THE TOOL KIT
Heart Charity Takes Pulse of Its Organization and Gets Better Results
By Grant Williams
THE GREAT RIVERS AFFILIATE of the American Heart Association achieved a 7-percent, $1.2-mil-
lion increase in revenue over the past
year in its 110 fund-raising events such
as walkathons, black-tie dinners, and
luncheons—a substantial rise at a time
when the economic downturn has battered events at many other charities.
The five-state Great Rivers regional
office credits these and other successes
in large part to the American Heart Association’s ambitious, nationwide effort
to set precise goals and compare results
in almost every part of its operations.
The charity regularly measures how
well it is doing not just in fund raising
but also in meeting its mission in such
ways as paying for research and helping hospitals treat heart disease and
stroke.
The heart association says its efforts
to focus on the numbers, an approach
adopted more than a dozen years ago,
has helped it work successfully with
governments, medical centers, researchers, and others to fight disease. Federal
figures show a 35-percent reduction in
the death rate of Americans from coronary heart disease since the association
set health goals in 1998 and began its
efforts to persuade hospitals to follow
its treatment guidelines.
As more and more charities have focused on ways to measure the results
of their programs, the American Heart
Association has emerged as a leader in
such efforts.
“What strikes me about the heart association is how it takes into account
both the hard-and-fast numbers—such
as fund-raising figures—while also focusing on measuring the impact of their
programs,” says Mark C. Dowis, associate executive director of Paralyzed
Veterans of America. “Most nonprofits
don’t develop these systems and are not
nearly as metrics-driven.”
Over the last three years, the American Heart Association has increased
the number of people who participate in its fund-raising walks.
portive from the start and energized by
the action.
“Developing the goal changed every-
thing within the organization,” he says,
“from the alignment of resources to a
context for volunteers to say, ‘Oh my
gosh, what I’m doing is XYZ and that’s
contributing to the 25-percent reduc-
tion.’”
The heart association began to mea-
sure its progress and succeeded in
meeting or exceeding most of its 2010
“Developing
the goal changed
everything
within the
organization.”
Curbing Deaths
The heart association began its intense focus on measuring progress in
the 1990s when it started to streamline
its operations (eventually consolidating
more than 50 affiliates into just eight).
In 1998 it decided to set a “bold goal”
for 2010 that the organization could
rally behind. A chief priority: a 25-per-
cent reduction in deaths from coronary
heart disease and stroke and in key
risk factors, such as uncontrolled blood
pressure.
“We knew we wouldn’t achieve the
bold goal by ourselves, but we decided
to hold ourselves accountable to work
on this and to focus, focus, focus,” says
Cass Wheeler, who as chief executive of
the American Heart Association from
1997 to 2008, helped set the goal and
counts its development as “the single
most significant thing that occurred
while I was the CEO.”
Mr. Wheeler says the charity’s board
of directors and volunteers were sup-
priorities. Statistics from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and
other government and private sources
confirm the progress is real.
Effort Pays Off
Focusing on the numbers has helped
the American Heart Association pin-
point its strengths and weaknesses, its
officials say.
For example, in the spring and fall of
each year, the charity’s affiliates hold
a total of more than 340 walkathon
fund-raising events in which hundreds
of thousands of people participate with
their co-workers, friends, and families.
