How to Launch a Highly Successful Hospital Fundraiser

Hospitals generate revenue from their services, but often this income alone is not enough to cover everything necessary to support a healthy community. Investments in research for improved health outcomes, equipment and facilities required to meet the standard of care, and staff salaries are just a few of the many big-ticket, yet essential, expenses that hospitals incur.

That’s why fundraising revenue is crucial for closing the gap.

However, the healthcare industry is unique and presents different challenges from other nonprofit fundraising. You’ll leverage typical nonprofit fundraising streams, like capital or comprehensive campaigns, but there are legal, emotional, and structural nuances that make healthcare approaches unique. In this article, we’ll explore how to set up an effective hospital fundraiser that raises much-needed funds, with the distinctions that the healthcare industry demands.

1. Build on Positive Patient Experiences

Before ever approaching a donor, fundraising groundwork begins with the patient experience.

Your hospital’s reputation will be a leading factor of donor trust. And because hospitals serve a large population (likely touching almost every member of your local community) one of the best ways to steward your donor base is to provide an exceptional patient experience. If patients and their families see your institution as a trustworthy, reliable healthcare provider, they are much more likely to view your hospital as a worthy recipient of funds and believe in your mission.

Your medical operations team may already regularly collect feedback on patient experiences. Promptly’s guide to patient satisfaction surveys suggests using this data to proactively address complaints and areas for operational improvement and inform your fundraising efforts.

Consider these applications for patient satisfaction data:

• Inform campaign timing. Trends in feedback can help your team measure your hospital’s reputation within the community. These insights, along with other indicators, can help you launch a campaign at the ideal time. For instance, if your team is steadily receiving high marks, that could be a sign that the campaign would be enthusiastically received.
• Collect marketing collateral. To effectively engage with donors, your hospital needs impactful stories of the difference you’re making. Glowing survey responses can be good leads for identifying patients and their families that may be willing to share their experiences. Including an opt-in question asking whether patients would be interested in a follow-up conversation with your marketing team can be a great first step.
• Identify grateful patients. Survey data can inform your hospital’s prospect research as an affinity marker. Patients who are appreciative of the phenomenal care they’ve received at your hospital are a foundational component of your donor base. Combined with wealth markers and other prospect data points, these surveys can help you know what potential donors to approach.

Your community sees your organization as one cohesive institution. Their experiences as a patient inform their propensity to donate and how you steward donors can also affect their choice of healthcare provider. By ensuring that both operations and fundraising reflect your hospital’s values and work together to develop a strong brand, you set the entire organization up for success.

2. Understand Healthcare Fundraising Complexities

Donors might connect with the emotional weight of a hospital’s lifesaving work or have been personally affected by a physician's care. These factors build a strong affinity within the donor for your hospital, but they also point back to the extremely emotional and personal nature of healthcare.

When designing your fundraising campaign, keep these considerations in mind:

• Your hospital is required to comply with HIPAA legislation, which also applies to how you use personal information, stories, and data for fundraising. Ensure that your team manages patient data safely and legally.
• The powerful patient stories that impact donors were likely incredibly emotional experiences for the patient and their families. Approach all conversations with patients with empathy and care.
• To build and maintain trust with both patients and donors, be transparent in your marketing. Upfront communication about your hospital's finances, including how contributions will be used, goes a long way towards shoring up goodwill for your organization.
• Given everything that’s required to operate smoothly, hospitals are complex institutions. Graham-Pelton’s guide to healthcare fundraising recommends reducing communication silos and establishing central fundraising best practices and protocols to fundraise efficiently in complicated circumstances.

While these considerations mean your team needs a specific lens for healthcare fundraising, they by no means limit your success. By approaching development with intention and carrying on the same priority of care your medical team exhibits, you’ll build meaningful, lasting donor relationships on an ethical, empathetic foundation.

3. Identify Success Indicators

Proactively defining metrics and benchmarks for your hospital prepares not only your development team, but the entire organization and your donors for the fundraiser.

As we identified previously, hospitals can be institutionally complex, so having clear key performance indicators (KPIs) to communicate internally can help the entire staff connect with the development work of your team. For donors, public fundraising goals can help them visualize your hospital’s financial needs and understand why their support is needed.

A few KPIs to consider tracking internally include:

• Return on investment (ROI) measures the amount of donations you receive for every dollar you spend on fundraising activities.
• Donor conversion rate measures how many prospects actually donate over a specific timeframe.
• Engagement metrics gauge how people are engaging with your content, including metrics like open rates, click-through rates, social media likes and comments.

These metrics can also help you know when to adjust your strategy during the fundraising campaign. If you aren’t on track to hit your overall fundraising goal, these leading indicators can show you where to make improvements along the way to ensure a triumphant finish.

4. Facilitate Giving

Your hospital likely has already cultivated loyal supporters through the high level of patient care you exhibit. Be prepared for engaged patients to support the good work your team is doing by reducing friction in the fundraising process. This includes:

• Ensuring your donation pages are easy-to-navigate and optimized for the donor experience
• Offering a range of giving options, including planned giving and non-cash gifts
• Incorporating information about corporate matching gift programs to help donors multiply the impact of their contribution

Additionally, have your appreciation strategy in place. Whether that’s honoring major supporters on a donor wall in your hospital or a personalized thank-you message from a staff member or patient, you’ll want to express your gratitude as quickly and as meaningfully as possible.

The intricacies of healthcare shape what development looks like in this industry, but by aligning both medical operations and fundraising with your organization’s mission and values, you strengthen the whole hospital. When your entire staff treats patients and donors with care, giving flourishes and the health of your community does too.