Annual Giving for Healthcare Institutions: A Series of Posts Focused on Best Practices

By nature, annual giving programs are dynamic, providing a pipeline of qualified prospects for both major and planned gifts. The program typically represents a large volume of your organization’s constituency, but a much smaller portion of revenue. 

It is an important indicator for what the future—both short-and long-term—may bring.  Maximizing opportunities beyond standard appeals will ensure future successful cultivation across the entire development department. Minimal changes can produce enormous results—you and your entire organization may just have to be patient enough to see them. 

Annual Giving for Healthcare

As the landscape of healthcare changes, philanthropy has become a critical component to support day-to-day activities. Grateful patients—both identified and unidentified—have become the backbone of a healthcare organization’s stability. While major giving, planned giving, and corporate and foundation programs are critical to an organization’s success bringing in big donors, an annual giving program can leverage a large volume of donors with minimal output. Furthermore, it can be the first step in the cultivation process and provide a foundation for future

A complex and innovative approach to annual giving for healthcare will acquire and retain a healthy donor base. Integrating creative programming – including qualification and grateful patient programs as well as crowdfunding, community events and even matching gifts – will increase the breadth of prospects. By exploiting all of the organization’s opportunities, each donor remains connected to the institution until a major or planned gift can be stewarded.

Annual Giving Best Practices

So the question is…what should your healthcare organization do to develop its annual giving program? 

For the next ten weeks, every other week we will dive into one of the following “6 best practices” of healthcare annual giving programs:

• Donor Segmentation: get to know your donor base
• Diverse Communication: connect with your unique donors in a unique way
• Persistent, Personal and Timely Outreach: don’t forget about your donors—or their reason to support you
• Acquisition: counteract attrition through unique strategies to engage new donors
• Metrics: clear, measurable goals will empower your annual giving staff
• Pipeline Integration: collaborate within the department to maximize your efforts

My intention is that you will find at least one strategy that can be easily implemented within your annual giving program and will impact the entire organization’s efforts. The first post focuses on getting to know your donor base. By tailoring your outreach to personally connect with donors you can establish a foundation of trust and engagement that can last a lifetime. There are huge segments within your donor base—you just have to know where to look!

What annual giving practices do you use? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Jacquelyn Peters

About Jacquelyn Peters Jacquelyn Peters recognizes the complexities within an organization and the importance of understanding its culture. Leveraging her effective communications and ability to solve complex issues, she works...