The CMNH New Business Team

New Business Development within CMNH includes three intertwined work groups: New Partnerships, Innovation and Activation.

• New Partnerships works to build a pipeline and close prospective corporate partners.
• Innovation’s works on finding and testing new revenue opportunities with existing partners and from new technologies.
• Activation builds campaigns and fundraising activations for new corporate partners as well as any new fundraising concept that tests well in Innovation.

New Partnerships

When we launched the current New Business team 3.5 years ago, interviews with CDO’s suggested that the best way to build the corporate partner pipeline was in partnership with hospital foundation leadership. This has proven true. Over the past 3 years:

• Nordstrom is the direct result of an introduction to a board member from Johns Hopkins All Children’s, Tampa.
• Knight Swift Transportation is the direct result of a referral from Phoenix Children’s as well as a CMNH board member.
• Columbia Sportwear was introduced to us via a trustee of Doernbecher’s Children’s in Portland, Oregon.
• GiveWorx, our new ecommerce giving platform, was started through a board member of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

In each of these successes, the key element was the established trusting relationship built by the hospital’s foundation leadership.

While we are experts at retail and there are significant companies that we target, new and diverse national corporate partnerships are key to meeting the rising needs of our hospitals and achieving the growth we all want.

2019 has been a good year in this regard. The New Business team brought on Lifetime Fitness, Vivint Solar and Knight Swift Transportation. These three non-retail partners have solid potential.

• Lifetime Fitness activated around an idea focused on cross-fit fundraising that came from our hack-a-thon innovation event.
• Vivint Solar and Knight Swift Transportation are all about engaging employees in a cause that benefits their local community and is near to their hearts.

The continual issue we face in securing new corporate partners is keeping a pipeline filled with viable prospects. We are doing this in three ways:

1. Direct sourcing of leads: research/LinkedIn, direct contacts, working through agencies
2. Referrals from hospital leadership: executive volunteers that have direct or referred connections to targets
3. In the future, we will be piloting business-to-business marketing

The most expedient path forward is via foundation leadership referrals as noted above.

An example of companies currently in the new partners pipeline include: Johnson and Johnson, Subaru, VW, T-Mobile, Raymond James, HSN, Albertsons, Shipt, Alibaba, Sherwin Williams, New York Life, Discover Card, Hub Group (logistics), CVS, Abbvie and Candy Crush.

Activation

The Activation team is growing new partners with innovation and best practices and in close partnership with hospital program directors. A recent look at our existing partners showed that most took about 7 years to cross the one million dollar mark. We are working to find ways to do this more quickly.

Examples of recent year successes:

• Coca Cola has grown to over $1 million over the last two years.
• GameStop, will raise more than they did in 2018 within a challenging business year.
• Nordstrom continues to grow and expand their support.
• Vivint Solar is engaging their CEO and executive team as we launch that relationship.
• Lifetime’s first ever Crushin’ It for the Kids raised over $100,000 dollars in a weekend. This is a solid start for a brand new program and partner. This is an example of how an idea generated by our innovation work led to a new partner.

Innovation

The Innovation team is:

• Collaborating with the CMNH Strategic Accounts team with the focus on finding new energy and funding. This customer focused approach is currently being executed with RE/MAX and Credit Union 4 Kids will yield more funding for the kids.
• Working with partners and consultants to understand future technology and opportunities to activate fundraising.
• At the 2019 Fall Business Meeting we held our second annual Smart Tank Innovation challenge. This draws ideas from CMNH hospital partners that grow fundraising. This year a holiday platform campaign from Canada won and is currently being developed into a pilot.

If you have questions about any of this or how your hospital can join us in this impact, please feel free to contact Steve Oshin, Chief Business Development Officer at soshin@cmnhospitals.org.

Tags:

• Activation
• Innovation
• New Business