Fundraising for Hospitals

Bill Mountcastle is the founder and president of Health Giving, a specialized healthcare fundraising consulting firm serving community-based health and healthcare nonprofits. He is a noted expert in healthcare capital campaign planning, collaborative fundraising among major university health science colleges, hospital foundation mergers and strategic restructuring, and grateful patient and physician engagement for fundraising results. He has more than two decades of experience in fundraising, rising to senior leadership positions at leading multispecialty academic medical centers and research universities with sophisticated and successful development programs. He wrote the chapter on healthcare capital campaigns for the 2014 book, Redefining Healthcare Philanthropy, from the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy. Before founding Health Giving, he served as senior associate vice president of development at The Ohio State University. As the chief development officer for the University's Wexner Medical Center and seven health science colleges, he oversaw fundraising activities for all aspects of one of the most comprehensive university health science complexes in the nation. He led efforts to promote interdisciplinary academic, research, and healthcare teams that collaborated closely to optimize philanthropic investments among the seven health science colleges. He helped design and lead quiet phase activities for Ohio State's But For Ohio State capital campaign with a $2.5 billion goal. Prior to joining Ohio State, Mountcastle was vice president of institutional relations and development at University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland, Ohio. In this role, he was also the principal campaign manager for the $1 billion Discover the Difference: The Campaign for University Hospitals, the capital campaign in support of the most comprehensive expansion in the health system's history. Mountcastle previously had a successful career at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, rising to senior director of development for the Cleveland Clinic Heart Center. He helped design and lead the pre-public planning phase of the Clinic's Today's Innovations Tomorrow's Healthcare campaign to raise $1.25 billion, at that time one of the largest campaigns of any not-for-profit academic medical center in the country. He also served as a member of the Clinic's Securing the 21st Century campaign major gift team that successfully raised $256 million, including $148 million in "brick-and-mortar" dollars for a three-building capital campaign, not only exceeding the target but doing so a year ahead of schedule. Mountcastle is a graduate of Muskingum College (BA) and Cleveland State University, Levin College of Urban Affairs (MPA). He has served on the board of the Ohio Association for Healthcare Philanthropy and the development committee for Circle Health Services in Cleveland, Ohio. He has served on the boards of community organizations including the Center for Community Solutions, Down Syndrome Association of Central Ohio, Children's Museum of Cleveland, and Lorain County Habitat for Humanity. Crain's Cleveland Business magazine named him to its Forty Under 40 list in November 2007 and Inside Business magazine profiled him a One 2 Watch in April 2003.

At the core of national efforts to improve the quality of healthcare is a shift to value-based care, a drastic transition from the long-standing focus on volume-based healthcare. This market shift toward values-based health care, inspired by Harvard economist Michael Porter, is considered revolutionary. The now outdated fee-for-service model had incentives to "do" more. Order more tests. See more patients. Do more procedures. Make more money.Modern, value-based healthcare is about doing better, not just more. It's about getting good-quality patient outcomes while using fewer healthcare resources; focusing on the continuum of care for patients rather than episodes of care; encompassing qualities of compassion, empathy, and responsiveness to the needs, values, and expressed preferences of the individual patient; employing evidence-based medicine and proven treatments and techniques; viewing the patient as a unique person, rather than focusing strictly on the illness; recognizing that family and friends are essential supports for the patient's healing process; and being transparent, upfront, and honest with information so patients can make informed decisions with us.Healthcare philanthropy is also in a state of transition. Like healthcare professionals, hospital fundraisers are also being asked to challenge assumptions and look for ways to do better instead of just doing more.Fundraising for Hospitals: Value-Based Healthcare Philanthropy, by William J. Mountcastle, draws parallels between the fundamental changes in patient care and in healthcare fundraising. Just like "value-based care" focuses on value, not volume, Mountcastle sees "value-based healthcare philanthropy" as focusing on people, not money.Mountcastle points out that the medical community is coming up with strong incentives to encourage doctors to spend more time with their patients, more time educating their patients, and more time listening to their patients and soliciting input when considering various testing and treatment options. He urges hospital fundraising teams to come up with strong incentives to spend more time listening and building relationships with philanthropic investors, learning about philanthropic investor needs and preferences, and building strong personal connections based on trust, responsiveness, and mutual benefit.Mountcastle has developed a methodology to help hospital fundraising teams succeed with value-based healthcare philanthropy based on these five key drivers of value-based philanthropy:Demonstrating your value to clearly show impactMaximizing the value of your core programsMeasuring your value to ensure high performance and effectivenessInvesting in value to build an amazing organizationSustaining value to make a profound difference in the health of your communityContentsChapter One: Demonstrating Your Hospital's Value to Clearly Show ImpactChapter Two: Maximizing the Value of Your Fundamental Fundraising ProgramsChapter Three: Measuring the Value of Your Fundraising to Ensure High Performance & EffectivenessChapter Four: Investing in Value to Build an Amazing OrganizationChapter Five: Sustaining Value to Make a Profound Difference in the Health of Your CommunityChapter Six: Concluding Thoughts