Healthcare Nonprofit Fundraising Experiences First Increase Since Recession

I often write about industry reports that provide insight into the state of nonprofit fundraising and emerging trends. Most recently I wrote about how the Decline in Nonprofit Fundraising Continues According to the latest Blackbaud Index which provides reliable statistical data on overall and online fundraising results. Through my research over the past year, I have often made specific mention of the troublesome fundraising results Healthcare Organizations were experiencing as they were consistently posting declining results in comparison to 2011. However, recent 2011 research released  by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) titled Report on Giving to Healthcare – US and Report on Giving to Healthcare – Canada, painted a similar picture to Blackbaud’s 2011 statistics.

The AHP compiled results based on a voluntary survey of 469 nonprofit hospitals and healthcare organizations and 2011 fundraising revenue. In comparison to 2010 the sector experienced an increase of 8.2% representing $8.941 billion in donation revenue and a 6.2% increase in return on investment (productivity). These are encouraging results for a sector that had not been fairing well due to the recession and unstable economic climate and broke a record that was last achieved in 2008. Other encouraging findings included a growth in the number of donors and gifts, representing an increase of 2% and 4% respectively, with hospitals generating the largest portion of contributions and the largest gifts being made by wealthy donors.

When broken down by organization type, productivity was higher amongst academic institutions, programs with the largest number of professional staff and programs with a history of more than 10.1 years. To compare, organizations with staff of 7 or more full-time employees raised $4.33 for every dollar spent in contrast to $2.60 for organizations with only 1 full-time employee. Similarly, older programs with 10.1 to 15 years of experience generated $4.40 for each dollar spent compared to organizations that have had programs for less than 5 years which generated $1.77 for every dollar. These stronger results are an indication that nonprofits can achieve fundraising success through the collaborative efforts of a larger team and the experience that an established organization can generate.

Based on 90 surveyed organizations, their Canadian counterparts fared slightly better with an increase of 12.5% in 2011 compared to 2010, representing $1.204 billion in donation revenue and a record not seen since 2007. On the downside overall productivity (donations generated for every dollar of expenditure) was down by $0.20 a decrease of -5.6%, with a reported $3.36 generated in 2011 for every dollar spent, compared to $3.56 in 2010. Public and academic institutions had the best performance with $4.42 and $3.85 respectively, while organizations with 2.1 to 4 fulltime professional employees generated the most donations compared to those who had less or more employees. The highest return on investment was achieved by organizations with 400 plus staffed beds ($3.60)

Although, Blackbaud results for Healthcare Organizations have not been very positive in 2012 reporting a decline over 2011 for 9 consecutive months, the latest results in September 2012 posted an increase of half a percent giving this sector optimism for stronger end-of-year fundraising results. One thing is certain, the significant success and record breaking year Healthcare experienced in 2011 over the previous year provides more insight into why this subsector has been experiencing a continuous decline throughout 2012. I anticipate better results for Healthcare nonprofits in the coming months and throughout 2013.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

For nonprofit, nonprofit fundraising, CSR business and other news, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Pinterest or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.