By JULIE MINDA
It is common for even the largest health systems in the U.S. to concentrate fund-raising and fund-giving activities almost entirely at a local level. This approach has individual hospital foundations building relationships with local givers, securing donations and bequests and hosting fund-raising galas, charity golf games, celebrity appearances and the like.
And this model can be very effective for raising money for building campaigns and new equipment, service expansion and community-focused programs. But it is generally not an effective way to create a reliable income stream for long-lasting initiatives with the potential to impact large populations of people across a big health care system.
For that type of muscular programming, San Francisco-based Dignity Health is building a system-wide foundation. The foundation will fund large-scale programming, over a multistate area, aimed at preventing disease, educating people on healthy living and improving access to care for underserved populations. The foundation's strategy is to originate initiatives at the system level or to take initiatives that have been successful in one of the communities Dignity Health serves and spread those programs to other Dignity Health communities. The system has 39 hospitals and more than 380 other sites in 20 states.
The foundation's priority is to further the goals of health care reform, said Nancy Bussani, vice president of philanthropy for the Dignity Health Foundation. Reform "is about prevention and education, but preventive care is not always paid for (by patients and their payers), so we need partners," she said. The foundation's role is to identify and secure funding partners for initiatives that hold the most promise to impact the health of large populations of people.
Lining up dollars
Established in February 2013, the foundation has a 10-member board headed by Dignity Health President and Chief Executive Lloyd Dean. Dignity Health provides foundation funding and the foundation is seeking commitments from private and corporate foundations and government grant programs — negotiations with potential funders are under way now. While just two Dignity Health staff members are dedicated full-time to the system-level foundation, numerous staff from throughout the system will provide their time and expertise on a project-by-project basis.
Dean, Bussani and the foundation's board evaluate programming opportunities for their potential to address health care issues in Dignity Health regions, and to attract seed or sustainable funding from philanthropists and grantors.
So far, the foundation has identified six programs that it will fund. They include efforts to:
- educate student athletes on the risk of head injuries in order to reduce the incidence of concussions.
- provide asthma patients with inhalers and case management to assist them in controlling their symptoms and preventing acute episodes. That program will be offered in communities with high percentages of low-income people.
- provide a path to health care careers for low-income, minority students.
- deliver simulation training in a mobile lab to frontline caregivers in order to improve patient care.
- create community gardens in communities with limited access to nutritious food.
- combat human trafficking by educating frontline caregivers on how to identify victims and by expanding the scope of programs to help victims.
There are an additional dozen-plus projects being evaluated for their feasibility, according to Bussani.
She said most programs will start in a pilot phase before being scaled up; all will include tracking systems so that Dignity Health and other funders can gauge their impact, and so that Dignity Health can make informed decisions to maximize program effectiveness.
Dignity Health is not yet disclosing projected program budgets, nor is it naming committed or potential outside funders.
The system foundation does not replace Dignity Health hospitals' foundations, which will continue to raise money for capital campaigns and other local community-based initiatives. Bussani said the system will not contact potential funders that Dignity Health's local foundations are approaching for donations.
Growth potential
Bussani said the establishment of Dignity Health Foundation comes as a shift is happening among many philanthropic organizations. While many still fund projects on a local, small-scale basis, increasingly organizations are funding programs that can benefit large numbers of people and are designed to become self-sustaining. The organizations are increasingly concerned with the social impact that their philanthropic investments will have, and so there is an ever-greater focus on tracking and evaluating results.
Bussani said with a system-wide structure, it is possible to set up programs that fit expectations for more expansive, far-reaching impact.
The system-wide approach also allows fund-raising on a scale not usually possible with individual hospitals. System representatives may have the clout to gain access to philanthropies that operate on a nationwide scale and to government representatives who control federal grant dollars, Bussani said.
There are other benefits-of-scale to be leveraged from a system foundation, too. Bussani said eventually the system foundation will take on some of the routine campaign funding and planning functions of Dignity Health hospital foundations, freeing more time for local staff to raise funds in their communities. The system might identify preferred vendors for local hospital fundraising campaigns and negotiate pricing discounts based on the volume that will drive.
Bussani said building a foundation "takes patience and persistence. This is more complex in a large system. But the long-term pay off will be greater."
She added, "There has to be a commitment by top leaders" to make a system-level foundation successful, "and we have that long-term commitment here from our system's leaders."
Confirmed initiatives seek to address priority community concerns
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