Programs

Children's Circle of Care

In 1995, Woodmark members set out to create a culture of major-gift philanthropy for children's hospitals. This goal was advanced through the creation of the Children's Circle of Care program in 1995. The program was established to foster private investment by engaging, educating and recognizing the leading benefactors of Woodmark-member children's hospitals. These leading benefactors are known as members of the Children's Circle of Care. Since 1995, Children's Circle of Care members have collectively contributed more than $6.4 billion to Woodmark-member hospitals to support pediatric clinical care, research, teaching, and advocacy efforts. More than 6,500 Children's Circle of Care members are actively contributing to Woodmark member hospitals each year.

Education, Training and Best Practices Exchange

Woodmark produces training programs and workshops to support the professional development and career success of fundraising staff and expand the capacity of hospital members' fundraising programs. Fundraising staff members identify learning needs and produce content for most programs aimed at accelerating the exchange of best practices. For more information on Woodmark learning programs contact Amber Wendover, Director of Learning & Member Engagement, at info@thewoodmarkgroup.org.
Ongoing and recent programs include:

The Woodmark Forum

Held annually since 1991, exclusively for chief development officers.

Woodmark Summit

Held annually since 1997, primarily focused on helping members create and sustain strong and vibrant major-gift cultures in support of their children's hospital. In recent years, more emphasis has been placed on how specialties within development programs support major-gift philanthropy. This has resulted in formation of cohort groups to accelerate best-practices exchange in such specialty areas as annual giving, corporate giving, marketing and communications, prospect research, and donor stewardship, among others.

Legacy Advancement

Woodmark-member hospitals in 2013 launched a special initiative to transform legacy gift-giving. Specific goals include: 1) significantly increasing the number of donor legacy notifications to each hospital; 2) grow the community of professional advisers (attorneys, tax accountants, certified financial planners, etc.) that are passionate about children's hospitals and engage them in charitable gift planning in support of member hospitals; 3) share knowledge and best practices about legacy giving among development staff of member hospitals; and 4) under take comprehensive benchmarking of members' legacy-giving programs to foster growth and success.

Transformational Giving

Building on an impressive history of transformational gift development, hospital members now are exploring how to foster institutional cultures and staff preparedness to develop more transformational gift ideas. A goal of this work is to create training curriculum for hospital executives, physicians and board members as well as for development staff. In recent years, Woodmark has produced the following educational programs that have engaged transformational donors to inform them of the impact of transformational giving on children's health: the North American Philanthropy Forum, the Aspen Children's Forum (in partnership with the Aspen Institute), the Campaign Summit and the Advancing Transformational Philathropy Summit.

Leading the advancement of philanthropy to improve health for children everywhere.