When Toby Cosgrove was CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, he often told people that the future of health care would be as a team sport.
Now that future has arrived. Medicine is no longer about the relationship between a single doctor and a patient; it’s about a close collaboration among a whole range of players, including the physician’s assistant, the nurse, and the brain surgeon.
So in 2012 when Case Western Reserve University, the clinic’s neighbor, announced it was raising money for a new medical-education building, Cosgrove called the university’s president, Barbara Snyder, and suggested their institutions do something together on a grander scale.
That conversation was the seed of an idea that would bring together a small but mighty team of fundraisers from both institutions for an unprecedented joint campaign. The initial $50 million School of Medicine project soon evolved into a vision for a $515 million multidisciplinary health-education campus to bring together students from medicine, nursing, dentistry, and physician’s-assistant programs to encourage interaction. Of the two planned buildings the larger one opened this summer, and so far, the campaign has brought in more than $275 million from more than 170 donors. Some of the money will be used for programming.
Balancing Multiple Campaigns
The initial Case Western project had already brought in $20 million — $10 million from the Cleveland Foundation and $10 million from the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation. Those grants were shifted to the new combined effort, and all money raised since then has been shared evenly.
Both organizations were in the middle of their own major fundraising campaigns during this effort — each with projects that needed significant investment. The challenge, fundraisers say, wasn’t a struggle between the two organizations but balancing other philanthropic efforts with this shared project. For that reason, most of the support for the health-education campus was raised by a team of 10 fundraisers.
The two organizations’ development teams looked for models of other joint fundraising campaigns on this scale but came up short, says Carol Moss, vice president for health sciences development at Case Western.
To get started, they held early-morning meetings every other week, sitting around a table to look at lists of alumni, patients, foundations, and corporations that might want to support this new vision of health education. They later switched to monthly meetings.
Fundraisers worked together to develop a list of the donors and prospects they had in common and a strategy for outreach and cultivation on a case-by-case basis. They had to think creatively about who might be interested in supporting the effort, says Terry Holthaus, vice chairman of the Philanthropy Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. “We didn’t stop at, ‘Oh, this person has supported our medical school or our nursing school,’ " she says. “We thought about which donors were really interested in the future of health care, or what this project meant to our community, or if they had interests in some of the innovative technologies in the building.”
Development leaders from the two institutions created what they called a “visionary society” for donors giving $1 million or more. Today, that group numbers more than 40, including individuals, corporations, and foundations, the majority of which had previous relationships with both institutions.
The organizations approached some shared donors together, and many times leaders from both groups had those initial conversations with donors.
“It was pretty powerful to have both Dr. Cosgrove and President Snyder come together and talk about this project,” says Lara Kalafatis, chairman of the Philanthropy Institute at Cleveland Clinic. “The power of their presentation and vision was very compelling.” The institutions created a common gift agreement that the leaders of both organizations signed.
In some cases, the decision of who would approach the donors depended on who felt most comfortable asking for the gift. Sometimes that was development staff; other times it was the medical-school dean or another donor.
“We were very open with each other when we didn’t think the timing was right to approach a certain prospect because of other gift conversations we were having,” Moss says.
It helped that the lead fundraisers had previously worked together. When the project began, Kalafatis served as vice president for university relations and development at Case Western before joining the staff at the clinic.
“The trust that we already had from working together as colleagues at the same institution led to being able to execute in a fashion that was very transparent,” Moss says.
A Rare Collaboration
Major donors and foundations say this kind of collaboration between major institutions is rare.
“This is pretty unusual,” says Larry Pollock, who together with his wife, Julia, has given a total of $10 million to the clinic, including support for this project. “Most of our giving is in support of one institution, of one cause,” says Pollock, managing partner of the investment firm Lucky Stars Partners. He serves on the Board of Directors of the clinic, where he chairs its philanthropy committee, a volunteer role that sometimes involves solicitations.
Donors responded very positively to this campaign, he says. “The people I talked to thought that this was a great project for the future of medical education and medical care.”
For more than a decade, the Cleveland Foundation has encouraged community groups large and small to collaborate, says India Pierce Lee, the foundation’s senior vice president for program. Its Greater University Circle Initiative, for example, brought together three “anchor institutions,” the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western, and University Hospitals, to support and revitalize their surrounding neighborhoods through a range of infrastructure, economic, and community-engagement strategies. The health-education campus collaboration grew out of those years working together, Lee says. “It’s part of the work that we’ve done as a foundation, being able to see organizations at a higher level and bringing groups together.”
Shifting Gears
Now that the 477,000 square-foot glass-and-steel building is in use, with faculty moved in and students typing away at their laptops, fundraisers are shifting from raising money for capital expenses to bringing in support for programming.
Fundraisers from the clinic and Case Western see this as an opportunity to refresh the campaign. “There’s new excitement around the project,” Kalafatis says.
Donors agree. “Nothing makes me happier than seeing the electricity and life of what goes on inside that building now that it’s open,” says Pollock, the donor and board member. “It’s truly amazing to see this chemistry at work.”
Eden Stiffman reports on nonprofit trends and fundraising for the Chronicle. She also writes a popular weekly fundraising newsletter with news, features, and trends. Email Eden or follow her on Twitter.
