Character, discipline help build brand

By LAURA COPELAND

Originally published in The Tennessean

Tuesday, 08/07/07

Andrea Hill, CEO of The Bell Group, recently wrote that the only two things that
matter to a company's brand are its character and discipline.

Character is about who your company is, what sets it apart and what your
customers see and experience.

Discipline is ensuring your mission and purpose are achieved. Small businesses
and nonprofits face challenges in having enough resources to market the value of
their brand. However, character and the discipline to follow through are
essential for success.

Siloam Family Health Center is one nonprofit group that knows exactly who they
are, what they mean to the community and the constituents they serve.

I talked with Nancy West, president/CEO and Lisa Ellis, director of development
about their organization's brand and identity.

Identity is compassion

Siloam provides high-quality, affordable and comprehensive health care and
behavioral health services to the uninsured, underserved and newly arrived
refugees hoping to establish residency here. Their purpose is to provide health
and hope to those in need.

Nancy explained that Siloam began as a faith-based organization whose core
values today reflect its mission in serving others in the Christ-centered model
of love and compassion. She said that Siloam "welcomes their patients with
cultural sensitivity, respect and meets others where they are with a holistic
approach: physical, as well as spiritual."

Their name reflects their identity. Siloam is the pool where Jesus told the blind
man to go to wash in the Gospel of John, Chapter 9. This story about a man's
miraculous physical and spiritual healing illustrates Siloam's holistic approach
to meeting others where they are.

An outcome of the organization's philosophy is seeing patients reach out when
they can to help their fellow patients in need, offering to pay for another's care
or other services quietly behind the scenes. It is love and compassion and their
character in action.

Siloam's commitment to excellence in health care has attracted hundreds of
volunteers from the medical community, language interpreters, pastoral care
givers and others.

Lisa adds that this "commitment and utilization of best practices has reinforced
Siloam's credibility and earned HCA's support of the clinic." The clinic also
partners with other top diagnostic facilities in Nashville to provide services to
patients.

Character is evident

Siloam's character is visibly evident from the moment you arrive at the facility
and you walk through the doors. The waiting area is warm, open and
comfortable. The reception staff is friendly and multilingual. The décor is
intentional in design — including quilted flags from homelands on the clinic walls.
There is also a children's play area and a chapel.

Lisa said the group is redesigning its Web site to provide patient information in
four languages. Staff members also are adding a blog to give a voice to those
who are being served: their patients and also those who serve — the volunteers,
board members and their supplier community.

The clinic is a model for providing interpretive services to the multicultural
constituency using volunteer interpreters fluent in nine languages and an ATT
language line to supplement those services.

Erie Chapman, president and CEO of the Baptist Healing Trust in Nashville has
written about Siloam and uses the clinic as an example of an organization
practicing "radical loving care." It is a paradigm shift from the bottom-line
profit and transaction-based culture existent in most organizations today.

Siloam aims high and delivers. It is a diverse community of healing, hope and
also peace: an example of branding, illustrating both character and discipline at
its finest.

©2001 Siloam Health Center