Geriatrics Recruitment Resources

Give credit where credit is due.

“We want development officers to know that we see them as a friend and we give them public credit for any gift that is sizable. I write a letter to the dean and mention the specific development officer who helped us get the gift.”

Jeff Williamson, MD, Wake Forest University

Learn to be comfortable asking for money.

“Geriatricians create tremendous good will, yet are uneasy asking people for money, creating a group of donors from family members, or cultivating wealthy family members. My advice is, get over it! Wealthy people want to give, and they will give to someone!”

Christine Cassel, MD, American Board of Internal Medicine

Close-ups

An activist for fundraising. For the University of Hawaii’s geriatrics department, fundraising from local donors accounts for 15 percent of their overall funding. The department chair, Patricia Blanchette, MD, stays actively engaged with the university’s development staff, because at times there is no development officer assigned to the medical school. “I continuously build relationships and send e-mails about important goings-on within our department. They say that I am one of the few department heads that keeps them in the loop, so they think of us when there is a potential major donor who is not committed.”

To address competition from the hospital’s development department, Dr. Blanchette teaches junior physicians that “if a family sounds grateful, one of the things they can say is, ‘I don’t know a lot about donating to the medical school, but may I introduce you to the school’s foundation officer?’ Even though our geriatrics ambulatory clinic is ‘very small potatoes,’ it has generated several large gifts given its size.” She believes this clinic and another small clinic dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease have received donations because of clear communication with the public. For example, signs identify that care is provided by the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, and that the clinics are part of the medical school and train practitioners. As a result, “grateful patients have come to us to support our clinical operations with both small and large gifts,” she said.

While the typical fund-raising process involves introducing families and patients to foundation officers, sometimes Dr. Blanchette takes the lead. “I have learned that it is important to know the donor’s wishes, and whether they may want to work directly with me rather than with a development officer. A particular donor did not like the way the university’s foundation wrote their thank-you letters, so now I write my own thank you worded in a way that I know she will appreciate. She now gives quite a lot of money and our program is in her will.” Dr. Blanchette also consults with estate lawyers on guardianship issues. “Because they know about our program, they have directed contributions from other clients’ estates or from lawsuits to our program.” Her largest gift to date—$600,000—came in this manner.

Allies in fundraising for aging and geriatrics. At the Baylor College of Medicine, the Huffington Center on Aging gives 100 percent of funds it receives to geriatrics education and research. Supporting clinical fellows has become the shared mission of George Taffet, MD, Baylor’s CoE director, and the Huffington Center director, Roy Smith, MD. “We have developed relationships with members of the development board and provided clinical care for them and their families,” Dr. Taffet explained. Along with funding second-year fellows, money raised by the Huffington Center has supported research. “We had a young Alzheimer’s researcher whose lab received $200,000 from local donations, Huffington Center money, families and others, including funds raised from the Huffington Gala, its Spring Forum, and a raffle.” Dr. Taffet works with a part-time, salaried development specialist at the Huffington Center. She has established cordial working relations with the college’s development department, which provides names of (and information about) potential donors to the center. For their part, she and center leaders keep development department staff informed and work to ensure that they “do not step on anyone’s toes.”

The Huffington Center’s development board, which is made up of prominent leaders in the community who meet four times a year, also plays an important role, particularly in supporting second-year geriatrics fellows. To give potential donors a choice and allow flexibility, the center has a variety of donation opportunities. A year-end solicitation letter, sent to approximately 3,000 former and potential donors, includes a “wish list” of specific items needed by the researchers in aging, such as a microscope.

The center’s face-to-face meetings between geriatrics leaders, junior faculty, and potential donors are a highly successful effort. The largest event is an annual luncheon called the Women’s Health Summit, which raises money for fellows. Prior to the luncheon, physicians from Houston and elsewhere speak to the lay audience about aging-related topics. To make things “more real,” the center hosts small luncheons that incorporate several consecutive lab tours and a talk by a researcher. These well-received and highly appreciated meetings usually attract 15 to 20 people, including new potential donors recommended by the center’s board. The development specialist added, “We bring in a young physician to speak to the board about what they are working on. It could be someone who is treating their family members. This makes the results of donations tangible. A young physician doing research is an easier sell than speaking about aging in general. It is a struggle to get people interested in aging, and there are other competing local charities, such as the MD Anderson Cancer Center and a children’s hospital. We also have a newsletter and we feature updates on fellows’ research.”

A low-key fundraising strategy that works. At Wake Forest University, Dr. Jeff Williamson, CoE director, has created a fundraising process that:

• respects the doctor-patient relationship
• minimizes the potential conflict of interest faced by physicians thrust into the fundraising role
• addresses physicians’ discomfort with directly asking for money.

The strategy is a response to patients and families who wish to support the mission of the geriatrics program “because they believe in what we do,” Dr. Williamson said. “While clinical faculty have never asked one person for money, over the past eight years our program has garnered $7.5 million in philanthropic gifts.” Contributions range from $100 to $500,000.

Dr. Williamson holds an annual session with clinical faculty to help them respond to inquiries from patients and families who wish to donate to geriatrics. He uses practice scenarios of patients/families who inquire about making a contribution—situations in which faculty might get tongue-tied and miss an opportunity. Faculty members are given a script to work from that begins with expressing gratitude to the potential donors. They then share a brochure that describes opportunities to contribute to the geriatrics program mission, with Dr. Williamson’s contact information. Patients and families are reassured that Dr. Williamson will be happy to talk with them about the program’s needs. The program brochures are also displayed prominently in waiting rooms, clinics, and the hospital’s acute care unit.

“When potential donors call, I explain that without community support we could not do what we do and there are a number of ways to support us.” He mentions a range of options, such as “training doctors about caring for older adults, interesting scientific pilot studies that are ‘shovel ready’ but do not require a lot of money to get started, and major programs we want to develop.” He tells them he will send information and also asks what they are interested in. When they tell him, he responds, “I would love for your [patient’s] doctor and me to put together a list of possible things you could support, and we could have lunch with you in the next month or so.”

Before introducing the potential donor to the development office, Dr. Williamson prefers to wait until he has a pretty firm idea about what the donor wants to support. Sometimes he invites a development officer to the lunch to underscore the donor’s commitment to geriatrics. Each year, he also arranges for the development office to meet with faculty to hear what they are doing individually and what the program’s needs are. In turn, Dr. Williamson periodically speaks about geriatrics at one of the quarterly dean’s donor forums or the annual planned giving advisory board meeting. “Identify a development officer who will work closely with you, and be very generous with your credit to them in particular. Our VP for development has become such a strong believer in our work that he developed a named fund in honor of his parents. This fund sponsors a junior faculty member’s research project each year—evidence that we are on the same team.” He recalled advice from one of his mentors and former chair, William Hazzard, MD: “Always make sure that whatever you accomplish, the people supporting you feel that your success is their success.”

Dr. Williamson urges his colleagues to stay true to the primary mission: “To provide the best care and exemplary research and teaching, not convert to being a fundraiser.” He sees his program’s fundraising success as “30 percent brochures and 60 percent learning what to say, in the context of superb research, education, and clinical care.” He also urges his faculty to view gifts as donations to the entire group. “While much of a gift might go toward a specific person, no one is an island and sharing success across all missions is part of the fabric of our program. You might call it ‘translational fundraising!’ ”