Abby Burns (00:13):
From Advisory Board, we are bringing you the Radio Advisory, your weekly download on how to untangle health care's most pressing challenges. I'm Abby Burns. We've been talking a lot about threats to health system revenue on Radio Advisory. Today I want to talk about a revenue opportunity for a change. Philanthropy has always been an important part of health system finances, but arguably never more so than right now. The vast majority of nonprofit health systems have a philanthropy team or a foundation that raises philanthropic dollars on their behalf, and these dollars can go a really long way. Just look at OHSU in Portland, Oregon. OHSU is a $5 billion system. In August, its Cancer Institute received a $2 billion donation. It's the largest single donation ever made to a U.S. economic medical center. That's a single donor example, but you can also look at Cleveland Clinic, which consistently raises more than $100 million every year and not just because of its name recognition.

(01:15):
Here's the thing. For all the OHSUs and the Cleveland Clinics of the world, there are far more systems that aren't taking advantage of philanthropy in the way they could be. A lot of this comes down to lack of investment in the function itself. Maybe because too many healthcare leaders are holding onto an antiquated view that philanthropy is really just about galas or silent auctions. Maybe the lack of investment is because their foundation is both physically and fiscally separate from the system, out of sight, out of mind. Maybe it's because this is a field that is lacking in hard data to show just what kind of investment it takes to generate a meaningful impact. Health system boards and executive teams are putting more and bigger demands on their philanthropy leaders as they face down threats to their operating margins. So today's conversation and the research we're going to be talking about is important. My goal is for you to walk away with an in-depth understanding, not only of why it's so important to invest in building and maintaining a sophisticated philanthropy function, but what it actually looks like to do this effectively. That is a tall order. So joining me today is Advisory Board Philanthropy Expert and founder of TwinPoint Insights, Erin Lanahan. Hey, Erin, welcome to Radio Advisory.

Erin Lanahan (02:28):
Hi, Abby. I'm so thrilled to be here.

Abby Burns (02:31):
Erin, you've been researching this space for two decades at this point. How would you describe this moment in time?

Erin Lanahan (02:39):
I would say that while philanthropy has always been important to hospitals and health systems, now it's really urgent, right? We are seeing more pressure than ever on hospital operating margins. It's become increasingly difficult to finance our projects through debt, through floating bonds. We are seeing cuts to federal funding, and at the same time, we have an influx of patients. There's incredible need and opportunity. I would also say that the people that I talk to, the development leaders in healthcare, philanthropy, are getting more calls than ever before. They are getting calls from service line leaders. They're getting calls from PIs who've had their research grants cut. They're getting calls from the strategic planners who are interested in how philanthropy might play a role in putting up a new building or in actually funding some of the programs within that building. But it's also, I can't underscore this enough, it's a really competitive time in philanthropy. So there's more competition for dollars for donors and for development staff than we've seen probably ever before.

Abby Burns (03:49):
And I imagine that that is not only within healthcare, when we look sort of outside of the healthcare industry, might be the same donors that are being approached from all different angles.

Erin Lanahan (03:59):
Never before I think have we seen all nonprofits across different sectors experiencing pressures in the way that they have today. So organizations that I speak with tell me that their donors who have been committed to healthcare, perhaps higher ed, are also being approached and are more compelled than ever before to give to causes like international aid or humanitarian assistance because they've seen how other sources of dollars have been cut back and how urgently those dollars are needed.

Abby Burns (04:30):
So let's focus our conversation on philanthropy for nonprofit health systems in particular. I know that's where a lot of your research focuses. Help me to understand what the opportunity size is here. I'm very familiar with the name on the building size donations that we see. Those are probably the most visible, but when we look more holistically, how should health systems, maybe our average health system think about the opportunity for philanthropy?

Erin Lanahan (04:56):
Abby, let's spend just a minute talking about the national picture before we think about what it means for an individual hospital or health system. So we have about 6,000 hospitals in the U.S. 6,093 on last count. And of these 58% or almost 3,000 are not for profit. And so the vast majority of those have a fundraising program, whether that's set up as a foundation or a development office. Development, synonym for philanthropy, philanthropy equals development, and vice versa.

Abby Burns (05:26):
That's helpful.

Erin Lanahan (05:26):
We see these programs taking root in communities of all different types. They're supporting health institutions of every kind, whether we're talking about children's hospitals, academic medical centers, large health systems, the increasingly vanishing individual community hospital, rural hospitals. We're seeing this across the board that philanthropy is important to these institutions, and I think that's comparable to what we see in higher education. You'd be really surprised to hear about any college or university, regardless of how large or small it was or where it was located the country that didn't integrate fundraising into its operational and strategic plan.

Abby Burns (06:08):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my mailbox is a testament to that.

Erin Lanahan (06:11):
Right.

Abby Burns (06:11):
Every couple months we get another thing in the mail.

Erin Lanahan (06:14):
Right. Absolutely. And that's part of the culture of philanthropy, of higher ed. Hospitals have typically been about a decade behind higher ed when it comes to philanthropy, but now we have very sophisticated philanthropy programs across the board in our field as well. So when we think about what this means for an individual hospital or health system, if you're a nonprofit health system, you have grateful patients, you have opportunity, and the ROI is so phenomenal here, Abby.

Abby Burns (06:43):
Erin, that was going to be my exact next question, was like, yes, the opportunity is there, but how do we know if the juice is worth the squeeze?

Erin Lanahan (06:51):
So I think that while ROI varies, of course, your mileage may vary. The number that we like to cite most often is four to one.

Abby Burns (07:00):
Wow.

Erin Lanahan (07:01):
Imagine if you had another service line that you were setting up that had at the median, a four to one return.

Abby Burns (07:07):
Right.

Erin Lanahan (07:08):
Yeah, it's pretty great.

Abby Burns (07:10):
Yeah, especially because health systems are on very thin margins. I think the latest estimate is less than 1%, the median health system operating margin, and they're facing down even thinner margins, which we've been talking about a lot on Radio Advisory. So it feels like you said more important than ever for leaders to be able to tap into a healthy revenue stream.

Erin Lanahan (07:31):
I want to be really careful about the terminology that we're able to use because this is a common misconception. You don't just tap into philanthropy dollars at any moment. You can't just turn on a steady stream of philanthropy dollars like you're turning on a faucet full blast. Right?

Abby Burns (07:48):
Interesting. I mean, we use water analogies a lot when we talk about money, right? Research funding is drying up. We're looking for additional pipelines of revenue. But what you're saying is this analogy almost distorts non-philanthropy leaders' expectation of what they can realistically ask of their philanthropy leaders. It suggests, "Hey, these dollars are there and just waiting for you." They're almost on demand.

Erin Lanahan (08:12):
So I think that's because when it comes to philanthropy as opposed to any other area of the hospital, you have an equal amount of art and science. So the potential is there, but you have to have both the art and science to realize it. And I don't think that we've done as good a job as we can in philanthropy of being data-driven and of sharing that data back with our leaders. And that is the language of healthcare increasingly. So, whether it's a quality improvement program that has specific metrics that they're sharing back with your health plan or KPI, key performance indicator for your finance team, they have data. So philanthropy, we need to have data as well. We need to have the science.

Abby Burns (08:54):
Well, and Erin actually this idea of, hey, this is an art and a science is going to resonate a lot with clinical leaders, really how we talk about medicine, right? To study medicine, you study a lot of the science, but actually practicing medicine, you have to bring in the art as well. I am curious, as someone with so much experience in the philanthropy research space, what is the art and the science of executing on health system philanthropy effectively?

Erin Lanahan (09:17):
And I want to acknowledge here that a lot of the listeners of this podcast are not necessarily in philanthropy. So I think I'd be remiss if I didn't use this opportunity to demystify development, demystify fundraising just a little bit so that other executives can understand what it takes to have an effective program and to unlock some of that potential in your community, right?

Abby Burns (09:37):
Yes.

Erin Lanahan (09:37):
So as you mentioned, I've spent the last 20 years researching this, and in that time, I've seen effective philanthropy requiring really four things. To grossly oversimplify. What do we need? We need clear expectations from the C-suite. We need consistent and sufficient resourcing of the philanthropy function. We need compelling funding priorities, and we need committed allies. So that means allies in this context, your executives, your volunteer leaders, like your board members and clinicians. Those are the four components that you have to have. I also want to acknowledge it is true, the wealth of your community matters. And when we say your community, I'm talking about your patient base. If you look at your wealth of your discharge zip codes, the net income and household wealth. So previous advisory board research has demonstrated that there is a statistically significant relationship between ROI variability and wealth of the community.

Abby Burns (10:40):
Meaning hospitals that are located in more affluent areas see a higher ROI of their philanthropy efforts. Is that fair?

Erin Lanahan (10:48):
So it's certainly true that the wealth of the community, and particularly in organizations, patient-based matters, so organizations that are in wealthy areas have an advantage. As to those organizations that are destination for self-pay patients, whether they're coming from within the U.S. or international destinations. Often those individuals have some capacity, but even rural communities may have what my dad always liked to call a millionaire next door. He loved that book, and those rural hospitals need every dollar that they can bring in. But there are also plenty of factors within our control that drive fundraising productions. So I don't want you to think that if you're not in one of those wealthy areas that you can't have full ability. You can. And conversely, even health systems that have an affluent patient base, they're not going to see a steady and strong return if they don't follow the playbook that we mentioned.

Abby Burns (11:46):
It really sounds, Erin, like the four things that you mentioned around clear expectations from the C-suite, consistent resourcing, compelling priorities, committed allies. These are important for any organization that is looking to have a strong ROI on their philanthropy efforts. So I'd love to use most of the rest of our time and talk about these. We already got into some of the idea around expectation, right? This isn't a stream that you can just tap at will. I have learned that now. I also imagine there's some expectation setting that philanthropy leaders need to do around how much is actually feasible to raise in a given campaign. Is that a fair assumption?

Erin Lanahan (12:22):
I think that campaigns are a great microcosm of philanthropy, how philanthropy functions and how you can have an effective program. And about half of nonprofit hospitals and health systems in the U.S. are in campaign at any given time.

Abby Burns (12:37):
Wow.

Erin Lanahan (12:37):
So if you're listening to this podcast and you're not in a campaign probably across the street from you, they're in a campaign. And just because they haven't announced it doesn't mean that they're not out there furiously raising money. Just something to really, really be aware of. But philanthropy already struggles with those clear expectations. We have the biggest campaign goals and the largest gifts grabbing headlines, understandably. So at the outset, you mentioned Phil and Penny Knight's extraordinary 2 billion dollar commitments to Oregon Health Sciences University. Last year we had Dr. Ruth Gottesman. She funded free tuition for all medical students at Albert Einstein with a 1 billion dollar gift. So these are visionary commitments that have far-reaching implications, but it's not just academic medical centers. Earlier this year, Sutter Health received 110 million dollar gift from an anonymous donor.

Abby Burns (13:28):
Oh, wow.

Erin Lanahan (13:30):
I'm not surprised that executives and boards are paying attention.

Abby Burns (13:35):
Especially like we've been saying, systems are facing and anticipating really serious pressures to their operating revenues. They're also facing limitations, like you said, on financing debt, etc.

Erin Lanahan (13:45):
Absolutely. So they're looking to philanthropy to help unlock some additional dollars here to fund research, to fund education, capital, expansion, programs, everything.

Abby Burns (13:57):
Erin, how can CEOs, CFOs, etc., how can they know whether they are realistically set up to target, let's say a 10 million dollar campaign versus a 100 million dollar campaign?

Erin Lanahan (14:08):
So often, Abby, I hear philanthropy leaders, they're creating principal projections, they are doing the research. They're approaching it in a very intentional and scientific way. They come up with a goal only to have a board member or CEO come back with a much larger number that seems to be pulled out of, I don't know, thin air. We talked about this in every other area of healthcare we're data-driven, and there's a lot of art in philanthropy. That's absolutely true. But there is also science. Philanthropy leaders, what I've seen over the past 20 years is that they're increasingly data-driven, not just so that they can effectively run their programs, but so they can speak the same language as their fellow members of the C-suite.

(14:50):
Being data-driven and bringing more rigor to the study of philanthropy is one of the main reasons that we at TwinPoint launched our healthcare campaign survey series, which we're running in close partnership with the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy. So we're looking at campaigns of all sizes, all different institution types. As of this morning, we have 125 different hospitals and health systems that have contributed their data across all different facets of campaigns. This is the largest ever research approach to hospital and health system campaigns. So we're able to put some data to questions like yours. In our study, the goals range from 4.5 million at the 10th percentile to a billion dollar goal at the 90th percentile. So that's not even the largest goal in our study. Median goal in our study at a U.S. hospital health system is 60 million dollars. So I think this gives you a sense of how wide-ranging the initiatives are. It doesn't tell you how to get there.

Abby Burns (15:53):
Erin, when you say the goal is four and a half million dollars, or the goal is a billion dollars, how frequently do systems meet their fundraising goals?

Erin Lanahan (16:04):
It's almost universally they're meeting these goals.

Abby Burns (16:07):
Wow.

Erin Lanahan (16:07):
So sometimes we do see some changes that have been made because we're living in extraordinary times, and by and large, we did not see folks revise their goals down. They may have changed the timeline. They may have decided to have an initial campaign that sort of tested the waters before launching their largest ever campaign. But I've only actually in my research to date encountered one institution that said they thought that they were not going to meet their full campaign goal, and they were only off by about 8%.

Abby Burns (16:39):
I mean, this is really meaningful. We spend most of our time talking with hospital and health system strategy leaders, and they have a lot of calculus to do right now about, do I slow down XYZ strategic priority? Do I take my foot off the gas? Do I pause? And what you're saying is in philanthropy, really the foot is staying on the gas, teams are continuing full speed ahead.

Erin Lanahan (16:59):
Absolutely. And they're not just giving their foot on the gas, Abby. They're strapping a rocket to the back. That's what's happening in philanthropy right now.

Abby Burns (17:08):
Erin, I have to imagine back to the idea of expectations. The right goal, whether it's closer to four and a half million, whether it's a billion, what have you, depends at least in part on the infrastructure that you have internally to actually work toward that goal.

Erin Lanahan (17:23):
Right.

Abby Burns (17:23):
You said that on average, the ROI from philanthropy efforts is four to one. My question is what goes into the one? What does it take to raise those funds?

Erin Lanahan (17:34):
So by and large, at its essence, we're talking about people, right? We're talking about the people who are raising the money, and we're talking about the people who are contributing money. So I want to talk about the people who are raising the money first. So when we think about campaign goals, it's really important to calibrate these goals to the staff that you have. That's one of the factors that I'd love for executives to take into account more often. If you are a hospital or health system CEO or CFO, and you are coming to the table asking for a 500 million dollar campaign, what we have seen in our research is that you need to be supporting this with 50 or more development FTEs. That's the median, right?

Abby Burns (18:15):
Wow.

Erin Lanahan (18:16):
Yeah.

Abby Burns (18:17):
That is a huge number. I have to say. I was really expecting you to say like five or something.

Erin Lanahan (18:22):
Five or 500 million. No, I mean, if you have a foundation staff of five to 10 people, our median campaign goal was much smaller and those billion dollar, those nine figure campaign goals, so anything with a B on the end, they get the most attention. You need at least 75 to a hundred FTEs, often more, and you need an extensive history of philanthropy, a robust set of what? Funding priorities and engagement from committed partners. Right?

Abby Burns (18:48):
Erin, this is a lot of FTEs at a time where workforce is very much on top of mind for leaders. How close are most systems to being appropriately resourced to hitting these benchmarks?

Erin Lanahan (19:03):
So Abby, I speak with maybe 200 to 300 hospital and health systems philanthropy leaders every year. I don't know that any of them has ever said to me that they have enough staff, and it's not because they're complainers. It's really for two reasons that I highlight. The first is they're always being asked to raise more and more money. So if they had enough staff in one year, they calibrated their staffing to a particular goal in the next year, their organization recognizes their success and comes to count on that revenue stream. You even see it showing up in some bond reports. Some bond ratings take into account strong and consistent philanthropy streams. Well, they have consistent philanthropy streams. You have to have consistent resourcing. But the other reason that no one feels that they have enough fundraisers, particularly development or major gifts officers, is just that there's extraordinary competition, right? Everyone is in campaign. It's not just hospitals and health systems. It's higher ed, it's service nonprofits, it's international aid. You think it's hard to find a primary care physician or a respiratory therapist right now? Try recruiting an experienced development officer.

Abby Burns (20:11):
Erin, you've used this word a couple of times that I want to come back to, which is consistent resourcing. What do you mean by that?

Erin Lanahan (20:18):
Yeah, so it's not just about hiring enough people. It's about maintaining sufficient numbers, and why is it so important in philanthropy? Well, philanthropy is all about authentic and deep relationships. Those take a lot of time to build. They take a lot of time to steward. It's pretty hard to maintain a strong and authentic relationship with a donor if their main point of contact is switching every few years. It's also a strategic mistake if that person is turning over, because many of hospitals' most committed donors give more than once. The billion dollar gift or the 2 billion dollar gift is never their first gift.

Abby Burns (20:56):
That makes sense.

Erin Lanahan (20:56):
We see too many hospitals undercutting their potential because they're engaged in yo-yo resourcing.

Abby Burns (21:03):
What is that?

Erin Lanahan (21:04):
I think back to the Great Recession, for example, or even any campaign that we're in. Let's use campaigns actually as an example, because they are so prevalent. So campaigns, they are a catalyst for increasing your philanthropy run rate, and so they are usually a time where your hospital or health system allows you to hire on more people. In our most recent research, about 70% of the organizations we looked at were able to add FTEs for their campaigns.

Abby Burns (21:34):
Oh, wow.

Erin Lanahan (21:34):
What's really interesting to me is pretty small number. So our preliminary data showed even at the 90th percentile, organizations were only adding five direct fundraisers and most for adding only one or two. So these hospitals are adding a few people. They're achieving their largest ever campaign goal. And then what happens at the end? So I'm going to oversimplify a bit. Many hospitals look at the philanthropy team and say, okay, the campaign is over. You don't need as many people. And they cut the number of FTEs that are allocated to development to the foundation or the development office. And even a lot of hospital foundations, if they're separately incorporated, to be clear, that's typically funded by the hospital or health system. But at the same time, your campaign is over, but your need for philanthropy at the hospital probably hasn't gone down, and campaigns can be a really powerful catalyst to increase that run rate.

(22:27):
So you've increased your run rate, but you cut FTEs in development. Well, Abby, now you decide that you want to go back to those halcyon days of the amount of money you're bringing in a campaign. Well, it can take months or even a year or more to recruit an experienced fundraiser. These professionals are incredibly in demand, and when you bring one on, you can't just hand off a relationship with a donor like a relay baton. So it can take 12 to 24 months for even the most experienced development officer to be closing significant gifts. No matter how talented they are, they have to reestablish those relationships with physicians and nurses, with trustees, with donors and prospects. And in the meantime, other nonprofits in your area have been courting those donors. So if there is one message, one message I want to send to health system executives right now, it's this. Don't cut your fundraisers. I know it's incredibly hard when you are under so much pressure, but protect this revenue stream so that it can flourish.

Abby Burns (23:33):
To your point, Erin, this isn't just a ready waiting pool of money they can tap into. You have to invest in maintaining it.

(25:08):
Okay. Let's say a system has resourced their team appropriately. They've set realistic targets. The other piece that you mentioned that I want to come back to is around compelling funding priorities. And my understanding, Erin, is that health systems shouldn't be looking to use philanthropy dollars to do things like backstop operating losses or finance to sort of keep the lights on type of expenses like an HVAC system. That can feel really hard when those are the most pressing needs a health system might have. How should leaders think about what makes for a compelling funding priority?

Erin Lanahan (25:44):
Absolutely, Abby. And certainly our philanthropy leaders understand the pressing and nuanced needs of their hospitals and health systems. It's interesting. Most of our survey respondents found it really hard to establish donor ready campaign priorities. Only a quarter of them said that it was easy. And in the interviews that we had, probably about 75 at this point, we have heard that often it's due to a lack of understanding from hospital leadership about the kinds of projects that are best suited for philanthropy or, and this is particularly true right now, because the hospital or health system's strategic plan is just in flux.

Abby Burns (26:24):
Right. We absolutely hear that. We hear systems shortening their strategic planning time horizon because of the amount of uncertainty and turbulence that they're seeing in the market. So Erin, I'm curious, what kinds of projects are well suited for philanthropy?

Erin Lanahan (26:38):
The good news is that there's actually a lot of overlap, Abby, on what hospital and health systems want to fund and what donors want to fund. That means there's a significant opportunity for philanthropy to support some of our institution's aims. So we see that organizations are fundraising for capital, they're fundraising for endowment, they're fundraising for programs, they're fundraising for medical education. In fact, most of the campaigns in our research are comprehensive. So think a large scale, multi-year initiative that encompasses all of the above, and donors are funding in these different areas.

(27:16):
Just to talk about capital for a second, because I know that that's a big concern of CFOs and strategic planners. And when I say capital here, I'm using this to mean sort of bricks and mortar, how are we actually building buildings? Not using it to mean financial capital. So 55% of the organizations we surveyed said their donors actually have a really strong interest in funding capital, and another 25% said they had at least a moderate interest, right? So they are funding buildings, but they're also funding some of the leading edge areas that urgently need philanthropic support to sustain. So that includes behavioral health and includes health equity.

Abby Burns (27:53):
Erin, my ears just perked up because a lot of conversations that we have these days are with health systems that are saying, "Hey, I need to realistically take a look at what services do I have to rationalize because I can't financially sustain them." What types of services or programs might be putting me on the map in a place that I don't want to be? And behavioral health is often at the top of the list or near the top of the list.

Erin Lanahan (28:14):
Yes. So behavioral health is a super interesting case, and I was just speaking with a community health system about this morning. Behavioral health is one of the four areas that they are focusing their grateful patient funding program on. 20 years ago, we would not have seen that, right? 20 years ago, we would've seen organizations say, "We are excluding anyone with a behavioral health," or they would've used the term mental health, "service out of our program entirely." But philanthropy has found that this is an area that donors are really compelled by.

(28:47):
And I just want to share one example. Vale Health System. So Vale Health in Colorado, their campaign is called, and it's an incredibly beautiful and effective campaign. It's called, It Takes a Valley. It is entirely focused around behavioral health needs, and they are actually fundraising in tandem with many of the community-based organizations that are across their service area, because they know that the health system cannot meet all of the needs of the patients that would eventually come to them, right?

Abby Burns (29:20):
Wow.

Erin Lanahan (29:21):
So I don't think we would've seen a hundred million dollars campaign focused on behavioral health 10 or 20 years ago.

Abby Burns (29:29):
And the thing that sticks out to me maybe the most from that example is you've got multiple nonprofits working together toward a shared fundraising goal and speaks to sort of the power of partnership. That's an example of working with external partners, but I know it's really important to the success of a philanthropy program to have strong internal partners. What does that look like?

Erin Lanahan (29:52):
Unique, committed allies to have an effective philanthropy program. No matter how exceptional the fundraiser is that you bring in to run your philanthropy team, you are not going to see the kinds of returns that you want unless you have some involvement. So oftentimes, Abby, the committed allies were themselves the largest donor, particularly board members, right?

Abby Burns (30:13):
Oh, interesting.

Erin Lanahan (30:14):
Yeah. A third of hospitals said that the largest gift in their campaign came from a volunteer leader, like a board member, a campaign cabinet member. But just because you may not be in a position to make that kind of transformational gift yourself does not mean you don't have an important role to play. Allies have a critical role to play in cultivating relationships with those transformational philanthropists. So 54% said that the hospital or health system CEO played a significant role in the relationship with their top campaign donor.

Abby Burns (30:47):
Wow.

Erin Lanahan (30:48):
Yeah. So it's meeting with the donor. It is helping to paint the vision for what a transformational gift could unlock in terms of elevating healthcare in your community. I want to be really clear. Your chief philanthropy officer is not going to ask you, a hospital or health system executive, to make the ask. You are not going to be asking for money. And that's one thing that oftentimes, understandably makes people feel a little bit nervous about getting involved.

Abby Burns (31:15):
I will say that's the first thing that came to mind when you said that 54% said that the CEO is involved in cultivating the relationship. What type of task are we putting on the CEO's plate? And it sounds like it's really using everyone to the top of their license.

Erin Lanahan (31:27):
Yeah. Love the terminology top of license. And again, when we think about the success that higher education institutions have had, it is absolutely an expectation that their president of their institution has a strong fundraising component to their job because they know that the donors, if they're investing significant funds in the future of the organization, they want a little face time with that person. They want to know that they're important to the institution. So that's what we see at hospitals and health systems as well.

Abby Burns (31:57):
Erin, I am mindful that philanthropy is often a little bit of an unsung hero when it comes to nonprofit healthcare. To close us out today, what messages have we not gotten to in our conversation that you want to make sure get into the ears of non-philanthropy leaders to help them better work with and support their philanthropy function?

Erin Lanahan (32:18):
There was another half of clear expectations that we didn't talk about. It's really knowing who your donors are and who they're likely to be. So MacKenzie Scott gets a lot of press, deservedly so for the amazing work that she's doing. MacKenzie Scott is not coming to save your hospital or health system. Donors and dollars are in demand. So there are some visionary community donors or foundations that might fund your work as a hospital or health system. Your core donor base is going to be grateful patients, and so the organizations that we see with effective philanthropy programs are those that understand how to unlock that opportunity.

Abby Burns (32:59):
Well, Erin, thank you so much for coming on Radio Advisory.

Erin Lanahan (33:03):
Abby, thank you so much for having me. As you said, I think it's often the unsung hero of hospital and healthcare programs, and it's my hope that we've put it in the spotlight a little more today.

Abby Burns (33:19):
Erin's healthcare campaign survey series is open for hospitals and health systems currently in campaign or who have been in campaign in the last five years. And Advisory Board is hosting a philanthropy roundtable about Grateful Patient Philanthropy on November 5th, where they'll get into a lot of the things we talked about today and even more, like the role of AI in Grateful Patient Philanthropy. I'll put links to both in the show notes because remember, as always, we're here to help.

(33:56):
New episodes drop every Tuesday. If you like Radio Advisory, please share it with your networks, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating in a review. Radio Advisory is a production of Advisory Board. This episode was produced by me, Abby Burns, as well as Rae Woods, Chloe Bakst and Atticus Raasch. The episode was edited by Katy Anderson with technical support provided by Dan Tayag, Chris Phelps, and Joe Shrum. Additional support was provided by Leanne Elston and Erin Collins. We'll see you next week.