Fundraising Activities and Particularly Grant Seeking Behaviors

¶ … fundraising activities and particularly grant seeking behaviors is a significant issue for any organization that relies on such funding. According to Jacobson (2006) the manner in which fundraising is integrated into existing systems is also important, as are the promotion of systems that are supportive of existing structures and innovative structure standards. Fundraising systems are so important in the health care field that they potentially make or break significant progress in provision of care for hospitals and other organizations in the industry. Grant funding is exceptionally important for growth and development of hospitals, supporting existing and new developments beyond the ability of nearly any other kind of funding, including but not limited to patient payment, insurance reimbursements and other more traditional forms of funding. Granting unlike other forms of hospital revenue can be used to supercharge projects that would otherwise not have seed money to begin, research infrastructural growth, specialization growth, improved recruitment of quality staff and even specialized and general quality improvement (Solnik, 2004) (Hayes, 2006) ("Cancer center campaign…" 2002) ("Johnson & Johnson Campaign Helping…"2004) (Kelly, 2006).

Having established the special place in the funding chain for grants, it is now important to establish the need for a systematic implementation of a grant funding focus department in a given organization to facilitate active grant fundraising. Such a department would support both outer agency grant work and create a whole network of staff and systems, similar to those already in place in the organization to engender independent grant fundraising (Hayes, 2006). It is clear from much of the literature that major campaigns, and especially those associated with a formal structured department are more effective than a more organic approach that relies on existing staff to volunteer and often spend their own spare time working toward grant procurement (Hayes, 2006) (McCardle, Rajaram, & Tang, 2009) (Blanckaert, 2010). It is not uncommon and is in fact one of the most logical manners in which to develop grant fundraising, for a whole unit of the organization, set up in a supportive and structurally similar way to the parent organization to manage major fundraising (Powderly, 2005). Any organization that relies upon grant fundraising as a major source of financial support is more likely to have an active systems-based unit that manages such affairs and many organizations do not go far without such as system (King, 2000). According to one research study on fundraising activities in non-profit organizations; "the group that focused most heavily on fundraising activities had the highest financial performance," (Marlin, Ritchie & Geiger, 2009, p. 23) This focus was clearly demonstrated to be the result of a discrete but interactive fundraising unit that was staffed by fundraising professionals.