Maine Medical Center's Vice President of Development and former chair of the board of directors for the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP), Susan Doliner, believes there's reason to be optimistic when it comes to the 2013 fundraising outlook for hospitals and healthcare systems.
"It's interesting. A lot of folks are still in this wait-and-see mode with fundraising, especially with everything going on with the fiscal cliff and sequestration," Doliner said. "So we still feel a little uncertainty about the fundraising outlook this year, but I'm really optimistic despite that."
Doliner said with continued good donor relationships and a fairly new scholarship program involving local Maine college students being able to stay in the state to attend medical school, fundraising look promising.
Meanwhile, University Hospitals (UH) in Cleveland announced in December 2012 that it had achieved its Discover the Difference Campaign goal of $1 billion one year earlier than expected and had the healthcare system's most successful fundraising year to date in 2012.
According to Sherri Bishop, chief development officer for UH, the organization reached its $1 billion goal with a $32.5 million gift from Rainbow Babies & Children's Foundation, and as a result, expanded its fundraising campaign to $1.5 billion by the end of 2016. The Discover the Difference Campaign is now the largest fundraising campaign in the history of northeast Ohio.
Bishop believes part of the reason UH has remained so successful with fundraising, despite the economic downturn in 2008, is because the organization continued to stay on target with fundraising despite external factors.
"We stayed on target with our strategic plan and did the best job we could with engaging stakeholders and getting our message and missions out there," she said. "A lot of hospitals and nonprofits held back a little when the recession hit, but we've continued to add people every year and increase our budget for fundraising every year."
Bishop said 2013 is off to a fast start.
"We've had one of the strongest fundraising results in the first two months of the year ever," she said.
John Heye, senior vice president for finance and CFO at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine, said that while he doesn't anticipate a decrease when it comes to healthcare philanthropic efforts across the country, he doesn't believe there will be an increase in 2013 either due to uncertainty with the sequestration in Washington, D.C.
"I think, in general, people would feel more certain if the economy was moving," he said. "With a lot of uncertainty in the economy still, people may want to keep their funds in their pockets. Nobody is sure how sequestration will play out. I think the fundraising outlook will be different for different parts of the country, depending on their unemployment levels."
Heye added that Maine Medical Center has seen a lot of stability in their organization, despite the economy, which he says is good for their fundraising development programs.
"I think this benefitted our long-standing relationships with the community and physicians, which is helpful in the cultivation of donors," he said.
Doliner added that whether hospitals see growth in fundraising efforts in 2013 or not, "philanthropy will play a huge role in the future. No organization is in the position to borrow as much as they want, and we're all scraping to maintain our quality ratings due to the fact that we'll be reimbursed based upon them. Philanthropy has ebbed and flowed in its importance to hospitals over the years, and now it's a really critical piece of the pie in terms of how to finance a hospital."