Pandemic didn’t dampen fundraising

Early into the COVID-19 pandemic, Sharp HealthCare’s fundraising team thought maybe it could raise a few million dollars to buy more personal protective equipment.

The three foundations that support the San Diego-based health system ended up with a record number of donors in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30—about 40% of whom were first-timers—and a fundraising total that easily beat the prior year.

“We were incredibly overwhelmed with support,” said Bill Littlejohn, CEO of the Foundations of Sharp HealthCare, which raised $29 million in its fiscal 2020, about $4 million over the prior year.

In the same way wildfires trigger donations to the Red Cross, the crisis that consumed hospitals in 2020 inspired many first-time hospital donors to offer help. While there aren’t hard numbers yet, healthcare philanthropy leaders say hospital fundraising totals are on pace to meet or in many cases exceed 2019 levels, driven in no small part by a groundswell of impassioned new donors, moved by stories of front-line workers risking their lives to treat coronavirus patients.

In one example, a donor drove up to the front door of an emergency department in the Midwest and handed the security guard a $10,000 check, said Alice Ayres, CEO of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy. In Santa Cruz, Calif., an anonymous donor’s $1 million gift went specifically to bonuses for hospital staff. There’s also been countless donations of PPE, meals and hotel vouchers for healthcare workers.

The Association for Healthcare Philanthropy and American Hospital Association raised more than $500,000 for hospitals in the past seven months through a campaign they launched in response to the pandemic.

“It’s been really remarkable to see just how generous donors are being in this time of crisis,” Ayres said.

The pandemic is unique in that it wasn’t just an issue raised by a marquee name like the Mayo Clinic. All hospitals dealt with it, Littlejohn said, boosting appreciation of local hospitals, he said.

Hospitals tend to direct their fundraising efforts at former patients and their family members. Socalled grateful patients and families typically represent 60% to 80% of their philanthropic revenue, said Chad Gobel, CEO of the Gobel Group consultancy. This year’s theme is grateful communities.

“Whereas before, the grateful patient or grateful family understood the impact the organization was having on them, I think now the community has a better appreciation and a better sense of how that hospital is having a positive impact,” Gobel said.

Like Sharp, 2020 charitable giving to Intermountain Healthcare is also on track to surpass the nearly $107 million raised in 2019, with the exception of a unique, $50 million commitment made late last year, David Flood, chief development officer for Intermountain Foundation, wrote in an email. History shows people tend to give during crises—think 9/11 or the stock market fallout of 2008. “Americans understand and gravitate to need,” Flood said.

Like others, Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Foundation is seeing more new donors, especially those making smaller donations, as well as “meaningful activity” at the high end of the scale, Flood said. There’s been a drop-off along midlevel donors.

It’s not yet clear whether the money that Sharp HealthCare’s three foundations raised in the system’s fiscal 2020—$6 million of which was specifically from its COVID campaign—will be enough to offset the health system’s losses related to the pandemic, Littlejohn said.

This is not to say strategy didn’t play a role in whether hospital fundraising was successful in 2020. Organizations that didn’t perform well were waiting for normalcy to snap back. Some furloughed their philanthropy staff or redeployed them to other areas, said Betsy Chapin Taylor, president of Accordant Philanthropy, a consultancy.

Overall though, Chapin Taylor said most of her healthcare clients have seen higher total charitable giving in 2020 over the prior year.

Still, hospital foundations had to be agile. That meant not only shifting quickly to virtual meetings and events, but finding a way to be innovative while doing so, Chapin Taylor said.

For Sharp’s foundations, the shift to virtual meetings and events allowed for more rapid communication than in the past. Whereas before, it would have taken six weeks to organize a lunch fundraiser at a hotel, today the foundation can get 60 people on a call next week, Littlejohn said.

The question that will linger after 2020 is whether hospitals can hang on to all of their new donors, or whether they’ll be one-time givers, Gobel said.

“This idea of the grateful community: Will that stick, or will we go back to focusing on the grateful patient and

● family?” he said.