Data-Driven Fundraising: Strategic Plan for Medical Education

Higher education institutions, including medical schools, increasingly rely on fundraising to bridge funding gaps and support their missions. This paper presents a viewpoint on data-driven strategies in fundraising, outlining a 4-step approach for effective planning while considering ethical implications. It outlines a 4-step approach to creating an effective, end-to-end, data-driven fundraising plan, emphasizing the crucial stages of data collection, data analysis, goal establishment, and targeted strategy formulation. By leveraging internal and external data, schools can create tailored outreach initiatives that resonate with potential donors. However, the fundraising process must be grounded in ethical considerations. Ethical challenges, particularly in fundraising with grateful medical patients, necessitate transparent and honest practices prioritizing donors’ and beneficiaries’ rights and safeguarding public trust. This paper presents a viewpoint on the critical role of data-driven strategies in fundraising for medical education. It emphasizes integrating comprehensive data analysis with ethical considerations to enhance fundraising efforts in medical schools. By integrating data analytics with fundraising best practices and ensuring ethical practice, medical institutions can ensure financial support and foster enduring, trust-based relationships with their donor communities.


Table of Contents
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Introduction
Higher education institutions play a crucial role in shaping society's future by developing new ideas, advancing knowledge, and preparing future leaders.However, to fulfill this role, institutions need financial resources.
Fundraising is a vital aspect of higher education because it helps organizations acquire some of the financial resources needed to achieve their mission, vision, and strategic goals.Fundraising can help institutions fund new academic programs, foster research and student learning, advance knowledge, and build links with the community.(1,2) Higher education and medical schools, in particular, are expensive (3), and many students require financial assistance to attend college or university.Fundraising can help institutions provide financial support for scholarships, grants, and other forms of financial aid to students who need it most.
Proceeds generated from fundraising endeavors can enhance and modernize campus infrastructure, encompassing vital domains such as classrooms, laboratories, libraries, dormitories, and athletic amenities.The increased financial resources from fundraising activities can be strategically allocated to recruiting and retaining distinguished faculty and researchers.These accomplished individuals occupy a pivotal position in both fostering student education and thus propelling the boundaries of knowledge forward.

A Fundraising Road Map
A fundraising plan or road map is aligned with an institution's strategic plan and is an essential component of a successful fundraising effort.It is a written document that sets Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound (SMART) goals (4) for the fundraising campaign and communicates these goals and objectives to internal and external stakeholders, including faculty, staff, donors, prospective donors, and the general public.The road map helps determine the resources (human, financial, material, etc.) needed to successfully implement the campaign, including academic leadership, advancement staff, volunteers, campaign materials, and so on, as well as how best to allocate these resources to maximize the return on investment (ROI).
The plan also aims to recognize the organization's major philanthropic contributors.In particular, it helps ensure that high net worth, prospective supporters are engaged, including alumni and friends, corporations, foundations, and government agencies, and that they share an interest in furthering the organization's mission, strategic goals, and fundraising priorities.The road map often includes targeted cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship strategies by fundraising program, unit, geographic region, and source of funds (eg, cash, gifts of publicly-traded securities) to ensure maximum ROI (5).
By establishing a framework that includes timelines for evaluating the campaign's success, the fundraising plan helps to keep the campaign on track by checking the progress made against goals set on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.The plan also includes KPIs (key performance indicators) by which to measure each fundraising program and solicitor's success.Some KPIs may include the number and quality of meetings undertaken with potential donors, gift proposals submitted, gifts received, total funds raised, number of new donors, and gift size; in addition, ultimately, they have an impact on the organization.

Using Data in Fundraising
Data play a critical role in developing a successful fundraising plan.Data provide valuable insights into the past, current, and future donor areas of philanthropic interest, as well as a measurement for the effectiveness of past fundraising campaigns, strategies, programs, and methods.Once analyzed, data can guide the fundraising efforts toward opportunities for growth and help offer the indicators of potential risks or barriers to success.
Medical schools (or any faculty) can develop a data-driven fundraising plan based on information and insights aligned with achieving their mission and fundraising goals.Using data to inform strategy and decision-making, medical schools can develop more effective and targeted fundraising plans that deliver better results and build stronger relationships with donors and prospective donors as well as the intended beneficiaries (6).

The Four Pillars of Data-Driven Fundraising
There are four key steps to develop an end-to-end data-driven fundraising plan: (a) data collection; (b) data analysis; (c) establishing fundraising goals and objectives; and (d) formulating targeted fundraising strategies.

Data Collection
The first step for medical schools in developing a data-driven fundraising plan is collecting data, both quantitative and qualitative.External and internal research is key, both from primary and secondary sources.External information about current and potential donors is often publicly available, including secondary data sets such as demographic and career information, professional networks and affiliations, giving history, and philanthropic interests.Institutional primary donor data can be analyzed to determine linkages to the medical school, affinity, and giving patterns, including gift amounts, giving frequency, past gift designations, and retention rates.These primary data sets can often be used in algorithmic analysis (in combination with secondary data available in the marketplace) to deepen our understanding of the donor landscape.
Additional information about donor experience, potential future giving interests, and preferred methods of communications can be gleaned from various data-collection tools, such as surveys, focus groups, personal meetings, and social media.Internal and external as well as primary and secondary data sets can be used together and separately to help organizations better understand donors' and prospective donors' interests, as well as the financial capacity and emotional links to the organization, thereby enabling medical schools to develop targeted outreach strategies that better meet donors' needs and preferences.
In addition to collecting data on donors, it is also important to have access to information about an institution's past fundraising campaigns, comparative data about other professional schools and peer organizations, and the industry trends.These data provide benchmarks and guideposts for planning, measurement, and evaluation.

Data Analysis
Once data on donors, past campaigns, and industry trends have been collected, they can be analyzed in order to uncover patterns and trends that in turn provide insights for future fundraising goals and objectives.For example, by examining the giving patterns of alumni, friends, retirees, corporations, and foundations, analysts can pinpoint the organization's foremost donors in terms of total contributions.Data analysis can reveal which donors have made the most substantial gifts, including those with deep ties to the organization, based on their giving history, donation frequency, and level of involvement.Based on these data points, predictive analysis can also help guide a strategy as to which donors are most likely to increase their contributions, both in terms of their capability and willingness to give more.Analysis allows fundraising campaign planners to highlight individuals and organizations currently not donating but who have significant potential to support crucial future initiatives.
Data from past fundraising campaigns can be analyzed to determine what programs (annual, major gifts, principal gifts, and planned gifts) and strategies were the most successful against their respective goals.Analysis helps understand performance trends (high and low) and which areas have the most potential for future growth.Similarly, fundraising tactics, such as direct mail, call center, electronic solicitations, personal approach, social media, events, and so on, can be evaluated to see which methods have the greatest ROI and growth potential.Understanding that donor-acquisition methods are in general costlier than the methods used to upgrade existing donors, steps in donor acquisition, retention, and upgrading can be further analyzed to understand and guide the fundraiser's strategic planning and resource deployment.Data can also help to determine whether certain geographical areas, sources of revenue, fund designations, cohorts, and programs will provide the most predictable ROI for scarce faculty resources.
An analysis of data on current and prospective donors, past campaign successes and failures, peer organizations, and industry, socioeconomic, and technological trends are some of the factors to consider when determining where to allocate future resources for maximizing fundraising success.A thoughtful fundraising strategy can also further equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives, inviting a broad range of Canadians and international citizens to invest in specific educational missions.

Establishing Fundraising Goals and Objectives
To establish an overall fundraising campaign with SMART goals, medical schools should start by determining the cost of delivering programs and services as per their strategic plan and expected revenue from nonfundraising sources.Once the revenue gap is determined, fundraising campaign planners can then examine the following: (a) past fundraising campaign results; (b) financial capacity and affinity as well as inclination of the faculty's donor pool, especially high net worth individuals with the greatest capacity to give; (c) opportunities for growth based on institutional, industry, technological, and/or global trends; (d) social, economic, and political climate; (e) organizational reputation; and (f) potential risks.These can be used to discover a realistic overall fundraising goal depending on the timeframe established.
However, of utmost importance is establishing a compelling case in support of a given program or project (gift designation).Donors give because they are deeply interested in supporting a given cause and because of the impact their gift will have on the beneficiaries.Research on high net worth donors has concluded that donors give because they want to make transformational change, have societal impact, and leave a personal legacy (7).So, as we analyze the data to focus on our best potential donors and the most efficient fundraising strategies, a compelling case for support remains crucial to the success of any fundraising program.
In addition to the overarching fundraising goal, there are other subgoals that organizations can establish to align with the overarching goal.For example, the subgoals may be to increase the total number of donors to a medical school by a specific percentage (ie, the percentage of alumni who give back to their alma mater), as well as increase the average gift size per donor, the number of annual campaign donors upgraded to major gifts, the number of new monthly donors, and the number of new multiyear pledges.Subgoals are chosen from the data analysis as these data points align with increasing overarching fundraising success.
Subgoals can also be established by year/decade of graduation, region, fundraising program (eg, annual campaign, major gifts, principal gifts, planned giving); source (eg, alumni, friends, foundations, corporations, other organizations); gift designation (eg, case for supporting students, research, infrastructure, community engagement); and individual fundraiser/solicitor, team, and unit.Donor communication, engagement, and stewardship subgoals can also be set.Aligning subgoals and measurements with overarching goals associated with success metrics helps create an integrated strategy.

Developing Targeted Fundraising Strategies
Once SMART fundraising goals have been established, medical schools can use data to develop targeted strategies and related activities, budgets, and timelines to reach their organizational goals and objectives.
For example, if the goal is to increase revenue to a specific fund designation or case for support, and the data reveal specific donor groups to be most supportive of these, then targeted communications, outreach, and solicitation strategies can be developed to better reach these donor groups, thereby increasing the chances of fundraising success.
For example, if past giving trends indicate that alumni are most likely to support scholarship funds, then medical schools may choose to focus their fundraising efforts and activities on reaching out to their alumni via various means of communication, highlighting the impact that scholarships have on student access and achievement and subsequently inviting alumni to make or upgrade their commitment to scholarship funds.In other words, by reinforcing the compelling case for support with donor groups most likely to respond, the fundraising ROI becomes greater.
In another example, if the data show that a certain percentage of a medical school's donors is in the 60+ age range, the faculty can develop focused, planned giving strategies, communicating how legacy gifts (eg, deferred giving in the form of a bequest or life insurance) contribute to the longterm sustainability of the medical school's vision.If the data show that a significant number of high net worth donors live in a particular geographical area, regional engagement, cultivation, and solicitation strategies can be developed accordingly to better meet the needs and interests of this group.This list of examples shows how targeted approaches can be developed through data analysis and planning.

Ethical Practice in Fundraising
Ethics in higher education fundraising are about conducting fundraising efforts in a manner that is consistent with ethical values and principles and that fosters trust and accountability.In a normative context, it can be said that "fundraising is ethical when it promotes and protects trust in fundraising and unethical when it harms trust."(13) Medical schools must ensure that fundraising practices are transparent, honest, and responsible and that all parties involved in the fundraising process are treated with respect.
Many fundraisers in Canada are guided by the AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals) Code of Ethical Principals, which encourages them to practice their profession with integrity, honesty, and truthfulness, as well as safeguard the public trust.The AFP Donor Bill of Rights highlights the principle of philanthropy rooted in voluntary action for communal benefit, emphasizing transparency, trust, and responsible stewardship in non-profit engagements.It outlines donors' rights including being informed of the organization's mission, usage of donations, board identity, access to financial statements, assurance of gift utilization as intended, respectful and confidential handling of donation information, professional interactions, clarity on the status of solicitors (volunteers or employees), option to opt-out from mailing lists, and the freedom to inquire and receive honest responses when donating (8).
The authors make the case that "fundraisers are unlike commercial marketers in that they arguably have two key constituencies-their donors and their beneficiaries through a transfer rather than an exchange" (13), including that there must be a balance in protecting both donors and beneficiaries and not applying ethics to one at the expense of another.
Fundraisers should be transparent about the purpose of the funds being raised, how the funds will be used, and any potential benefits or risks associated with donating.Furthermore, they should treat all potential donors and beneficiaries fairly and equitably, without discrimination or favoritism.Donors' data, including personal information and donation history, should be confidential and not shared with third parties without their consent (6).Moreover, fundraisers should avoid situations that could create conflicts of interest for themselves, their organizations, the donors, and the beneficiaries.
One area of importance is grateful patient fundraising (GPFR), a unique approach to charitable giving where patients, often touched deeply by the care they have received, choose to financially support their health care institutions.Although GPFR is widespread, it raises ethical issues for patients, physicians, development professionals, and institutions.In 2004, the American Medical Association (AMA) Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs acknowledged that philanthropic donations are essential to maintaining state-of-the-art medical facilities and conducting research but discouraged physicians from directly soliciting from their patients, especially during a clinical encounter.( 9) More recently, Collins made a list of recommendations and stated, among others, that GPFR discussions must be avoided when patients are clinically vulnerable.(10) Philanthropy does not justify a level of medical care not available to other patients, and institutions should recognize and take measures to mitigate the ethical risks inherent in wealth screening (11).
Educational institutions are also responsible for using donated funds wisely and effectively and ensuring that the intended purposes of the donations are fulfilled.Institutions are urged to have a fundraising committee made up of educators, physicians, and fundraisers to reduce safety concerns and prevent fraudulent behavior.Fundraisers are required to abide by the established rules of their fundraising organization.( 12)

Conclusion
Developing a fundraising plan or road map is crucial for medical education institutions to achieve their institutional vision and goals, allocate resources effectively, and ultimately raise the funds they need to make up for budget shortfalls, remain competitive, and ultimately transform their institutions.This is a partnership between practitioner fundraisers and academic leadership.
A fundraising plan with clear goals, objectives, strategies, action plans, and timelines helps to build stronger relationships with donors, prospective donors, and volunteers by providing them with a clear understanding of the institution's needs and goals, what the institution's plan is to achieve these goals, and how their gifts can make a difference.
Data collection and data analysis are two steps essential for establishing SMART fundraising goals and developing strategies that will yield the greatest fundraising results.By having a well-designed and data-driven fundraising plan, medical schools can ensure that they have the resources they need to support their students, research, and mission in the short and long term.