Reaching New Residents: A Resident Engagement Platform That Scales Across Campuses

Organization name

Presbyterian Homes of Georgia (Presbyterian Village Athens)

Main Contributor

Alex Patterson, Chief Executive Officer

Organization Description

Presbyterian Homes of Georgia is a Christian ministry serving senior adults since 1949. The nonprofit operates six communities across the state — two Life Plan Communities (Athens and Quitman) and two income-based residences with a full continuum of care spanning independent living, assisted living, memory support, rehabilitation, and skilled nursing.

When Presbyterian Homes knew something had to change

In 2015, Presbyterian Homes of Georgia broke ground on Presbyterian Village Athens, its first true Greenfield project since 1987. The challenge was the math of a new Life Plan community. Lenders typically require an operator to pre-sell about 70% of units before closing financing, and a build of that size can run two full years of construction. That meant holding the commitment of hundreds of future residents across a long window, with nothing physical to show them.

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Their existing tool was a single-blast phone system. It carried announcements one direction. It would not carry a relationship.

"Most lenders require you to pre-sell 70% of your units before they close on the financing... large projects like this will take years to construct, in our case two full years of construction. So years go by, and you've got to have some way for people to be engaged. We needed a system through which we could connect with those future residents, one they could also easily use." — Alex Patterson, CEO

Choosing a resident engagement platform that matched the mission

Presbyterian Homes approached the change as a long-term operating-model decision, not a software purchase. The platform had to carry a two-year pre-sale window, work across multiple campuses, and serve residents at every level of care, from independent living through skilled nursing.

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What they needed Wellzesta to replace:

• A single-blast phone system with no two-way path
• Paper calendars and notices that could not sustain a two-year pre-sale cycle
• Disconnected tools across a multi-campus, multi-acuity organization
• No way for future residents to feel part of the community before move-in

Why Wellzesta over other resident engagement platforms

Presbyterian Homes did not pick Wellzesta on a sales pitch. They handed the decision to a resident advisory committee, including IT-oriented University of Georgia faculty, and asked them to evaluate it against competing systems. What broke the decision was fit, not a feature checklist:

• Built for adoption. Residents could navigate it without staff intervention. The committee picked it themselves.
• Worked across the continuum of care. One platform for independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing, across multiple campuses.
• A partner, not just a vendor. A client success team that stayed available through onboarding and rollout, and a product that matured with the organization.

"It's a tool that works well in spite of your unique circumstances. If you had a choice between using a screwdriver that only works when you stand on one foot, or one that works well no matter how you stand, you're going to use the one that works well no matter how you stand." — Alex Patterson, CEO

Making the switch

Presbyterian Homes framed the rollout as a long-horizon decision, with the resident engagement software as the connective layer across campuses.

• Resident-led selection: A resident advisory committee evaluated four platforms and chose Wellzesta. The people who would actually use it picked it.
• Onboarding and training: iPads were distributed to incoming residents with Wellzesta pre-installed. Small-group Zoom sessions ran in spring 2021, during the pandemic, before the building opened. Sessions were recorded for replay.
• Repeatable playbook: The same rollout pattern carried into Presbyterian Village Cobb, a community that opened in 1987 and had layered in technology piecemeal for decades. "Same story over there," Alex said.

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The transition was smoother than expected. "I think it made their life easier," Alex said. "I didn't hear anybody complaining about that part."

Measuring the outcome

Resident engagement and adoption (Presbyterian Village Athens)

Five years after launch, Athens runs at 90% weekly active users, well above typical industry benchmarks for resident engagement platforms, and 70% daily app use.

FLAG (blog-only adds, not in PDF): the blog also cites 98% usage over a two-year window, ~200 daily actives, 10.7 events/day, and ~2,100 confirmed attendances/month at Athens. Include only if you want the richer figures and are confident they are approved. PDF is silent on these.

At Presbyterian Village Cobb, the platform holds 68% daily app use, with 62% of residents logging a wellbeing check-in every day, giving staff a near-real-time view of who needs attention. Cobb schedules 13 events per day and serves 25 assisted living residents on the platform alongside 122 in independent living — the continuum running in production.

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Event quality and wellbeing impact

Across both campuses, residents rate events 4.5 to 5.0 stars across every wellness dimension — emotional, environmental, intellectual, physical, social, spiritual, and at Cobb also cultural, financial, and vocational.

Pre-sales effect

At Presbyterian Village Athens, Wellzesta cut expected pre-sales attrition by 30% during construction, saving Presbyterian Homes significant cost in re-acquiring depositors. The CEO frames the qualitative side plainly: the platform "made us seem cooler. We had some forward technology. This was not some Humpty Dumpty old school thing."

The same playbook is now in motion at the new campus, with 30 of 50 deposits secured toward financing.

Challenges and lessons learned

• Let residents pick the platform. A resident advisory committee will choose the tool they will actually use. Wellzesta rose to the top of theirs.
• Paper-to-digital is easier than electronic-to-electronic. Residents and staff do not have to unlearn click patterns from an old system. They just have a better tool than the one they had.
• One platform across the lifecycle is the real ROI. A system that works at a 2021 Greenfield and a community from 1987 is a system that scales across a portfolio and into the next pre-sale.

Conclusion

Presbyterian Homes built one resident engagement platform that runs across a Greenfield community, a 1987 campus modernized into the present, and a new campus in pre-sales. The same system that carried roughly 400 depositors through two years of construction — cutting expected attrition by 30% — now drives 90% weekly engagement at Athens and 70% daily use at Cobb.