Not just friends – PARTNERS Stinnett recalls early days of fundraising
Mary Martha Stinnett thinks of herself as a connector. Her talent for bringing people together landed her a job in the UTHealth Houston Office of Development just as ideas began floating around about establishing a philanthropic organization to support what is now Cizik School of Nursing.
Back in the 1990s, many academic and nonprofit organizations had “Friends of…” fundraising groups. “Friends” didn’t seem like a strong enough word to describe the relationships Stinnett wanted to foster.
Inspiration struck during a vacation when Stinnett thought up the acronym PARTNERS (Providing Advancement Resources To Nursing Education, Research, and Students).
“It was a time of thinking big,” Stinnett recalled. “Everybody’s a friend. I wanted us to be real partners.”
Stinnett joined UTHealth Houston after working as PR director for Goodwill Industries and director of funding for the San Jacinto Girl Scout Council. During her last year with the Girl Scouts, she directed the council’s cookie sale. The scouts sold $4 million in cookies, making it the largest cookie sale in the United States – back when the cookies cost $1.25 a box.
At UTHealth Houston, Stinnett was assigned to the School of Nursing and the School of Dentistry. Then-dean Patricia Starck had a plan. She offered the development officer space in the nursing school, behind the front desk.
“I loved having an office right at the front of the school where I could see faculty members coming in,” Stinnett said. “I could really tune into what they were doing.”
Starck also had plenty of ideas for getting PARTNERS off the ground, including recruiting Peggy Barnett as founding chair. Barnett and Stinnett worked together to plan the first spring luncheon, including hand-written notes in each invitation.
Dean Ornish, MD, a well-known physician focused on prevention and control of coronary artery disease, spoke at that first luncheon. The event raised $10,000. Many more spring luncheons, fall fundraisers, and other support activities followed, and membership grew as each luncheon chair brought more friends – make that PARTNERS – into the fold.
“Sally Harvin was a jewel,” Stinnett said, referring to a past chair who is still involved with the organization. “We would sit around Sally’s dining room table and sign the invitations by hand, address the envelopes, and talk about how we can make PARTNERS better. The ideas just flowed.”
Over the years, PARTNERS has provided approximately $16 million in support to Cizik School of Nursing. The 2025 Spring Luncheon, featuring author Sarah DiGregorio, raised a record-breaking $270,000.
More than 220 students have benefited from PARTNERS scholarships. Grants to early-stage nurse scientists ultimately helped them secure awards from the National Institutes of Health, like Associate Professor Jennifer E.S. Beauchamp’s recent $6.48 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to test an intervention using video chats to encourage mood-enhancing behaviors among older, low-income stroke survivors.
Yet PARTNERS has never been only about monetary contributions. The real mission is to fulfill needs. Members have cooked pancakes for students during finals week and presented nursing pins to Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates. When the nursing school building opened in 2004, PARTNERS outfitted and dedicated the second-floor lounge for students to gather and relax between classes.
Today, Stinnett lives near her children in Frisco, Texas, and keeps a few prized possessions nearby, like a silver cup presented to her as an honoree at the 10th-anniversary spring luncheon in 2004. On her wall hangs a needlepoint blowup of the PARTNERS emblem patterned after a 4-cent stamp from 1961 that featured a nurse lighting a candle. She also displays a small, framed stamp given to her by the nursing school’s resident philatelist, the late Professor Dorothy Otto, who made sure everyone knew that by the 1990s nurses no longer wore hats.
“So many fond memories come gushing forward as I read about the funds raised at the last PARTNERS luncheon and the sad news about the passing of Dean Starck and Peggy Barnett,” Stinnett wrote in a recent letter to current Dean Diane Santa Maria. “However, I know that the school is in excellent hands as it moves forward, accomplishing all the dreams that Dean Starck had dreamed.”
