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The PM Podcast
Challenge and Opportunity: A Conversation with Leaders in Healthcare Philanthropy
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and changemakers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. In this special episode, we bring together some of the most influential voices in healthcare philanthropy. Nancy Bussani, Executive Vice President and Chief Philanthropy Officer for Common Spirit Health and President of the Common Spirit Health Foundation. Julie Cox, Vice President of Development at LifeBridge Health John Drake, President of the BSW Irving foundation at Baylor Scott and White Health David Flood, Enterprise Chief Development Officer and President of the Intermountain Foundation Bill Littlejohn, CEO and Senior Vice President of the Sharp Healthcare foundation and Birgit Stumpf, Acting Managing Director of the Deutsche Stiftung Fraum Gesundheit and Leader of the Healthcare section of the Deutscher Fundraising vrband. In a collaboration between A Court and Donor Search, I met with each of these leaders individually at the AHP International Conference to ask one simple but revealing in today's environment, what is your biggest challenge and what is your greatest opportunity? Here are their answers.
- [01:19]
B
Well, I'm Nancy Bassani, I'm our Executive Vice President and Chief philanthropy officer at CommonScript Health and the President of our Common Spirit Health Foundation. I think the biggest challenge is to, to do what we were just describing of building that infrastructure and doing it in a way that's efficient while honoring the relationships. Because other parts of healthcare you can just say, oh, we're changing that. It's all, it's an internal discussion, it's a process discussion, it's a, you know, policies and procedures. We change that now we do this. And I find myself in many, many, many conversations within our leadership team of saying, well wait, this has to engage the community in the discussion or we might make this great new policy that saves us a dollar and then jeopardize $10 because community doesn't see themselves in that conversation. So I think some of the challenges are to do it go slow, to go fast, make sure you have all the right stakeholders at the table, make sure you are authentically not co opting your donor community. You're authentic, authentically inviting them into the, into the conversation, that you're being transparent in the why? I don't think donors have to be shielded from some of the challenges of healthcare. They're smart people. Have them be part of the dialogue. Which means you can just create an edict that says now we're doing it differently, get on board. So I think that's a challenge that isn't necessarily in every other Part of healthcare that somewhat unique to the externally facing world of philanthropy. That is critical because if we do it wrong, then not only do we not serve people and fulfill our mission of raising funds, but we disengage so many people. And for the type of people who are attracted to philanthropy, that doesn't even fill their cup in the way that we all love. We love to make a difference. I think our profession is so wonderful in that it's pulled in people that want to do this work for the right reasons. And so it's a challenge to ensure we do it right. We have to do it, but to do it right in a way that honors the people who are taking this trip with us.
- [03:42]
C
I'm Julie Cox. I have my CFRE and my fellows certification from AHP called the FAHP and just came off of teaching the certification course for cfre, which is really an international certification. Right. So for me, the biggest challenge right now is the president and CEO, who was the president of our flagship hospital for 37 years. Well, in an executive role, has been in his role for 13 years. And he and I have worked beautifully together and have this wonderful relationship of trust. And he's so warm and engaging. He is retiring in June. So I have been involved in the search process. I'm not on the search committee. My boss is the only staff on the search committee. But I am able to be personally interviewing some of the candidates. And it's been a really fascinating process. Most of the candidates are completely focused on operations. In fact, the two more recent candidates have nothing in the resume related to philanthropy, although the profile states that almost 35% of the job is working with philanthropy, being the community face of the organization, engaging with donors, working across the system to articulate the philanthropic priorities, being the political liaison, you know, sitting down with the governor and talking about healthcare policy and funding and getting capital funding for our new, you know, patient tower. But. But it hasn't really translated into this search. It's. It's. We've got people coming into this search who are excellent and very skilled operators. But one of the candidates, when I said, tell me about your involvement with philanthropy. Well, you know, I was involved in kind of looking at the priorities, but I've never been involved in soliciting or engaging with the development part department in any way because I run the hospital. So it's a very different mindset to work with a very successful CEO and president in order to achieve as much as you can through philanthropy.
- [06:25]
A
Do you imagine that that's happening in other places? As well. Is this specific to your institution?
- [06:30]
C
No, I think it's one of the biggest challenges whether your CEO is leaving and there's some leadership transition. I mean, that's going to impact our ability to get major gifts probably over the next six to 12 months because people want to, they trust the leader, they feel good and they're going to make a major investment if they trust that leader and respect them and know that they've got it right. So leadership transition is always a challenge. But I would say what's challenging for our profession is making sure that the president and CEO understands how relevant philanthropy is in terms of streams of income, right? So there's how much money you can make from patient care, which is a very limited marsh margin. And then for us, we have a new, we have a for profit entity that is another stream of income. So we own an ambulance company, right. Why not that be a for profit business? We own a urgent care center so that instead of people coming to the ERs, they go to the urgent care center. And that's a partnership with a private, a private entity. And that's how we get another stream of income. Right. But the last and final stream is philanthropy. And the return on investment is extraordinary. So Our team raises 10 times what we spend. That doesn't happen anywhere in the, in the new business development aspect for the private business component or certainly in the hospital operations.
- [08:14]
A
So when you look across the landscape of what's happening today in healthcare and look forward a little bit, especially through the lens of all you've done in philanthropy, what do you imagine is the opportunity there with philanthropy?
- [08:29]
D
What's the opportunity?
- [08:31]
C
Well, I think the opportunity is really engaging the CEOs in a way that they understand what the return on investment can be and what opportunities there are in asking people for support and investing in development in a way that can be very gradual. I mean, development, the beautiful thing about development is very metrics driven, right? I say to my president, more people, more money, right? So we create a plan, we roll on three more matrix people and if we hit a certain benchmark, then we roll out and hire three more. We hit a certain benchmark, we just keep on going. And it's really, I would say with executives, once they drink the Kool Aid, they're on board. But it's not generally the executives are more worried about, you know, how much they can charge, you know, the insurance, you know, keeping their doctors happy, making sure they have enough nurses because they're national nurses shortage shortages. I'm not sure that they really learn about philanthropy. They but they experience it. And our job is to get some wins with these executives so that they really understand the relevance and the value. And also if we're not around the table hearing all the big conversations, then we don't know what to talk to the relevant donors about. And donors also want to know that the top development person or their development team, they have access to the leadership. That's important too.
- [10:23]
E
Hi, I'm John Drake and I'm the president of the Baylor, Scott and White Irving foundation in Irving, Texas, located right between Dallas and Fort Worth. You know, the short term answer is, and I hope it's okay to say this, in the last couple days a for profit firm has Co opted 1.4 million charities and produced web giving pages for them. That's to me that's reprehensible without the permission of those charities. Things like this where you can intercept, take and claim it as a service without that concerns me. In the short term I think that will be solved. But there will be copycats. And so we as fundraisers I think have to be really vigilant as who's trying to fly the flag that we're carrying to take a portion of what our donors meant for us, paying those fees and other things. That's a short term, long term. I'm concerned with what I read in the Chronicle about the Gen Z, Gen X millennials and the ones that follow Alpha, their reticence to give. We don't know if that's just an age thing and they'll grow into it. They're in the accumulation phases of their life and maybe they will be, but I think we're going to have to it's our job to create the joy of giving for them as well. And figuring out how do you engage them. And it is the old techniques sometimes don't work. Events and other things, they're not the right fit. The generation who will come after me in eight months, in six days, the generation they'll have to figure out that. But that is what that's a challenge for me is how are we going to continue to have generous support. It doesn't look like the dollars are dropping, although after 2017 we dropped. But it seems to be kind of catching up. So I'm encouraged by that. But I am concerned that most of the gifts seem to be coming from the older generational segments and it's larger gifts from them. But what happens when those folks are gone, when my generation is gone? So those are the things that probably make me think But I'm going to turn around and say the thing that I'm so excited about. I actually got a text this morning from one of my newest employees. I just hired her in December, and she is more talented than I ever was or will be. And she's the future. And so I said, you're one of the brightest people I've hired. And I'm so excited because I think the future is in good hands. Because I see how talented they are and adaptable they are in their ability to pivot and to learn new technology. And so our greatest chance of reaching those donors, future donors, I hope, are in good hands. If Hannibal Stevens is any example, then we're gonna be okay.
- [13:32]
D
My name is Dave Flood. I am the Chief Development Officer at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City. By virtue of that role, I also serve as president of the Intermountain Foundation. The biggest challenge right now that we have in philanthropy, as I see it, is it's trust. You know, we've lost, say over the last three years, 20 million or more individuals from philanthropy, according to IRS records. So that has you concerned. And when you look at the political landscape right now, wherever you are on it, you know, we're really being taught, whether we're listening or not, to not trust. To not trust anyone else, to not trust, certainly institutions, to be skeptical of any mission if it sounds too good. And then you begin to analyze words as well, and you say, well, are they too conservative? Are they too liberal? And this is really beginning to hurt us a lot. And I think that we have to figure out how to define ourselves, particularly in nonprofit healthcare, as this lighthouse for the country. I mean, when you look at health systems, nonprofit health systems, those dollars are being generated back into the system. So as skeptical as people can be about how much money you're making, it's staying there. When you look at the for profit systems, so much of that money, 90% of those dollars are leaving the ecosystem. And I think we need to really amplify that message. We need to be trusted. We need to fight through this noise that has people frozen. You know, there's a thaw that needs to happen. And I think people don't know who to believe. So they're choosing maybe to help their neighbor or help their friend. I think everyone still wants to help people, but the question is, do they want to come to our institutions to do that? Because the world's telling them not to trust institutions.
- [15:19]
F
Hello, I'm Bill Dilljohn and I have the honor of serving as the Senior officer for philanthropy at Sharp Healthcare. HP has been great. I'm proud of my role and served as chair of the board and done a lot of speaking and presenting and you know, I'm honored to receive the Size Seymour award and just had great collegial development, which is great. I learned a lot and shared a lot at the same time. It's and I. The challenge is it's limited and so you know, conferences and you have Madison, but the end of the day is that you truly have to develop professional pathways and matriculation programs for people in the healthcare philanthropy space. And I bring this back to when we started the sharp experience sharp 25 years ago. We did another thing and that was quarterly leadership development for all the managers and above. So I was part of that. We've done, we've done 25 years of them and they were all kinds of leadership training programs, team training, you know, all kinds of, you know, executive level. The things were somewhere clinical but in the end of the day was and we did crucial conversations, crucial confrontations, performance management, all kinds of things to be a good executive and a leader. Now to think that Sharp made that investment in me. I had to go every quarter for a day, but now for 20 plus years. So I've gotten a huge amount of training in leadership, healthcare dynamics and understanding from my employer. But you know, I made a few presentations there. But shouldn't we thinking about the same types of things within our profession. And this is especially true like now with the virtual capability that everybody can't go to conferences. But I know they're doing the Spark program which is a monthly mentoring for a group cohort. Well, I've done HP mentoring for at least a decade and I still have people I mentor. But the end of the day is that it's almost the point that if you want to have a successful career in healthcare philanthropy, it's almost a requirement that you attend you participate in these webinars program educational like we have to do and we're required to do these and we have tests and everything we have to take in that. But it makes us better leaders. Well, we should probably create some expectations of our philanthropic professionals as well. And I think now with the virtual capability, that's a great thing I've got. I just joked to someone today is that you know, I might do kind of a retirement tour, you know, on the HP huddle, which we've done several webinars on and say okay, I'm willing to do an hour every month for the last full time year I'm working and just dump out all of my knowledge and skills and documents. Anybody who's interested on everything related to governance and grateful patience and board development. Yeah. And, and you know, staffing and performance management and data. You. We just all that 25 years worth because it's all sort of, you know, I don't want to write a book. I don't feel like doing that. But at the end of the day is that. Because I would want that for people to. And so I think we do have to think with the complexity and what's happening in the healthcare delivery space with education professional development we should probably mirror some of those dynamics in our professional association like ahp and you know we're doing more of that. But I think it, I think, I think it would be great to get a group of senior people together and say you know, what can we do? Or even the point that what can even I do even in semi retirement to help in that position facilitation process in the aspect of. I think about that is that I spot spent 25 years at Sharp and we have completely transformed the entire enterprise.
- [19:13]
C
Great.
- [19:13]
F
You know, we've had a lot of issues and challenges, done great things. Now someone's going to take my role and inherit that. Now whether or not they'll have the depth of understanding of all of what, what's behind all of those things that we do today which they normally have to. But they would be better off if they did have that. And so, or at least they would have even a program almost like a fellowship program when you become ahead of a program that there is a backstop of supportive dynamics. That's why I've agreed to stay on for part time for a year to help whoever takes my place because there's just so much stuff that they would be helpful for them to know versus you know, oh, go call Bill, you know, he's not around and that. And so you know, and that's the thing is that we've had that a lot of these programs think about the structure of our healthcare philanthropy world today in these big systems and shops and all this like we've talked about changes. Do we have the team, the class of people prepared to move into those roles. That's why we're doing the position leadership academy. That's why there are CEOs or academies and aha. Doing all kinds of things because the role of a CEO in a hospital is not what it was or a system or not what it was 30 years ago. And so that aspect. So I think there's a good opportunity and whether or not there's a consortium like with consultants with Accordin and AHP and others, that even. And I said that to people, I said look, if a consortium came up with an incredible kind of matriculation program, workforce development planning strategy on site, whatever it might be, we pay top dollar for that. Especially if it laid out that we think that with that investment, like in a campaign, we could double our or triple our production in a relatively reasonable amount of time, it'd be worth it for us to make that investment. So I think there's a lot of opportunity, but I think it's going to require some thought leaders to come together and say what are the opportunities we have for not just the next generation of leaders in healthcare philanthropy, but the next institutional dynamics of healthcare philanthropy. And that will we all kind of rise to the occasion.
- [21:36]
G
So I'm Vigit Stumpf, I'm also a fundraiser by profession, but I'm also having a second hat on which is I'm leading the healthcare section of the German Fundraising Association. And that's also the reason why I'm here and why I'm always so, yeah, happy to be invited by the AHP and go to the international conference. This is my 13th conference. Well, I think the challenges are similar in the US in healthcare. Just speaking about healthcare, not healthcare fundraising, I think we have the same pressures you have. We have rising costs, stagnating revenues, we have shortage of staff, we have an aging population which you know, coming to the hospitals, they live longer, have more chronic diseases. Are multimorbit, you say?
- [22:27]
A
Yes, multimorbities, yeah.
- [22:29]
G
So this always adds to the costs. And then also especially in Germany, we are very slow in digitalization so our processes are not very efficient. You know, we're discussing since years if you should introduce the electronic patient file. And because we are so adamant about data protection and sometimes we are too much, you know, we're seeing only the risk associated, we don't see the goods associated. So our processes are slower and as less efficient. But we don't have, as I said in the beginning, we don't have this imminent threat of additional cuts on top. But we are operating in the same non ideal business world. And as I said before, 17% of the hospital don't make any profit in terms of fundraising. I think we have hospital fundraisers and they know their instruments well. But what's lacking, and I see this as the biggest challenge, is that leadership doesn't get involved. They get involved in so far that they Create the position, they give sort of a budget and then they say, you know, and then please leave us alone, we have a busy agenda. You know, you are employed to do the fundraising, but that's not how you raise the full potential of fundraising. This is also not how you get major donors involved and also not this transformational gifts. So I think this is one of the biggest challenges we have. But I also see this as one of the biggest opportunities because it's an in house problem, you know, it's not something you cannot solve. So I'm actually, I'm spending a month in the US to actually see best practices in hospital and hospital systems who have a good relationship with the CEO. And I'm asking the question to the leadership and also to the fundraising department. You know, why do you participate? What are the arguments? You are cooperating and also for the fundraisers. Maybe it hasn't been this ideal relationship before. You know, what did you do in order to position yourself to get hurt? You know, what are the things you brought, metrics and so on. So in order to be relevant and I think bringing this one back would give us another step ahead. And, you know, and also euros are needed, you know, resources are limited for hospitals. So these additional euros would mean a lot to a hospital. You know, this is the most profitable revenue you can generate. The return investment is as good as you have in the us. It's the most profitable department in a hospital. And again, you're relatively free to use the money according to the donor intention, but you're relatively free. And this is actually like profit, you know, it's like additional profit you can use. And this is 1.8 people who are generating this and you, and you're not even generation generating a profit with your operating margin. So, you know, this is basically the cash cow of the hospital. And in order to, you know, really bring this one back and actually say, you know, we probably need to think bigger because we have already some couple campaigns who worked well, you know, why shouldn't we do this on a normal level? Do more campaigns, show that also bigger fundraising euros are possible in Germany. So yeah, I'll let you know in two to three years time. I'll let you know how it's going.
- [26:19]
A
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can hear more from these conversations and learn more about these leaders, their work and the field of healthcare philanthropy by following accordantcordanthealth.com donor search@donorsearch.net and the association for Healthcare Philanthropy@ahp.org Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the global leader in AI powered fundraising intelligence solutions for the nonprofit world. Our producer is Jack Frost and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe wherever you you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise. And come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader or leaders in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.