Q&A with the Medical University of South Carolina’s Director of Annual Giving

When the Medical University of South Carolina team was thinking through their Autonomous AI Fundraising strategy, there were two clear use cases: a clinical segment and an alumni segment. Carley Houseman, Director of Annual Giving, shares the results her team is seeing so far and what’s on the horizon.

Q: You launched two Virtual Engagement Officers simultaneously — James for clinical donors and Emilie for alumni. How did MUSC land on launching two VEOs?

A: It actually started with a small internal pilot my team was running to advocate for mid-level donor engagement. Each of my staff members was managing a portfolio of about 40–50 donors to demonstrate the need and track what we could do at a small scale. When some of our leadership learned about Autonomous Fundraising at a conference, they came back and proposed taking what my team had been doing, but making it bigger. The timing just aligned perfectly.

Q: James and Emilie are working with very different donor populations. What have you noticed about how they engage differently?

A: With James, we're getting heartfelt patient stories. People are sharing deeply personal reasons why MUSC matters to them and their families. With Emilie, it's much more direct. Alumni see themselves as part of the institution in a different way than our patients. We've received some really honest, candid replies, which have actually been really useful. It's telling us things about those relationships that mass communications rarely capture.

Q: What results are you seeing so far?

A: Since we launched James and Emilie, over $600,000 has been raised across both portfolios, with half being from upgraded giving. We've seen five-figure gifts come through both the alumni and clinical portfolios that were significant multipliers of the donor’s previous giving and led to us graduating donors to human gift officers. The results have genuinely blown us away. I think this initial success shows we were looking in the right place when putting these portfolios together. There were so many people sitting in this leadership annual realm who have been waiting for more, and we just haven’t had the capacity to reach them until this.

Q: How are James and Emilie factoring into MUSC's Giving Day?

A: We're really excited about incorporating James and Emilie in our lead-up efforts, particularly around identifying challenge gifts and match opportunities. Finding those donors is never easy, and having a communication channel that can do it at this scale is going to be significant. We also wanted to make sure we weren't adding a new voice into the mix for donors who've been building a relationship with James or Emilie. So rather than throwing one of my staff or me back into the conversation, we're letting the VEOs carry that outreach. This is also our first spring Giving Day, giving us an opportunity to elevate that conversation and steer donors to a new giving moment, and also continue building those relationships well past the day itself.

Q: With results this strong this early, how are you thinking about year two and scaling the program?

A: We are asking a lot of questions right now, the biggest being how do we maintain and build this program? We have thousands of both current and donor prospects who fit similar criteria to the ones James and Emilie are already working with. So part of the conversation is how we bring more donors in and how we identify signals that might indicate someone is ready for a major gift conversation beyond the obvious ones. Our focus is on sustained growth and what that looks like in year two and beyond, when donors have been getting this level of engagement consistently. We know that that target may be a moving one right now, but learning more about who within our constituency is the best fit for this work will be the key to success and expansion.

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