Easy Steps to Take Your Board from Good to Great
Health foundations have a significant opportunity to harness the influence and involvement of board members as great allies in advancing...
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philanthropy, governance & community partnerships
We Wrote
the Book
No really. Our CEO, Betsy Chapin Taylor, wrote the book on Health Care Philanthropy. Accordant experts are sought after speakers, coaches and guests for conferences, trainings, podcasts and webinars.
We are Founded in Relationship-based Philanthropy, Governance and Community Partnership
First, our thinking. We believe health care has the greatest ability to improve the lives of people and impact communities, and philanthropy fuels the ability to succeed.
Second, our team. Each member of our team has more than 20 years of experience. Not as consultants, but as Chief Philanthropy Officers, Major Gift Officers, Planned Giving Officers and more. No other firm understands your challenges like we do.
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Third, our approach. We created the Transformative PhilanthropyTM model which holistically addresses the most important levers to performance. We have also pioneered tools and processes to align and engage teams, leadership and boards to ensure the best possible outcomes.
The team at Accordant elevated our vision and helped us build our team through strong strategic insight, programmatic expertise and leadership development. Through feasibility to campaign planning and launch, they helped us build a centralized support team – expanding us from one system employee to a team of 12 in just three years – while also ensuring that fundraising and impact remain local at our nine hospitals. Our philanthropy program has faced exponential growth in infrastructure since 2019 with an overall team of 37 staff members, while also experiencing increases in fundraising success – growing from an average of $8 million per year to more than $25 million in our most recent fiscal year.
Roy Lowdenback
Vice President, Philanthropy
Baptist Health • Louisville, Kentucky
Very early in our relationship, it was apparent that we made the right decision…
Throughout the process, Accordant’s entire team has worked diligently to get to know Eskenazi Health Foundation – our team, our strengths, and our challenges. They have truly embraced Eskenazi Health’s culture and have worked collaboratively with a number of leaders. Accordant’s leadership and team are very accessible and responsive. I look forward to continuing the partnership with them in the next few years as the last couple have exceeded expectations.
Ernest Vargo II, CFRE
President and CEO
Eskenazi Health Foundation • Indianapolis, Indiana
Each member of the Accordant team is a Thought Leader who regularly shares their experience, knowledge and insights through our blog, newsletter, white papers, videos and speaking engagements. With an average of more than 20 years of on-the-job experience, no team understands the challenges you face and is better equipped to serve your needs than Accordant. Find out more by reading our Blog and by subscribing to our newsletter.
We know how you feel. Our team consists of highly experienced health care professionals—with consultants averaging 20 years of direct, frontline experience in leading nonprofit health care organizations. Most experts hold the Fellow of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (FAHP), Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE), Fellow of the Institute of Fundraising (FInstF) or other professional certifications. That means experienced, senior leaders work with you on all phases of an engagement to create a platform for agile innovation and collaboration and to guarantee individual, custom-tailored service from experienced industry leaders.
Accordant leaders serve as faculty and authors for leading industry associations, including the American Hospital Association, American College of Healthcare Executives and Association for Healthcare Philanthropy. Our team wrote the leading book on philanthropy for health care executives and the first in-depth guide on philanthropy for health care trustees.
Our progressive work has also been featured in industry publications including Healthcare Executive, Modern Healthcare, H&HN, FierceHealthFinance, BoardRoom Press, Trustee, Chief Executive Officer, Becker’s Hospital Review, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Healthcare Philanthropy Journal, Health Facilities Management and more.
Our team members held positions similar to yours and we know you need more than simple fixes and consultant-speak. So we go deeper. Over the years we have developed a number of tools to better engage leadership, align organizations, discover relationships and build capacity. We believe these are invaluable to your campaign success. As your partner, we tailor our engagements to your needs, opportunities and challenges . We see proposals as the start of a conversation.
Exceptional health care organizations recognize partnership is more important than ever in this dynamic environment. That’s why Accordant strengthens connections between health care organizations, communities and key stakeholders through our key areas of service: building high performance health care philanthropy programs, facilitating community partnerships to elevate health status, and strengthening health care governance.
Our services embrace a “best practice meets bespoke” approach in all we do. That means you won’t find lockstep plans or cookie cutter approaches here. Having deeply experienced consulting leaders enables us to customize our progressive approach to be responsive to each organization’s unique strategy, culture, opportunities and constraints. While Accordant is best known for our progressive work around Transformative Philanthropy™ to advance health care’s new priorities, it’s our privilege to collaborate with organizations to advance an expansive approach to partnership.
Philanthropy
Elevating health care is our sole focus, our passion and our mission. Accordant’s singular focus on health care, rather than serving multiple nonprofit sectors, ensures you have access to experts who understand the complexities, pressure points and possibilities inherent in an ever-evolving health care industry. Accordant has had the privilege to serve more than 100 health care organizations representing more than 400 hospitals as well as hospices, CCRCs and more.
Our proprietary Transformational Philanthropy approach examines and engages all pillars of health care including leadership, caregivers, infrastructure, culture, communications, project selection and communications.
Leadership & Governance
Community leadership volunteers serving on health care organization and foundation boards have significant responsibilities for advancing the mission. However, many trustees and foundation boards do not have access to the infrastructure, information and tools that position them to be optimally successful. Accordant elevates health care governance by helping organizations define roles and responsibilities while enabling best practice governance.
Cause Branding
& Communications
Seat-of-the-pants communication is over. It’s time to evaluate and move toward a plan that is smart, straight-forward and effective. Limited resources require every health care foundation to make wise decisions on how they engage prospects, donors, clinicians and their community. Accordant’s team of communication experts brings both industry specific expertise and progressive, next-curve strategies to help you not only prioritize, budget, utilize data and implement a strategy but also create compelling copy and vibrant design to influence, inspire and motivate your constituents.
Community Health
Advancing community health and well-being requires different ways of thinking about the hospital’s role in its community. Increasingly, hospitals are proactively moving upstream to address patients’ social needs and to help address systematic social determinants of health. Health organizations cannot elevate the health status of their communities alone, but must do so in partnership with the communities they serve. Authentic collaboration with community-based partners is needed to advance health equity for all.
Education
& Training
Are you looking to get your board members to the next level or to advance you major gift officers and planned giving teams? We offer onsite, virtual and special event training for boards, health executives, philanthropy teams and events. Our team members are experienced keynoters, presenters, trainers and coaches who can help your team reach their maximum potential.
2024 Leadership Retreat
February 2024
Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL
Explore and discuss the current and emerging trends in health care philanthropy with some of the best minds from hospitals and health care systems around the country. Accordant’s team of thought leaders continue to stay abreast of the opportunities and challenges facing the health care industry and will facilitate discussions, workshops and design thinking sessions for you and other health philanthropy executives from around the country. The 2024 Retreat will be held at the beautiful Ponte Vedra Inn & Club on the beach in Ponte Vedra, Florida. Registration is now open.
We are honored to be able to work alongside some of the best people in health care at more than 550 hospitals and health care systems. We live for the opportunity to serve mission-driven people, organizations and communities.