A recession that has cut into charitable giving by people and corporations has not-for-profit hospitals reassessing how they raise money.
Some are getting back to basics. Costly fundraising events are out. In are appeals that stress how money will go toward treating patients.
Print newsletters and mail solicitations are being cut in favor of e-mail appeals, which are less costly.
And personal appeals are being made to key donors to make sure they don’t go cold during the recession.
“We’re looking at this economy as a transition period for us to continue to cultivate our donors and keep them close to our mission,” said Cecilia Belew, president of the Saddleback Memorial Medical Center Foundation, part of Fountain Valley-based Memorial Health Services.
All the while, hospitals are tightening their own belts.
“We are clearly dealing with some very challenging budget issues,” said Jan Lansing, vice president of marketing and communications for Orange-based Children’s Hospital of Orange County. “So while we are reducing our marketing budget, we still plan to keep our visibility high.”
Fundraising for hospitals is tough, even in good times, according to Frank Hall, vice president of resource development at St. Joseph Health Systems, an Orange-based Catholic hospital operator with three local facilities.
“The foundations don’t market to the general public,” he said. “We don’t use telemarketing, where you call donors and ask them to make gifts. Nor do we do mass mailing to donors within a certain Zip code.”
Instead, hospital fundraisers rely on former patients and their families, religious groups and supporters within the community to help raise money.
Catholic hospital operator St. Joseph relies on donors who have some ties to its hospitals, according to Hall. Many of them are Catholics who support the hospitals as part their faith.
Other foundations stress the role their hospitals play.
“We’re working to be more proactive and tell our story and try to get to more people who are prospects,” said Ronald Guziak, executive director of Newport Beach-based Hoag Hospital Foundation, which raises money for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.
Watching Their Pennies
With donors more concerned about where their money is going, foundations are being more careful with any advertising they commit to and are focusing more on cheaper Internet marketing than print, said Debra Legan, vice president of marketing at Hoag Hospital.
The situation is the same at Memorial Health, which runs four hospitals in Orange County.
“We’re putting a little more emphasis on our Web site and e-mail blasts to prospects and loyal donors,” Belew said.
St. Joseph, which runs three hospitals here, has seen fundraising below original goals, according to Hall.
Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo and St. Joseph Hospital-Orange finished fundraising campaigns last year and will raise less money this year, he said.
St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton is raising money for an expansion, which is “doing very well,” Hall said.
Hoag set an ambitious target of collecting $32 million in donations.
“Right now, I would say that’s a very difficult task, but we haven’t given up yet,” Guziak said.
Hospitals have said that they still are getting responses from donors, just not at the same levels as in the past.
“The message of the hospitals is important and people continue to support us. There isn’t a shortage of donors, just how much they can give,” Guziak said.
“From July to December, we had the same number of gifts as we had last year, but people are pulling back on how much they give,” St. Joseph’s Hall said.
One of the more notable drops the foundations have seen is a decline in big gifts in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.
“What happened is those people who have expressed interest in making large gifts are saying ‘I still love you and still want to make the gift, but not right now or not as much,'” Hall said.
And those who are giving want to be sure their money is being used effectively. That could tie the hands of hospital operators.
“A lot of donors have expressed that they want their money to go to a specific program or into a specific piece of equipment,” Memorial’s Belew said.
The other decline comes from giving by businesses.
“We’ve seen a drop off in corporate sponsorship, but that’s because a lot of those companies are essentially out of business now,” Guziak said. “So it’s kind of hard to get money from them now.”
