
10 Fundraising Problems Hope Won’t Cure
By Steven A. Reed

This list of 10 problems was first published as a sidebar to the cover story of the fall 2012 Journal of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy. The “Hope Isn’t a Strategy” portion of the title came from a confidential fundraising study we did within a major health system. We found hospital CEOs generally believed they were raising half or less of the money they should, yet those same CEOs expressed optimism that fundraising would improve.
Unfortunately, they gave little rationale for this belief. They were relying on hope — and hope alone.
A far better answer is FPI. Lean and other PI tools can do amazing things for fundraising. Hospitals in recent years have used them to do things like eliminating “never” events, raising patient satisfaction and improving emergency department throughput.
Here are 10 fundraising problems Hope won’t cure that FPI can.