To continue their service to communities, hospitals need more money from more sources.
Philanthropy is often an untapped yet significant source that can transform a healthcare organization.
To raise more money, hospitals need to identify more potential donors. We know people give because of people. In healthcare, people specifically give to the people who provided the care and compassion for them or their families when they were in need.
Since giving is ultimately driven by emotion, it has been nearly impossible to utilize data or analytics to identify the best potential donors.
Consequently, non-profits, including healthcare organizations, have relied on someone’s wealth as the most important factor to identify a potential donor. In the best situations, organizations will convert only 10 percent of their wealthy prospects into donors.
That means organizations are receiving no results from 90 percent of their efforts – a highly inefficient and ineffective program.
But the yield doesn’t have to be that low. The growth and implementation of artificial intelligence is transforming the way healthcare organizations treat patients. Researchers have found AI can help with everything from drone-supported organ delivery to more precise cranial computed tomography analysis, to greater precision therapies that are tuned to the individual’s DNA.
Now, AI it is also changing the way philanthropy offices identify potential donors.
Using HIPAA compliant patient data extracted from an EMR, a healthcare organization can use artificial intelligence in a machine learning environment to build a predictive model to identify which patients are most likely to be grateful and therefore most likely to become donors. Recent comparisons have shown AI models for gratitude are 400 percent more predictive of identifying potential donors than wealth screening alone.
Aligning philanthropic resources to the most grateful instead of the most wealthy is not only a more efficient and effective return on investment, it is also a more compassionate, patient-centered approach and personalized approach to philanthropy.