not hesitated generating SmartLists to disaggregate a specific patient list and notify list members of educational opportunities. Additionally, MGA’s newsletters are filled with hope.  Staff has been able to print newsletter mailing lists in label format as well as export the list to an Excel file and send them to a mailing house. Furthermore, our nurse uses the GiftWorks custom fields to identify patient’s primary care physicians and schedule a patient’s next testings as required. And, emailing information about upcoming events is easy with GiftWorks.

As we expand our need for GiftWorks, we look forward to gradually increasing the programs capacity to serve our patients and supporters. We promote the product as often as possible within the organization’s network and encourage other nonprofit organizations to contact MGA’s office if they have questions when conducting their own research of various products. GiftWorks has easily become a part of the Myasthenia Gravis Association of Western Pennsylvania’s organizational culture.