When non-profit University Hospitals in Cleveland began its fundraising campaign in 2005, the economy had not yet fallen into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Prior to then, it's most recent fundraising campaign aimed for the $40 million mark in the early 1990s. Fast forward to today, and nine-hospital system UH has reached its $1 billion goal — one year early.
"The support started coming in faster than we expected," says Sherri Bishop, UH chief development officer. "And we believe we're still at the tip of the iceberg."
Giving was so steady, in fact, Ms. Bishop says UH is increasing its goal by 50 percent to $1.5 billion by the end of 2016.
Non-profit hospitals often benefit from the larger fundraising efforts of their academic arms, Ms. Bishop explained, but UH's campaign was specific to the hospital system.
No other hospital in northern Ohio has ever launched as ambitious a philanthropy campaign.
What was UH's secret? Ms. Bishop lays out her team's strategy in four steps.
1. Build a superior team. UH recruited Ms. Bishop in late 2004 from her role as vice chairman of development at neighboring Cleveland Clinic to invigorate UH's development program that she says was "underpotentialized." Once there, she began to assemble her lineup of what she calls "top-third talent," or people who consistently outperform their peers.
"The first thing we did was make sure we had all the right people on the bus," Ms. Bishop says. Minimum qualifications and high performance expectations set on the development team were much more rigorous than they'd had seen before. Most left the system, leaving just five veteran staff members of what used to be a 21-person development office. Unlike other large non-profits that often practice massive "surge hiring" to initiate a campaign, Ms. Bishop grew her team conservatively each year, growing to what is now 75 people.
2. Craft a vision, then make a plan. In 2005, shortly after her arrival at UH, Ms. Bishop and other senior management developed a five-year $1.2 billion growth plan dubbed Vision 2010, which was comprised largely of five significant capital and construction projects.
A fundraising campaign would be an integral part of that, and consultants had previously advised they set a goal of $250 million. But Ms. Bishop held her ground on not going public with a number target until they had time to gauge what giving potential existed in the community. "You never want to go out with the wrong number, and we weren't sure what the right number was," she says.
"Almost all of our non-profit peers [in northern Ohio] had these wonderful bar charts that go back many, many decades that show their fundraising trends helping to inform their projections," she adds, but UH's historical performance was both flat and low, making it difficult to project accurately.
Her team, however, was seeing a far greater capacity than they'd anticipated. When giving in the campaign's silent phase exceeded $600 million amid the recession, they knew the $1 billion mark was possible.
They went public with the $1 billion campaign goal in 2010, and what was originally a capital-focused campaign evolved to include more programmatic elements of UH's strategic plan, including 90 new endowment funds and positions to support physicians.
3. Engage all stakeholders. From the beginning, Ms. Bishop says she was impressed by the community's loyalty to UH, but there was "untapped equity" in the community's volunteer leaders who could engage to take UH to the next level.
"We, out of the gates, recognized we could not do this alone," she says. "We were smart enough to know, let's tap this fast and tap it effectively."
"We knew UH had this unparalleled following, and we needed to find a way to convert that loyalty and energy into helping advance UH. And we saw that as our job," she says. "We knew these folks wanted to engage, we just had to set up a system to engage them. It's very difficult to do that, to engage large numbers of volunteers effectively, and we had to figure out how to sustain their engagement."
Ms. Bishop's team sprung to put mechanisms in place that could oversee and facilitate meaningful volunteer leader engagement. Before 2005, UH could count on roughly 30 volunteers assisting the system, by Ms. Bishop's estimates. Now that number is more than 1,000, and UH has been nationally recognized by the Advisory Board as one of the top hospitals in volunteer leadership engagement.
"We had a veritable army ready to work on our behalf, at no charge," she says. That tidal wave of engagement swept many donors to contribute. More than 60,000 people and organizations supported the campaign. In 2012 alone, UH raised nearly $160 million.
4. Broadcast your success. Many non-profits work quietly on their fundraising even during the public phase, but Ms. Bishop says it's important to share your progress and the impact it is making through events, media and face-to-face conversations.
"A big part of this mission was messaging, it was part of our strategic plan," she says. "We actually had it in our strategic plan that we were constantly messaging that we were continually building momentum."
UH had set the bar high, even by pre-recession standards.
"But when the recession hit and we saw our fundraising results continue to trend upward, we knew there was a capacity that challenged that recessionary belief that people weren't giving," she says.
Communicating that success was a major part of Ms. Bishop's strategy.
"Ultimately, people want to be part of a winner. We were differentiating ourselves in this recessionary environment. A lot of organizations were pulling back, and we were doing the opposite — we went forward at full steam."
What's next?
Now that the development office has extended the campaign through 2016 to coincide with UH's 150th anniversary, the team is driving toward their increased goal of $1.5 billion. The money will be used to invest in medical innovation, develop new and expanded institutes and specialty centers, build new patient facilities and fund delivery of community health programming.
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Prior to then, it's most recent fundraising campaign aimed for the $40 million mark in the early 1990s. Fast forward to today, and nine-hospital system UH has reached its $1 billion goal — one year early.
"The support started coming in faster than we expected," says Sherri Bishop, UH chief development officer. "And we believe we're still at the tip of the iceberg."
Giving was so steady, in fact, Ms. Bishop says UH is increasing its goal by 50 percent to $1.5 billion by the end of 2016.
Non-profit hospitals often benefit from the larger fundraising efforts of their academic arms, Ms. Bishop explained, but UH's campaign was specific to the hospital system.
No other hospital in northern Ohio has ever launched as ambitious a philanthropy campaign.
What was UH's secret? Ms. Bishop lays out her team's strategy in four steps.
1. Build a superior team. UH recruited Ms. Bishop in late 2004 from her role as vice chairman of development at neighboring Cleveland Clinic to invigorate UH's development program that she says was "underpotentialized." Once there, she began to assemble her lineup of what she calls "top-third talent," or people who consistently outperform their peers.
"The first thing we did was make sure we had all the right people on the bus," Ms. Bishop says. Minimum qualifications and high performance expectations set on the development team were much more rigorous than they'd had seen before. Most left the system, leaving just five veteran staff members of what used to be a 21-person development office. Unlike other large non-profits that often practice massive "surge hiring" to initiate a campaign, Ms. Bishop grew her team conservatively each year, growing to what is now 75 people.
2. Craft a vision, then make a plan. In 2005, shortly after her arrival at UH, Ms. Bishop and other senior management developed a five-year $1.2 billion growth plan dubbed Vision 2010, which was comprised largely of five significant capital and construction projects.
A fundraising campaign would be an integral part of that, and consultants had previously advised they set a goal of $250 million. But Ms. Bishop held her ground on not going public with a number target until they had time to gauge what giving potential existed in the community. "You never want to go out with the wrong number, and we weren't sure what the right number was," she says.
"Almost all of our non-profit peers [in northern Ohio] had these wonderful bar charts that go back many, many decades that show their fundraising trends helping to inform their projections," she adds, but UH's historical performance was both flat and low, making it difficult to project accurately.
Her team, however, was seeing a far greater capacity than they'd anticipated. When giving in the campaign's silent phase exceeded $600 million amid the recession, they knew the $1 billion mark was possible.
They went public with the $1 billion campaign goal in 2010, and what was originally a capital-focused campaign evolved to include more programmatic elements of UH's strategic plan, including 90 new endowment funds and positions to support physicians.
3. Engage all stakeholders. From the beginning, Ms. Bishop says she was impressed by the community's loyalty to UH, but there was "untapped equity" in the community's volunteer leaders who could engage to take UH to the next level.
"We, out of the gates, recognized we could not do this alone," she says. "We were smart enough to know, let's tap this fast and tap it effectively."
"We knew UH had this unparalleled following, and we needed to find a way to convert that loyalty and energy into helping advance UH. And we saw that as our job," she says. "We knew these folks wanted to engage, we just had to set up a system to engage them. It's very difficult to do that, to engage large numbers of volunteers effectively, and we had to figure out how to sustain their engagement."
Ms. Bishop's team sprung to put mechanisms in place that could oversee and facilitate meaningful volunteer leader engagement. Before 2005, UH could count on roughly 30 volunteers assisting the system, by Ms. Bishop's estimates. Now that number is more than 1,000, and UH has been nationally recognized by the Advisory Board as one of the top hospitals in volunteer leadership engagement.
"We had a veritable army ready to work on our behalf, at no charge," she says. That tidal wave of engagement swept many donors to contribute. More than 60,000 people and organizations supported the campaign. In 2012 alone, UH raised nearly $160 million.
4. Broadcast your success. Many non-profits work quietly on their fundraising even during the public phase, but Ms. Bishop says it's important to share your progress and the impact it is making through events, media and face-to-face conversations.
"A big part of this mission was messaging, it was part of our strategic plan," she says. "We actually had it in our strategic plan that we were constantly messaging that we were continually building momentum."
UH had set the bar high, even by pre-recession standards.
"But when the recession hit and we saw our fundraising results continue to trend upward, we knew there was a capacity that challenged that recessionary belief that people weren't giving," she says.
Communicating that success was a major part of Ms. Bishop's strategy.
"Ultimately, people want to be part of a winner. We were differentiating ourselves in this recessionary environment. A lot of organizations were pulling back, and we were doing the opposite — we went forward at full steam."
What's next?
Now that the development office has extended the campaign through 2016 to coincide with UH's 150th anniversary, the team is driving toward their increased goal of $1.5 billion. The money will be used to invest in medical innovation, develop new and expanded institutes and specialty centers, build new patient facilities and fund delivery of community health programming.
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