Staff and physician engagement

Physicians and clinical staff hold relationships development does not: with grateful patients, with local businesses, and with the community's sense of what the hospital is for. They are also employees, working under policies that usually have something to say about fundraising.

What they can help with

• Introducing the foundation, rather than soliciting on its behalf
• Naming the program a campaign should fund, in terms a donor recognises
• Providing or approving behind-the-scenes access items in their own area
• Appearing at the event and speaking about the work
• Bringing colleagues and filling a table
• Identifying local businesses they have a relationship with

The introduction is the valuable one. A physician saying "the foundation would like to tell you about the unit — may I put you in touch?" opens a door that a cold approach does not, and it keeps the physician out of the position of asking their own patient for money.

Where systems usually draw a line

Find your own system's policy rather than working from general principles, but the questions worth asking are consistent:

• May a physician solicit their own patients directly, or only introduce?
• May clinical staff be solicited by the foundation, and how often?
• May a department donate staff time as an auction item, and who approves it?
• May employees bid on items connected to their own department or to a vendor?
• Who signs off on an item involving clinical space or equipment?
• What may staff say publicly about the campaign, and on which channels?

None of these has an obvious answer, all of them come up during a gala campaign, and every one of them is faster to answer in a single meeting at the start.

Making it easy to say yes

Physicians are not short of requests. Ask for something specific and bounded: one introduction, one item from their area, one appearance, a named table. An open request for help produces goodwill and nothing else.

Then close the loop properly. Tell them what their introduction produced, what the campaign funded, and when the equipment arrived. Development staff know this; it is worth saying because clinical colleagues are the group most often thanked generically and least often told the specific result.

Patients are a separate question

Anything involving patient identity — a list, an introduction, a story, a photograph — belongs on the grateful patient page and with your privacy officer, not in a general engagement conversation.

See grateful patient programs.

General information, not legal or compliance advice for your organization. Patient privacy and healthcare compliance rules are fact-specific — take anything here to your own privacy officer and counsel before you act on it.