Several critical factors must be in place in order to develop and sustain successful philanthropic support at healthcare institutions. These include building your potential donor pipeline ethically and effectively, partnering with physicians to increase referrals, and positioning and optimizing your fundraising events. All of these issues need time, care, and attention to address. But there is one factor that, if operating optimally, can benefit all the others—the quality of the engagement of the executive staff—in particular, the working relationship between the Chief Development Officer (CDO) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
In the last few years, this issue has surfaced in hundreds of Advancement Resources’ conversations with development professionals and hospital executives. An ineffective working relationship can be a source of constant struggle that makes professional life far harder than it needs to be. Yet, when the relationship does work well, it can increase philanthropy—improving healthcare and ultimately helping patients’ quality of life.
For these reasons, Advancement Resources and the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) have partnered to produce a study on the intricacies and nuances of the relationships between development leaders and healthcare C-Suite executives—why they don’t work well in some organizations, what similarities exist across different hospitals and hospital systems that get it right, what can be done to improve challenging situations, and more.
The full Healthcare Philanthropy Leadership Essentials Report, based on this groundbreaking research, will be available early in 2018. For a preview of the research findings, stay tuned to the Advancement Resources blog. Research uncovered five main themes that characterize the most successful healthcare executive-level relationships, which will be highlighted in a series of posts this fall and winter.
If you are one of the leaders that contributed your expertise and experiences to this research, thank you once again for assisting in this vital project that will benefit the entire healthcare philanthropy industry.
Download the Healthcare Philanthropy Leadership Essentials Report