Alison Auciello, MBA
Healthcare institutions are asked to navigate constant change, whether that be leadership transitions, mergers and acquisitions, evolving expectations, or policy changes that may create new dynamics for the communities they serve.
While the specific challenges may vary, the fundamentals of creating and maintaining a strong fundraising practice remain constant. As you consider the headwinds that may be waiting in 2026 and beyond, here are three fundamental aspects of your fundraising program that will stabilize and strengthen your team and your results, regardless of what might be shifting around them.
Activate Your Champions – Physicians, Board Members, and Caregivers
The most credible voices in healthcare philanthropy are often not the major gift officer nor the foundation president but the caregivers and leaders who visibly embody your mission of caring for and serving the community daily. These champions will be your best advocates as you weather whatever change might lie ahead. When you consider how you might activate your champions, this can look like:
- Intentionally connecting board members and physician champions to the fundraising work;
- Developing strategies that leverage caregiver partners as relationship stewards and primary points of contact (not just door openers to new prospects); and
- Creating a two-way street. You cultivate donors with champions and champions introduce you to new prospects.
Your role as fundraiser is above all to make it easy. You may put together a strategy, manage logistics, and handle follow-up. Just make sure you give your champions the confidence that their relationships will be managed with the same level of bespoke care and attention that they have given to these patients, because their reputation is indeed on the line.
When physicians or nurses or caregivers invite patients or grateful families to support the institution through philanthropy, it can be a moment along their healing journey and it carries a unique weight that no solicitation letter or email can ever match.
Formalize your Grateful Patient Program – Turn Mission Connection into Systematic Pipeline
Grateful patients represent a vital, high-impact segment of your donor base for strategic healthcare fundraising. Their stories are grounded in lived experience, and can be very emotional, which in turn makes their giving more emotional in nature, too. Strategically sharing their experience can create impact, drive momentum, and inspire others to give.
The focus here should be on formalizing a consistent approach, based on the relationships that fundraisers have with the caregivers. They are the trusted link to your grateful patients, and can be the difference between a thriving pipeline full of prospects and an anxious bid to steward an ever-shrinking pool of existing donors.
Healthcare institutions have a built-in pipeline of mission-connected prospects, grateful patients and grateful families who’ve experienced your care firsthand. If your organization is still approaching this haphazardly or opportunistically, rather than systematically, now is the time to focus on this priority. What this could look like:
- Build relationships with caregivers and secure their buy-in (as per our last section);
- Be visible in clinical spaces, actively educate physicians, nurses, and caregivers about inviting patients to stay connected through philanthropy;
- Create clear and easy pathways for caregivers to bring you into conversations with their patients; and
- Make the process low-friction. Caregivers need to trust that it will be handled with professionalism, warmth, and care.
The best way to stand this up is by building the infrastructure: create templates, talking points, and referral systems that can make this type of participation simple for busy caregivers. When engaging with grateful patients, you needn’t explain how critical or life-saving your programs are or what makes you special. They’ve had unique experiences that have made that abundantly clear in a poignant lived way.
A formalized grateful patient program ensures that you’re identifying these prospects and future champions and engaging them with consistency and respect.
Maintain Steady Stewardship and Communication – Build Trust Through Consistent Engagement
During uncertain times, donors need additional reassurance that their investment matters. Change on a transformative level rarely affects just one sector. But consistent, meaningful engagement builds trust and demonstrates impact with their philanthropic dollars, especially when these external circumstances feel unstable. What this can look like:
- Create unique stewardship opportunities that provide direct engagement with the mission.
- Identify and leverage influential voices within the organization (not just top-level physicians) but also exemplary nurses, patients, and other support staff who can share mission stories with an authentic lived voice;
- Show impact through varied channels whether it’s newsletters, social media, donor visits; and above all,
- Bring the mission to life in tangible emotional ways.
Your role in this is to communicate often and through multiple channels. Don’t assume that a single annual report is enough. Your donors need regular touchpoints all the more so during these times of tumult and change.
When the external noise becomes loud, your stewardship should be the steady drumbeat that keeps donors connected and confident in their partnership with you.
To Weather Change, Return to Fundamentals
The question for us as non-profit and fundraising professionals isn’t whether change is coming–it’s whether your foundation is strong enough to hold. Strong fundraising fundamentals can create an increased stability for your organization in the community you serve.
By activating your champions, formalizing and systematizing your grateful patient engagement, and maintaining consistent thoughtful impactful stewardship touches, you can build programs and portfolios that not only weather this uncertainty but thrive through it.
Development Guild has supported many healthcare institutions through such transitions, growth, and change. If you are evaluating your program’s readiness for what’s next, please feel free to reach out to discover how we can support you and your team through whatever lies ahead.
About Development Guild
Development Guild partners with nonprofit leaders to provide executive search, fundraising counsel, and strategic guidance that drives impact. Since 1978, we have been bringing a powerful combination of discipline and innovation to every client engagement, delivering solutions that are strategic, deeply rooted in experience and analysis, and evidence-based.
Drawing upon our history of working with more than 2,800 clients across every nonprofit sector, our collaborative approach is successful due to candid dialogue and diverse perspectives. We commit to understanding and respecting your unique culture and translating that knowledge into viable solutions.
Ready to strengthen your fundraising program for 2026 and beyond? Let’s create a tailored roadmap that supports your team and elevates your results. Contact us today to get started.
