Blog
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness Monday, August 17, 2009 The below graphic is from the BBC's website. It should be required reading, not only in this country!
Whither Healthcare Philanthropy? Friday, August 07, 2009  Everyday I pass through South Kensington on the way to work. The view of the Natural History Museum serves as a permanent reminder of the magnitude of Victorian philanthropy.
A recent report by Barclays Wealth (in co-operation with Ledbury Research) states that among major donors, both in the UK and the US, 58% believe that health and medical causes will become more important over the next ten years, the highest figure recorded.
Yet this statistic underlines the major problem with many of the philanthropy surveys that come out of private banks and similar institutions. What do donors mean by 'health and medical'? For some it's guaranteeing clean water supplies in the developing world, for others it's pure research to find a cure for cancer. How many actually actually meant supporting and supplementing the delivery of public healthcare in the UK through the NHS?
Yet the need for such increased support for acute and primary healthcare in England will become increasingly important.
Both main political parties have indicated an unwillingness to commit to increases in NHS funding beyond 2011. As a result, either the economy and resultant tax revenues must recover in short order or, as seems more likely, the further development of other income streams must be supported. With private patient income directly correlated to economic recovery and limited by statute for NHS Foundation Trusts, it seems the one clear answer is to focus on fundraising.
Visiting the Development Office of Massachusetts General on my recent trip to the States, it came as no surprise to learn that the hospital's fundraising department employs 95 people generating many millions of dollars each year in gifts, both to annual and capital appeals.
What is required is the re-establishment of the culture of philanthropic support for public healthcare in this country, something which appeared to leave these shores during the early part of the 20th century, through the use of some of the healthcare fundraising techniques that have proved successful over many decades in the US.
The first 50 years of the NHS may have changed attitudes towards the funding and delivery of public healthcare, but the twin forces of demographics and tax mean that UK philanthropists once again have a significant role to play in the support of hospitals and healthcare in the UK.
SPNM 2009 Monday, August 03, 2009  I've just returned from attending the Strategic Perspectives for Nonprofit Management 2009 programme at the Harvard Business School, thanks to a scholarship award from the the Hansjoerg Wyss Fund for Social Enterprise.
It's certainly reassuring that an august institution such as HBS takes social enterprise as seriously as it does the corporate 'for-profit' sector.
The usual positive comments can be made about the functional and international range of the delegates, but overall you come away with two clear impressions: (1) that HBS 'does what it says on the tin' as a global leader in management education and (2) that there is a set of strategic planning tools for the nonprofit sector that are fundamentally different from those used in standard for-profit corporate planning.
The Charity's focus must be not 'what we do', but 'what we aspire to change or achieve' and thus the three main strategic planning priorities have to be mission, mission and mission! Like many key learning points, such conclusions may be obvious, but for a Chief Executive day-to-day operations, firefighting and problem solving can often distract.
My challenge on settling back into my desk is thus to create the time to take a step back, revisit our mission, and agree with the Charity's Trustees what contribution to our part of UK society we are truly trying to make.
Naming the Blog Thursday, July 09, 2009  In starting a blog, one of the first challenges is to find a title that communicates something of what the postings are and will be about.
Well this is a blog about running a charity and for many, if not all charities income and fundraising are critical. In a recession, doubly so.
Sir Winston Churchill is known for many pithy phrases, some amusing, many insightful and several of such outstanding oratory that they have become part of our everyday vocabulary.
However, he also had one or two things to say about giving. Maybe this was due to his birth during Britain's Victorian heyday or perhaps this was due to his American mother, given that nation's cultural affinity to personal philanthropy.
If any case, he once said,
"You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give." For a blog about running a hospital charity, need I say more?
|
