Time for hospitals to brace for more bad news: Fund-raising efforts are likely to have lower results during the holiday season and into the new year.
Many hospitals are already downgrading their goals for 2009 fund-raising, knowing that both the stock market downturn in 1997 and the dot-com bust in 2002 resulted in lowered donations for hospitals. And with hospital galas for the holidays just getting started, some hospitals are already seeing a lot less responses from corporations that usually buy tables.
Expert fund-raisers say that hospitals would do well to stay in contact with their donors: not to try to extract large donations this year, but in hopes that when the economy recovers they will think of the hospital again.
To learn more about the expected slump in fund-raising:
- read this New York Times piece