Donna Murphy and her husband Jim, are the founders of Heaven’s Gain Ministries (HGM). HGM is the most comprehensive organization serving families who are experiencing stillbirth and miscarriage. They serve over 1500 families a year with products and services that provide dignity to the child and support to the family. Donna is the Executive Director of HGM and is a Certified Baby Loss Family Advisor. She has been a guest on Catholic Answers, Jim and Joy, Teresa Tomeo, and a number of radio stations throughout the USA. Donna also travels teaching seminarians, priests, and pastoral care personel on how to best serve those experiencing the loss of a baby. She hopes to start training staff and volunteers at Pregnancy Centers around the nation in the near future.
For 25 years, Donna was a pro-life speaker traveling to high schools teaching the beauty of fetal development and the tragic methods of abortion, reaching up to 10,000 students a year. This knowledge of fetal development was a type of preparation for the service she would provide to grieving families at Heaven’s Gain Ministries.
As a Certifies Baby Loss Family Advisor, Donna sits down with families and prepares them for the birth of their baby who has died. Her clients come in scared and leave empowered and ready to greet and create memories with their baby.
As a certified Baby Loss Doula she can advocated for women as they labor with their stillborn child. Donna also provides guidance, support, and advocacy after the baby has been delivered until those services are no longer needed. She manages the Heaven’s Gain Ministries group support in person and on Zoom.
Heaven’s Gain started out of Donna and Jim’s own miscarriage experiences at 9, 14, and 17 weeks. They were frustrated that they were unable to find a little baby casket for any of their miscarried babies. Jim and Donna believe each miscarried and stillborn baby is truly a loss. Proper burial of their miscarried/stillborn babies in a little casket was very important to them, and they did not want any other family to be in this situation and thus began Heaven’s Gain Ministries.
Besides the many services Heaven’s Gain offers, they also offered dignified caskets and urns for families experiencing the loss of a baby at all gestational ages. They have skilled wood crafters to make the baby caskets and Jim makes urns in their home.
Donna and Jim are the parents of eleven children: three in Heaven, and eight on earth. They have seven biological children. In December of 2012, they adopted their two-year-old foster child whom they had fostered since she was two days old. She is their adopted rainbow baby (baby after the storm), who grew in their hearts and not in Donna’s womb.