Campaigns are a go-to strategy for intensive, big-ticket fundraising at hospitals and health systems. Today, expectations of campaign financial performance are higher than ever—but so are donors’ expectations for clearly defined impact.

To support your development team on your next (or current) campaign, we have collected all of our best resources in one place. Below, you’ll find best practices and guidance on framing your campaign for donors, leveraging the influence of volunteers and allies, closing larger gifts, and building a sustainable pipeline.

Click the links below to jump ahead to resources on each campaign imperative:

• Develop compelling priorities and messaging
• Prepare allies to amplify their impact
• Deploy agile and productive volunteers
• Land big gifts
• Improve visibility to refresh your pipeline

Develop compelling priorities and messaging

Translate strategic campaign priorities for donors

The increasing breadth and sophistication of hospitals’ needs has made it harder to identify and explain campaign priorities to donors. Curating Donor-Ready Campaign Priorities includes four tactics for sourcing and translating strategic needs into donor-ready opportunities, including:

• Mapping the campaign to your organization’s strategic plan
• Sourcing campaign priorities from clinical leaders
• Identifying and building cases for system-level priorities
• Applying donors’ insights for building more effective cases

Read the research report

Build campaigns around new-in-kind needs

Hospitals and health systems have embraced new priorities like population health, primary care, and patient consumerism—a marked shift from the priorities that philanthropy has successfully supported.

Streamline campaign structure for well-scoped priorities

Our Get the playbook

Train staff for campaign and case-making roles

The Fundraiser Virtual Academy, our online training tool for front line fundraisers, offers go-at-your-own-pace courses in both Campaigns and Case Making. The courses provide resources and tools to apply our best practice models in ways that are meaningful to your specific organization.

Access the FVA

Prepare allies to amplify their impact

Help clinical allies make meaningful connections with donors

Even if your campaign priorities are attractive and well scoped, the best people to present your case to donors are often the people who live and breathe the work: your clinicians.

Our tactics on Preparing Clinical Messengers to Bring Priorities to Donors provide two ways that health care organizations can elevate clinicians’ interactions with donors:

• Help them distill their work into a presentation that resonates with donors
• Provide structure around their donor interactions to maximize response

Get the tactics

Scope specific roles for executives in your campaign

Our ready-to-use presentation, Engage CXOs in Campaign Fundraising, contains data and talking points to help you explain to executives why they should and how they can support your campaign efforts.

Get the presentation

Deploy agile and productive volunteers

Identify and define roles to match the strengths of your volunteers

Today’s campaigns place greater demands on both fundraising professionals and volunteers, especially as campaigns get longer. Deliberately scoping and staging volunteer roles in campaigns is essential to maximizing the value of volunteer participation. Agile Campaign Strategy presents tactics for:

• Identifying the right volunteer leaders
• Vetting an effective campaign cabinet
• Phasing volunteer activity to limit burnout

Read the research report

Train volunteers to support fundraising activities

The Health Care Fundraising Board of 2020 includes specific guidance and tools on how to get your volunteers to help make the connections between your organization and potential prospects. Our best resources provide:

• Ready-to-use presentations to orient volunteers to the moves management process, from major gifts prospect identification through solicitation and stewardship
• Downloadable worksheets and referral forms to make volunteers’ work easier
• Role play toolkits and sample scripts to help volunteers become comfortable making connections

Get the resources and tools

Land big gifts

Meet elevated expectations of donors

Today’s philanthropists are focused on results. Current and prospective donors increasingly want to see concrete plans for how charities plan to use their philanthropy, as well as proof of their gifts' impact. Fulfilling the Donor Investor Mandate provides best practices and implementation guidance on:

• Creating compelling business cases for use in solicitation
• Tracking and communicating data on the impact of giving

Get the report

Improve visibility to refresh the pipeline

Today’s larger campaigns can require twice as many prospects at every level of the giving pyramid as in previous campaigns. The practice briefs in Building a Sustainable Campaign Pipeline show how to:

• Assess current pipeline health and the need for new tactics
• Retain and reactivate existing donors for future needs

Get the practice briefs