NU Foundation Amanda

Curtis Bright Author

04/21/2016 Added

167 Plays

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interview with Amanda

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[00:00:00.049]Say your name and spell it for us.
[00:00:01.799]Okay, it's Amanda Feser.
[00:00:03.217]AMANDA FESER.
[00:00:05.980]What's your job title?
[00:00:07.847]Director of Donor Relations and Recognition.
[00:00:10.715]Is it too bright?
[00:00:11.931]A little bright, but that's how
[00:00:13.211]it's supposed to be, right?
[00:00:14.407]One of my most memorable donor encounters
[00:00:18.235]that I've had over the years, I got an email
[00:00:21.222]from a woman, and it said,
[00:00:24.102]I'm interested in setting up a memorial fund
[00:00:28.059]or figuring out how memorial gifts work.
[00:00:30.811]My sister has terminal pancreatic cancer
[00:00:33.243]and we're gonna lose her any day
[00:00:36.582]and I just want to have that prepared.
[00:00:38.855]And I was, of course, completely taken aback
[00:00:41.574]because this woman is going through this really tough time,
[00:00:45.638]gonna lose her sister, and she instead is reaching out
[00:00:50.129]to us to try to help and try to honor her sister
[00:00:53.563]and try to figure out how that works
[00:00:56.529]with her grieving process and kind of honor her sister,
[00:00:59.602]and I was floored by that, I just thought that was
[00:01:01.788]so special, and so I wrote her back immediately
[00:01:05.404]and said, I'm so sorry that you're going through this.
[00:01:09.019]You're at the top of my mind.
[00:01:11.323]Pancreatic cancer has touched our family,
[00:01:14.363]my husband lost his dad to pancreatic cancer,
[00:01:16.626]and so that's kind of a passion area of mine as well,
[00:01:19.207]and so I was just kind of giving her that interaction
[00:01:21.746]via email and telling her that I was gonna get
[00:01:25.223]the right person hooked up with her so she could have
[00:01:28.411]all the correct information, and so I made sure to reach out
[00:01:31.378]to Tom Thompson, and Tom followed up and
[00:01:34.108]made that connection, and she did end up creating
[00:01:36.667]a fund in her sister's memory, and she emailed me back
[00:01:40.283]shortly after and said that she lost her sister,
[00:01:43.302]and I continued our conversation and gave her that support,
[00:01:48.594]any support I could give her, try to make her feel better
[00:01:51.697]and give her that human interaction as she was going
[00:01:55.212]through a grieving process, and kind of just tell her
[00:01:57.430]how thankful we were that she was choosing
[00:01:59.426]that special way to honor her sister,
[00:02:01.719]and I guess I was just really just in awe
[00:02:06.210]of how somebody could use that to kinda
[00:02:10.092]get through a really hard time, and it made me really
[00:02:12.726]proud of the university and the cancer center
[00:02:15.597]and what was going on there, and it made me feel good
[00:02:20.556]to be able to kind of fill that information in
[00:02:23.798]and connect her with Tom, who handled it,
[00:02:25.953]and just kind of, was a good experience for her,
[00:02:29.185]as good as it could be in her difficult time,
[00:02:31.543]and just shows you, you don't know who is gonna email you,
[00:02:35.181]you don't know if it's gonna be your job or somebody else.
[00:02:38.508]Being kind of prepared to interact with those donors
[00:02:41.398]and give them a good experience and kind of
[00:02:45.580]ease them through whatever it is that they need,
[00:02:48.631]and I just felt really good about how that interaction
[00:02:51.106]went down, and no matter what, giving her kind of
[00:02:53.730]some support during what was a really hard time for her.
[00:02:56.598]I got an email out of the blue from a woman
[00:03:00.694]who, she wrote and said, I need some information
[00:03:03.585]about memorial gifts and how those work,
[00:03:06.614]and kind of how it works to set up a memorial fund,
[00:03:09.452]and she said, my sister has terminal pancreatic cancer
[00:03:12.097]and we're gonna lose her any day
[00:03:13.943]and I just want to figure out how that process works,
[00:03:16.279]and I had a good interaction with somebody at UNMC
[00:03:18.582]and I want to support research at UNMC.
[00:03:22.657]And I was floored because this woman who is going through
[00:03:26.445]this terrible time, gonna lose her sister, wanted to
[00:03:30.893]reach out to us to try to honor her sister
[00:03:34.349]and help other people who are impacted by pancreatic cancer,
[00:03:38.262]and it just blew me away, so I immediately wrote back to her
[00:03:43.756]and said how sorry I was that she was going through that
[00:03:48.001]and how unimaginable that must be, and I explained
[00:03:52.022]that I would get her in contact with the correct person
[00:03:55.778]at the foundation that could really make that process smooth
[00:03:58.444]for her, so I made sure to include Tom Thompson,
[00:04:01.281]and Tom ended up building on that area
[00:04:05.046]and actually, she did create a fund,
[00:04:07.478]and so Tom handled that, but I made sure to get
[00:04:12.118]the right person on that, but I did tell her
[00:04:15.713]how sorry I was that she was going through it
[00:04:18.390]and just offered her my support and told her
[00:04:21.847]that my family had been impacted by pancreatic cancer
[00:04:24.790]when my husband lost his father to that,
[00:04:27.372]and just kinda gave her that human touch
[00:04:29.772]and that sympathy and just support, as much as I could
[00:04:32.598]being that we didn't know each other and I just wanted
[00:04:34.957]to make her feel better, and so she did end up following up
[00:04:39.585]later and telling me that her sister passed away
[00:04:42.434]and I, again, wrote her and said how sorry I was
[00:04:44.801]and how grateful we were that she was choosing to
[00:04:48.118]honor her sister in that really selfless way,
[00:04:50.701]to help other people that meet that diagnosis later,
[00:04:53.644]and it was just a really interesting experience to interact
[00:04:58.114]with somebody who's going through that, via email even,
[00:05:01.974]and it was just a really positive experience for me
[00:05:05.708]to try to make her feel better, and it kind of shows you
[00:05:09.165]that you might get an email randomly from somebody,
[00:05:12.301]it might not be connected to your specific job,
[00:05:14.711]but to make sure to kinda close that gap and make sure
[00:05:17.197]that that person has that good experience
[00:05:19.980]with the foundation, and offer that human touch
[00:05:23.778]and whatever we can do to make them feel good
[00:05:26.476]about what they do, and it was just a really moving
[00:05:30.273]experience, it made me feel really proud to be a part
[00:05:32.162]of the foundation, and proud of our cancer center,
[00:05:34.786]and it was a really good experience for me
[00:05:37.708]and hopefully, I think it was a good experience for her
[00:05:40.044]as well, and that's just something I'll always remember.
[00:05:42.796]Done, is that better?

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