Since the beginning of the Great Recession, two nonprofit categories have been particularly hard hit. Those are Museums and Art Groups and Health Care organizations.

Nothing against the arts, but I can understand their decline. In an era of tight resources, donors are making tough choices, and the arts groups are life enhancing rather than life saving. So, if cuts have to be made, the life enhancing groups are the first to suffer.

But that surely doesn’t explain the Health Care decline. Fighting cancer, heart disease or Parkinson’s are truly life saving endeavors.

Or are they?

We recently completed some health care donor focus groups in Atlanta and Chicago. One of the key findings that surprised me is the growing skepticism of these health care donors. We were doing some standard headline testing when one respondent said:

“Don’t say you are going to cure this disease. That’s not going to happen in my lifetime. I just don’t believe anyone who says that anymore.”

This started an impromptu discussion on how health care organizations seem to never make any progress toward a cure.

And thus the health care dilemma.

It use to be that any organization that’s mission was life saving was immune from recessionary effects. My hypothesis is that urgency is more important than ever today.

So my question for you is: How do we legitimately create urgency for organizations entrenched in decades long battles to cure diseases?

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Tags: health care dilemma, health care organizations, life saving organizations