Advancement for healthcare

Strategic and sustainable fundraising growth for hospitals, health systems, and academic medicine

Helping healthcare and research institutions thrive is a core capability at Huron. 

For decades, healthcare and academic medicine leaders have trusted Huron’s teams for the first-hand industry expertise they bring to delivering solutions for growth, cost efficiency, care and consumer experience, and digital transformation. Now, the breadth and depth of our expertise, combined with our GG+A global philanthropy team, transforms our ability to inform fundraising through a comprehensive, evidence-based, and actionable approach deeply rooted in an understanding and empathy for the industry’s goals and challenges.

We work with healthcare organizations to build powerful philanthropy programs that, in turn, empower them to improve patient care, strengthen medical education, and make life-changing discoveries.

Giving back is not only a powerful act, but it can also be powerful medicine for people working to cope with and understand their own challenging circumstances. Giving can provide a way to change the experience of others, bring a sense of control to a situation that feels uncontrollable, bring meaning to loss or suffering, or simply express gratitude.

Our team understands the emotional bonds that patients and families form with their caregivers in times of crisis, the desire to give back to an organization that served them well, and the passion for funding research to treat or cure devastating illnesses. We also understand the investments required to attract top medical school faculty and students, the skyrocketing cost of top-tier research, the escalating insurance premiums, and declining reimbursements.

Receive hands-on, strategic support

Access flexible, customized, one-on-one support tailored to your needs, offering strategic counsel on philanthropy positioning, cultivation strategies, and interim management to maximize your fundraising effectiveness and resource allocation.

Assess and formulate data-backed campaign and fundraising goals

Gain the organizational insights and hard data necessary to make informed planning decisions regarding your proposed campaign. Combined with an objective analysis of strengths and weaknesses, our strategic recommendations, and targeted engagement with key constituents provides a pathway to maximize your fundraising potential.

Gain invaluable insights into key stakeholders

Utilizing customized segmented surveys, get a statistically relevant and actionable picture of your key stakeholders' philanthropic interests and attitudes through a cost-effective approach that uncovers their motivations and concerns, allowing for tailored engagement in development, communications, and donor stewardship.

Enhance your fundraising success

Build a comprehensive fundraising program that optimizes your organizational structure, aligns staff and resources, and evaluates culture and readiness for sustainable growth.

Engage physicians and stakeholders

Build effective partnerships between gift officers, physicians, leaders, and other key philanthropic partners by actively engaging physicians and internal stakeholders in the fundraising process. By assessing your institution's culture of philanthropy through tools like surveys, we help design a tailored, foundationally sound program aligned with your goals. Our work emphasizes clear roles, objectives, and unwavering respect for the clinician-patient relationship.

Upskill your teams using best practices

Elevate your fundraising effectiveness with thoughtful and tailored best-practice training for development officers in academic medicine and healthcare philanthropy, equipping your team with essential skills in major-gift fundraising from the early conversations that happen in the qualification stage through the deepening of relationships as gift officers move toward an informed gift conversation.

Build your pipeline as you accelerate annual giving success

Build an understanding of your own donor audience as you develop targeted segmentation strategies that maximize donor growth, retention, and annual fund yield by identifying and engaging individuals with a strong philanthropic alignment to your organization through an organized, measurable and strategic approach that builds a pathway to major and planned giving.

Increase principal and major gift prospect success through targeted focus

Build a data-informed understanding of the best opportunities within your pool of prospects through proprietary analytics that help to optimize gift officer portfolios by identifying high-value unassigned and low-value assigned prospects. Optimize prospect assignments based on clear measures and strategic recommendations for resource allocation that maximizes gift potential at the individual officer level.

Support gift officer success through more effective management

Build a cohesive understanding and supportive tools to empower your development leaders and gift officer managers to move teams uniformly toward success using a comprehensive set of key measures and reports designed to enhance hiring, training, and overall team management through proven practices benchmarked against high-performing teams.

Foster effective and inspiring communications

We work with leaders and stakeholders across your institution to understand your mission and strategic priorities. Together, we shape gift propositions and case statements that align with your goals and engage your philanthropic community. Our approach ensures communications inspire meaningful support while staying strategically focused.

Gain insight into your own institutional needs through program benchmarking

Unlock long-term fundraising success by leveraging insights into the impact of staff and program investments and identifying strategic opportunities for resource allocation through peer comparisons in key advancement areas.

Establish a grateful patient program

Navigate healthcare’s fastest-growing donor segment using best practices to ethically and effectively overcome the challenges related to patient-based fundraising and build a sustainable baseline level of support from this key constituency.

Our team specializes in developing conscientious and effective grateful patient programs.

Consulting and support services to 3,000+ nonprofits and NGOs

Consulting and support of 100+ fundraising campaigns of $1B or more

150+ current or recent advancement consulting engagements with leading hospitals, health systems, and academic medicine organizations

Advancement advisor to flagship public research universities in all 50 U.S. states

Carrie Bhada Porter

Director

Carrie has more than 20 years of experience helping healthcare and higher education institutions and academic medical centers raise funds and develop and implement programs that drive philanthropic revenue and support.
Contact Carrie
Suzanne Hilser-Wiles

Managing Director

Suzanne has more than 30 years of experience in advancement, program building, and campaign planning and implementation.
Contact Suzanne
Michael Pou

Managing Director, Healthcare

Michael has 20 years of healthcare consulting experience. He specializes in helping healthcare leadership teams reimagine their operations to facilitate sustainable growth.
Contact Michael