raised at the Essentially Yours gala
sponsors manage across tier from $10,000 to $40,000
of sponsorship info follow-up eliminated
Covering 15 hospitals and 60+ clinics across a 500-mile rural footprint in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, Essentia Health serves communities where driving to specialty care can mean hours on the road.
Essentia Health Foundation exists to keep exceptional healthcare close to home. Across a region where the nearest specialist can be hours away, the foundation fills the gaps in patient support, medical equipment, healing spaces, and compassionate care. It taps into fundraising markets brought to life through galas, golf tournaments, and community events running simultaneously across the system. Every dollar raised stays local — funding the programs and services that keep care accessible in the communities that need it most.
THE CHALLENGES
Cassie McIvor, Events Manager at Essentia Health, manages a range of events that include galas, golf tournaments, and community events. Sometimes three events overlapped at once, each demanding the same attention.
A multi-tab Excel spreadsheet on SharePoint was always open — target list, committed sponsors, table arrangements, golf teams, and expenses. All details were entered manually. Additionally, there was a clear visibility challenge as the whole team depended on the Events Manager to act on them.
Sponsors were tracked the same way. The Gift Officer would notify Cassie of a verbal commitment, and from there it was entirely on her — following up over email, chasing logos, ad assets, and attendee names, and entering every detail by hand. When a sponsor needed a formal invoice, it was created manually, with no sequential numbering, no auto-populated details, and no way to know if it had been paid without following up again.
A verbal ‘yes’ without a formal commitment made revenue projections unreliable and sponsors hard to hold accountable. On at least one occasion, a sponsor who had verbally committed couldn’t be reached when it came time to confirm. With nothing in writing, there was no recourse.
Sometimes Cassie was still entering sponsor details the week before the event. Typically, up to 25 sponsors with sponsorships ranging from $1,000 to $40,000 per event — each managed entirely over email.
“It’s constantly following up — whose logo do I have, whose guests do I have, whose I don’t. And we can have up to 25 sponsors for an event.” — Cassie McIvor, Events Manager
For public ticket sales, Essentia used Eventbrite and it had no direct connection to Raiser’s Edge NXT. Every ticket sold created more reconciliation work, not less.
The actual cost surfaced when Wade Jones joined as Operations Director. On a drive back from Fargo, he learned from the gift processor what happened to every Eventbrite ticket in the database: it went in as an anonymous donor. No name. No record. No path to follow up.
Across eight fundraising markets and multiple events each year, community members were walking through the door at galas and golf tournaments and leaving without a trace. For a foundation built on relationships — where today’s gala guest becomes tomorrow’s major donor — that was a gap they couldn’t afford to ignore.
On top of this, Eventbrite charged the foundation across multiple fee types and offered no support person to call when issues arose. “It wasn't very user-friendly and it cost us, the foundation, money," Cassie said.
“We were just putting them in as anonymous donors. And I was like — how is that anonymous donor getting any credit? How are we following up? We just weren’t.” — Wade Jones, Operations Director
Publishing an event page meant going through the marketing communications team — requesting it, waiting for it to go live, and relying on them to take it down after. Events launched on their schedule, not the foundation’s. And when an event closed, the page often stayed live, leaving stale registration data in front of visitors who might still be looking. The foundation had no way to move independently.
For a team running multiple events simultaneously across eight audiences, that dependency added up.
WHAT CHANGED
With 90% of their event revenue coming from sponsors, Essentia Health needed a platform that reflected that reality.
Almabase’s dedicated sponsorship experience was ready to step in — from how tiers were structured and sponsors submitted guest names and assets, to invoicing being tied to commitments rather than created outside the system.
By the time the Essentially Yours Gala arrived, the platform reflected how healthcare foundation events actually work.
“It saves emails in my inbox. It saves time from having to respond and then go in and make the changes myself. You can see all of your sponsors in one spot — and there’s really no miscommunication.” — Cassie McIvor, Events Manager
The guest lists were managed by the sponsors themselves at their own pace. They received a link to a dedicated sponsor registration portal, added names, and made changes directly. If a guest changed at the last minute, the sponsor updated it. Cassie could monitor progress without her inbox being the only record of what was happening.
What had been a season of chasing became a system sponsors could navigate on their own. This transformation was the direct result of Almabase collaborating with Essentia Health to build a tailor-made sponsorship module for healthcare foundations.
“Almabase created this sponsorship portal. It told them exactly what was needed and when it was needed. It ended up being such a huge, huge value.” — Wade Jones, Operations Director
With Almabase, Essentia moved off Eventbrite entirely. There are no per-ticket platform fees eating into foundation revenue — registrations run through Almabase on a flat subscription, and payments are processed through Blackbaud Merchant Services, which Essentia already had in place.
Every ticket buyer, every sponsor, every gala guest now registers through Almabase and enters Raiser’s Edge NXT as a named constituent record — tied to the event, attributed correctly, and ready for gift officers to act on. The donor acquisition pipeline that had been invisible became visible.
Event payments move into NXT as structured gift batches, each one linked to a named constituent and the event it came from, and held for the gift processing team to review before committing. Every dollar is attributed before it touches the database.
With Almabase, Essentia’s events team creates and publishes branded event pages directly — no request queue, no dependency on the marketing team’s calendar. Registration opens when the foundation is ready, and closes when the event does. The page comes down on their timeline, not someone else’s.
Each event page carries the foundation’s branding, event details, and registration flow — with dedicated links for attendee and sponsor registration, so every audience finds exactly where they need to go.
For Essentia Health Foundation, the first event on Almabase told the story clearly.
.svg)