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Healthcare Philanthropy: The Keys to Success

The healthcare field is constantly evolving, and the need for new equipment, buildings, and state-of-the-art innovations is greater than ever. To continue saving lives and helping the community, your healthcare organization needs the proper medical funding to stay on the cutting edge of medical advancements.

The year 2020 showed us just how much support there is for healthcare workers globally. Even so, you may be wondering how to find donors for your specific mission and goals.

iWave is ready to show you how you can be successful in your healthcare philanthropy along with the best steps to take. In the end, a healthy fundraising strategy leads to well-cared for and healthy patients.

What’s a Grateful Patient Program?

One of the best ways to fundraise for your healthcare organization is by establishing a grateful patient program. This is achieved by compiling a list of current and former patients who are the most likely to give back to your organization.

You can also use your grateful patient program to identify potential new donors as they walk in the door. Have you determined that a potential future donor is visiting (or even admitted to) your hospital right now? When you know who they are and their history of charitable giving, you can tailor their experience, ensuring they’re left with the most positive impression possible.

Of course, as a respectable healthcare professional, you understand that nothing is more important than your patient’s health. Approaching a patient while still at your facility may not always be the best course of action. Instead, wait for a follow-up after they leave.

With a follow-up meeting or call, you can catch up on the patient’s health and learn how they’ve been doing since leaving your hospital. Such conversations foster a more personal relationship with patients, whether they choose to donate to your organization or not.

How Do You Create a Grateful Patient Program?

In order to have a successful grateful patient program, you’ll need to:

  • Analyze current and former patients’ information to uncover who has the greatest propensity to give
  • Dive into potential donor history to see who has a record of charitable giving
  • Reach out to the right donors at the right time

Your healthcare organization probably sees thousands of patients a year, so how do you analyze background information on every single patient? Allow iWave to take the reins. We’ll make it quick, simple, and convenient.

Related: How to Master Fundraising Intelligence

Planned Giving: Let Grateful Patients Cement Their Legacy

When approaching former patients, it’s important you’re offering them a range of donation avenues. If you ask every prospect for a one-time gift, you may be missing out on greater opportunities for fundraising. A planned giving program allows grateful patients to leave a lasting mark on your organization for years to come.

With planned giving, donors promise an unspecified amount to be given on an unknown future date. Usually, these gifts are received in a will or trust after the donor has already passed. If you provided life-saving treatments to a patient, they may want to make a planned gift to help save future patients for generations to come.

Look into what these legacy programs can provide for your healthcare institution and how you can start building a successful program.

Use Your Data Wisely: Start a Capital Campaign

Does your hospital need a new wing or new advanced surgical equipment? As your organization grows your funding needs to grow with you. When it comes to one-time fundraising campaigns for buildings, equipment, or general expansions, you may want to consider launching a capital campaign.

A capital campaign is unique in that it’s typically only used for funding when a strict timeline is imposed. For example, if you need to have your new hospital wing by next spring, you’ll likely need to meet all your funding goals months ahead of time.

Capital campaigns are broken into two funding periods: private (quiet) and public. Your capital campaign starting steps include the private portion which is where the majority of your donations should be coming from. After the private round of funding ends, you can open your campaign up to public donations to fill in the gaps.

How Do You Run a Successful Capital Campaign?

Organization is key in a successful capital campaign. You’ll want to follow these steps to stay on track throughout the process:

  • Identify a hardworking team with clear roles early on in the process to ensure everything runs smoothly
  • Create a strict schedule to make sure you’re meeting your goals and staying on track every step of the way
  • Identify the right donors for the private phase
  • Contact the best potential donors and ask for the right gift amount to propel your campaign forward and put you in the ideal position to achieve your goals

Staying on track will be easier with the proper tools. iWave may have just the fundraising solutions you need for your capital campaign.

Related: Get the Capital Campaign Cheat Sheet

Strengthen Your Annual Fund

Your annual fund is how you “keep the lights on” for the year, making it a vital campaign to focus on. Fundraising can come with a lot of overhead costs you’ll need to prepare for. Start by building a budget of your expenses and then set your goal based on these numbers.

Since most donors are likely to donate to specific causes such as cancer programs, you may find your team has been disproportionately focusing their efforts on those campaigns only.

However, by strengthening your annual fund, you’ll set your organization up for great success. There are many different ways to invigorate this program, starting with setting clear goals. Cultivate your past year’s data to see trends as well as to help you establish what funds should be allocated where.

From there, you’ll be able to fundraise with greater confidence. Do you notice there’s a time of the year when donors are more likely to give to your annual fund (such as your anniversary)? Then sit down with your team and plan out your strategy for this time period to ensure you’re reaching the right audience and earning the necessary funds.

How to Engage Your Audience

Donors want to feel excited about fundraisers. By offering various avenues to donation as well as hosting creative and unique events, you’ll be able cultivate strong supporters who are genuinely excited about your cause.

Some of the ways you can achieve engagement include:

  • Encourage physicians and grateful patients to donate their life insurance or other planned gifts
  • Create and market a branded online donation form
  • Apply payroll deductions for healthcare employees
  • Use data to coordinate outreach to healthcare prospects such as grateful patients
  • Utilize virtual events to enhance inclusivity

No matter what path you choose to venture down, you’ll want a strong resource to help uncover the right supporters. That’s where iWave comes into play.

How Can our Nonprofit Fundraising Solution Help?

Whether you’re establishing a grateful patient program or want to kickstart a capital campaign, our next-generation platform is your one-stop shop for nonprofit fundraising.

iWave helps streamline the entire donor cultivation stage, making it easier for your researchers to get their work done. If your staff had technology that enabled then to work twice as fast as they do now, think of how effective your fundraising campaigns could be.

Our fundraising platform quickly analyzes billions of datapoints and then provides a score of how likely someone is to donate to your cause. You can also organize all viable current or former patients into a list with the ones with the greatest propensity to give at the top. This helps to ensure you’re reaching out to the right people to ask for the funding your hospital needs.

Not only will we show you who to ask from, but we’ll help uncover how much to ask for as well. Our comprehensive wealth screenings provide more confidence going into a gift ask, so you can walk away knowing no money was left on the table.

Take Our Fundraising Software On the Go with You

Life at a healthcare organization means constantly being on the move. At iWave, we want to be there with you every step of the way. You can now access our fundraising platform on your mobile device.

Quickly glance through potential donor information before meeting with prospects, so you know you have all the details straight. Preparedness is one of the most powerful weapons in successful fundraising. With iWave, all that power is right in the palm of your hand.

Prioritize Privacy

Whether launching a capital campaign or building out your grateful patient program, fundraising with a healthcare organization presents its own unique challenges.

Since many of your donors may be current or past patients, healthcare protection laws come into play. While you probably have your own legal team, it makes fundraising much easier when there are extra protections in place. If your fundraising software takes every security precaution possible, it makes your healthcare fundraising more effective.

When choosing your fundraising software, you want to know these rules will be followed. iWave works closely with many healthcare privacy organizations and is HIPAA compliant. We’ve also built multi-factor authentication into our platform to ensure the privacy of users and prospects.

Use our Fundraising Platform for Success in Healthcare Philanthropy

At iWave, our greatest commitment has always been to our clients. Want to see how our nonprofit fundraising solutions can help you build or improve your grateful patient program? Contact our team for a free fundraising assessment or demo!

As your organization grows and changes, we will adapt with you. Our team will be here every step of the way to answer your questions and to show you how to make the most of our wealth screenings.

Ready to get started? Book your custom demo today!

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