Written By: Sharon A. Marine 
Senior Vice President of Development 
Chief Philanthropy Officer 

It’s been a couple of months since Blitz Week, and we’re still feeling its incredible impact. To my fellow leaders of organizations within Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals: if you want to electrify your current stewardship strategy, I encourage you to consider this initiative. 

Dedicating one week every spring to visiting all our CMN Hospitals partners with a sweet treat and heartfelt “thank you” has become everyone’s favorite stewardship touchpoint. 

Here’s why Cincinnati Children’s loves Blitz Week: 

It’s the perfect way to surprise and delight partners. 

We visit all local locations in our market. They’re touched to see us walk through the door. The partners over an hour’s drive away are blown away. 

Blitz Week takes place in between campaigns. We give them general updates about our latest research innovations—but the focus of our visit is expressing gratitude for their partnership. 

It opens the door for more fundraising. 

In five days, we visited 331 locations and saw fundraising increase across almost all active partners. Talking to them directly about their impact motivates them and they often ask about other fundraising initiatives they can support.  

Those conversations got CMN Hospitals partners involved in our largest community fundraiser, Cincinnati Walks for Kids.  

It gets more employees engaged. 

We enlist help from across our department for Blitz Week. This year, 25 development employees contributed: of them, only two work regularly with CMN Hospitals. That means more than half of our department extended themselves to engage with our partners. All our colleagues told us these visits were the highlight of their year. 

It makes a difference. 

An unexpected gesture of gratitude means so much to our partners. While we’re there, they share stories about loved ones we’ve treated. When we leave, they say goodbye to us in tears.  

They’re reminded why fundraising for their local member hospital is so important, and they’re reenergized to help us improve child health.  

Above all, that’s why we love Blitz Week. When we come together in shared inspiration and mutual gratitude, we make a bigger difference to the kids and families that depend on us.