The primary purpose of healthcare systems is to generate sustainable and sufficient resources to help them provide high-quality services to clients. Thus, the issue of charitable contributions like fundraising has been identified as an effective method to help healthcare organizations finance their activities, especially when a facility wants to increase the scope of its offering or improve the quality of services offered. Non-government organizations (NGOs), as well as civil society organizations (CSOs), have been recognized as among the top donors contributing considerable resources to support healthcare firms (Ziloochi et al., 2019). Donations have been identified as significant sources of revenue by organizations in different sectors, making the healthcare sector not an exception in soliciting funds from its clients or stakeholders. However, unlike in other sectors, one of the significant problems with fundraising in the healthcare industry has been limited methods of organizing and attracting donors. Discussing some opportunities a healthcare facility can use to generate sustainable income through donations is essential. Identifying these opportunities can help hospitals increase resources to either acquire state-of-the-art equipment, hire more staff, or expand their facilities and services to save more lives.
Background Literature
The issue of fundraising in the healthcare sector is not a new phenomenon in the industry. Many healthcare facilities and systems worldwide sustain their activities through donations and grants from the private or public sector. For example, after the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy’s recovery plan was centered around receiving funds from the European Union Recovery Fund. The other source of funding for the country’s national healthcare was donations from persons as well as large firms that help municipalities, healthcare providers, and regions. Such funds aim to finance investments in electronic healthcare records, industry digitization, and telemedicine expansion (Nataliia et al., 2021).
Similarly, Malaysia relied on fundraising for the country’s healthcare system during the covid-19 to obtain funds for its challenges, such as a shortage of workers, medical equipment and PPE. For example, NGOs and the public were generous enough and even self-produced protective tools like PPEs (Abd Samat et al., 2021). For these countries, social media and crowdfunding played essential roles in soliciting funds from the public. As a result, there have been questions on whether fundraising for healthcare organizations as well as the available opportunities for these facilities, is a viable option for any firm to raise revenue for its operations.
Analysis
Although fundraising has been considered an effective option to sustain healthcare facilities, especially private and smaller ones, there have been questions on whether this option is viable for long-term sustainability. However, medical crowdfunding, a seemingly new and rapidly expanding option for healthcare facilities to raise funds, is based on willingness. In other words, fundraising activities are held so that they can be continuous and are based on generosity. Most patients contribute based on their experiences with a specific healthcare facility, making them the main targets of fundraising. Therefore, regardless of the methods adopted or the type of healthcare facility, fundraising is a way of understanding patient satisfaction with the services they receive. Besides, although some activities, including crowdfunding, are held online, the donors contribute depending on the provided information. Ideally, as Cutrot et al. (2020) assert, evidence of the motivations for a medical facility to conduct fundraising and the implications for such activities are usually outlined in most donation operations. Since most healthcare organizations also explain how the raised funds are allocated, these activities imply that they act as people investing back into their own lives. For example, improving one’s healthcare clinical settings benefits the donors and their communities. However, Coutrot and colleagues argue that there are cases where the distribution of donations is not fairly done. Such cases occur when the donors influence the decisions to donate and the services to allocate the additional resources. In other words, the decisions are not based on medical conditions, the legitimacy of the demands, or priorities. Hence the funds might not be accounted for. For example, the continuation of charitable endeavors in the UK, especially Scotland, has been controversial since the onset of donations from the public (Stewart & Dodworth, 2023). Therefore, there is a need for solutions that can help a healthcare organization grow without creating a handful of charity brands, as has been the case in some regions.
Possible Solutions
One of the first possible solutions or opportunities for a healthcare facility for fundraising is engaging with corporate philanthropy. Corporate philanthropy has been defined as the activities an organization can voluntarily engage in to manage its reputation or impact on society (Gautier & Pache, 2015). Typically, these activities include donating services or products, monetary investments, employee volunteer programs, in-kind donations, or other business arrangements that can support social causes in society. In recent years, corporate philanthropy has gained popularity as a way of attracting contributions and resources for organizations. Thus, a healthcare organization can use this method to increase its publicity and promote employee engagement. For healthcare organizations, some philanthropic support is through sponsoring healthcare-related fundraising events where the facility can promote its brand. Besides, such organizations can invest in capital campaigns to raise funds for specific needs in the hospital, such as hiring budgets for more staff or purchasing MRI machines. Organizing such events will help a healthcare firm establish collaborations with other players in the industry and different sectors. For instance, the Red Nose Day collaboration with Walgreens has been one of the longstanding associations that have helped raise donations to support kids in poverty all over the US.
Another fundraising opportunity for healthcare organizations is establishing grateful patient programs (Collins et al., 2018). When a facility has a designated program to solicit funds from the patients, it can collect more donations than the normal solicitation from the clients. These programs allow clients to express gratitude to the organization or specific physicians for satisfactory services. Furthermore, the programs have the potential to bolster an organization’s reputation and public image. Such a reputation is crucial for attracting more donors and clients, which can increase the company’s revenue. Organizations like the Boston Children’s Hospital have designed these programs, encouraging clients to honor their loved ones with planned and memorial-giving opportunities.
Hosting fundraising meetings regarding a hospital’s foundation has also been identified as an opportunity for healthcare organizations to raise funds effectively. A hospital’s foundation advocates for the services offered within a facility. It is worth noting that hospital foundations operate independently to generate funds plus awareness for the needs of the local setting. Therefore, being isolated entities makes the foundations perfect opportunities to raise funds and pursue their agendas and those of the facilities they assist. However, most clients and donors are not aware of the functions of these foundations, making healthcare organizations responsible for hosting meetings where they can showcase the efforts and goals of such entities.
Maintaining communicating or sending messages to the donors can also be an opportunity to raise funds. Once a medical organization has attracted a generous donor, it must maintain communication to retain them. This is because establishing relationships and sending information on how the funds have been utilized will encourage the donors to continue funding the organization’s projects. Another related opportunity is creating and marketing healthcare fundraising donation forms. For example, revamping the online donation forms and making them shareable will encourage the clients visiting the website to share with their friends and families. Such efforts have been recognized in increasing donations, especially in the digital era.
Proposed Single Solution
Although there are many possible solutions to holding effective fundraising for healthcare organizations, the proposed solution is crowdfunding. Crowdfunding has been recognized as one of the easiest ways to raise money to cover medical expenses or other hospital operations. As mentioned earlier, crowdfunding involves reaching out to an organization’s supporters and asking them for donations. The top crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe help organizations develop mobile-responsive online donation pages. Unlike many fundraising opportunities, crowdfunding helps an organization collect funds from family members, friends, business partners, as well as strangers. In other words, the opportunity allows an organization to collect more donations compared to different ways of fundraising. However, this solution should not be undertaken like normal crowdfunding opportunities. A healthcare organization should employ third parties and inform its partners and generous donors about the event before launching. Such a move will eliminate the misappropriation of funds and ensure the healthcare company is accountable for all the collected funds. This is because previous crowdfunding opportunities have been conducted for unproven expenses (Snyder & Cohen, 2019). Thus, even though the solution can help collect more funds, monitoring their usage and understanding the purpose of such fundraising will avoid similar incidents.
Implementation Plan
Since the above-proposed solution is not expected to run like other crowdfunding opportunities, partnering with corporations or foundations is the first step in implementing it. Research shows dynamic communication and partnerships with potential donors can attract more funding opportunities (Behl et al., 2023). Numerous corporations and foundations are interested in donating to healthcare organizations. Such foundations and firms can be a way to publicize and build on the reputation of a healthcare firm before undertaking crowdfunding. However, the organization should partner with firms whose objectives and values align since most corporations are interested in donating or investing in causes that match their own.
After forming the partnerships, the healthcare organization should extensively research prospective donors. As part of marketing an organization’s event, knowing about the partners’ backgrounds is crucial for the firm’s reputation and for attracting more clients. It is also easier to connect with partners that one understands and helps build relationships with them. After garnering adequate partners, the healthcare firm should outline its planned crowdfunding. Once the partners have agreed to support the fundraising, it is time to launch it. It is worth noting that the partners can be both organizations and loyal clients who will support the fundraising in contributions and by pushing the online forms or other materials required to attract more donors.
The last step in implementing this plan is to host a physical event where all the partners will be present and launch it online and offline. Launching an event physically helps convince potential donors and encourage them to donate. Therefore, it is vital to acknowledge each partner’s contribution during this event as it will attract clients from different backgrounds.
Why And How My Solution Will Solve the Identified Problem
Crowdfunding will solve the fundraising issue for healthcare organizations better than the other solutions. Such campaigns have been adopted by most organizations and even individual fund drives because they can be managed from anywhere. Once an organization has launched them online, they can manage it from their phones or any other device. This makes it easy to track the progress of the fund drive and account for the contributions. Besides, many people can understand the campaign, making it a transparent way of raising funds (Kaartemo, 2017). In fact, transparency has been one of the significant reasons why crowdfunding is preferred as a way of raising funds in most settings. An organization can also use videos, images and compelling descriptions to explain its situation, which appeals more to people who cannot attend the firm’s physical activities.
Additionally, the campaign will attract more people since online platforms can be used to reach out to strangers and people from all over the world. Moreover, during periods of crisis like COVID-19, crowdfunding opportunities have proven to be more successful than other ways of fundraising (Mahmud et al., 2021). People could donate funds without assembling in an organization or its foundation, which helped save lives in remote locations.
References
Abd Samat, A. H., Rashid, A. A., Yunus, N. A. M., Salim, A. M. H., & Musa, H. (2022). A Malaysian Medical Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) Experience in the Emergency Response for COVID-19, Using the Whole-of-Society Collaborative Concept. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 16(6), 2665-2668.
Behl, A., Dutta, P., Sheorey, P., & Singh, R. K. (2023). Examining the role of dialogic communication and trust in donation-based crowdfunding tasks using information quality perspective. The TQM Journal, 35(1), 292-319.
Collins, M. E., Rum, S. A., & Sugarman, J. (2018). Navigating the ethical boundaries of grateful patient fundraising. JAMA, 320(10), 975-976.
Coutrot, I. P., Smith, R., & Cornelsen, L. (2020). Is the rise of crowdfunding for medical expenses in the United Kingdom symptomatic of systemic health and social care gaps? Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 25(3), 181-186.
Gautier, A., & Pache, A. C. (2015). Research on corporate philanthropy: A review and assessment. Journal of Business Ethics, 126, 343-369.
Kaartemo, V. (2017). The elements of a successful crowdfunding campaign: A systematic literature review of crowdfunding performance. International Review of Entrepreneurship, 15(3), 291-318.
Mahmud, A., Ding, D., & Hasan, M. M. (2021). Corporate social responsibility: Business responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. SAGE Open, 11(1), 1-17.
Nataliia, V., Barzylovych, A., Zabolotna, A., Boiko, M., & Rybchych, I. (2021). Healthcare facilities management in digitalization context. International Journal of Health Sciences, 5(3), 429-440.
Snyder, J., & Cohen, I. G. (2019). Medical crowdfunding for unproven medical treatments: should GoFundMe become a gatekeeper? Hastings Center Report, 49(6), 32-38.
Stewart, E., & Dodworth, K. (2023). ‘The Biggest Charity You’ve Never Heard of’: Institutional Logics of Charity and the State in Public Fundraising in Scotland’s NHS. Journal of Social Policy, 52(2), 215-236.
Ziloochi, M. H., Takian, A., & Arab, M. (2019). Charitable contribution in healthcare: What drives Iranians to donate money? Archives of Iranian medicine, 22(3), 109-115.
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