The Pennsylvania Higher Education Foundation’s
Nursing Education Initiative
In 2001, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Foundation and the Higher Education Foundation were established to provide students and families improved access to higher education. The Foundations are independent, non-government organizations working closely with the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA).
The board of directors agreed in 2002 that the Pennsylvania Higher Education Foundation (PHEF) would embark on its first charitable initiative – a comprehensive nursing education financial assistance campaign to address the nursing shortage in Pennsylvania from the bottom up, aptly named, the Nursing Education Initiative. The concept, simply described, was to ensure affordable access to a nursing education through grants awarded directly to schools of nursing in Pennsylvania, to assist as many students interested in pursuing the profession of nursing as possible, in an effort to increase the supply of well trained and motivated new graduates entering the workforce.
In addition to the innovative programs that were developed by the Foundation to achieve its goals, the Nursing Education Initiative also included an aggressive media and public relations campaign to bring attention to the many benefits associated with the nursing profession.
Kingdom Communications Group, LLC was retained in 2003 to provide fundraising counsel for this start-up foundation with the goal of identifying and approaching potential stakeholders to support the mission.
The Solutions:
Kingdom Communications Group developed the fundraising strategies and the Case for Support for the Nursing Education Initiative, approaching corporations and foundations, as well as providing support for board communications and legislative outreach. Kingdom Communications Group counseled the Pennsylvania Higher Education Foundation’s leadership on all matters involving development.
The Results:
The team effort exceeded all expectations -- raising over $15 million to date, mainly from corporate donors approached to partner with the Foundation to provide funds for nursing education in an effort to address the nursing shortage in Pennsylvania.
Kingdom Communications Group also played a major role on the team that planned and executed the Johnson & Johnson Promise of Nursing Gala held in Philadelphia in March 2005 and again in March of 2008, raising a combined total of over $1.2 million for scholarships, grants and faculty fellowships.
The accomplishments of the initiative include:
Over the past five years, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Foundation, in partnership with all of its donors who have supported the various programs of the Nursing Education Initiative, has provided an estimated 35,000 scholarships at 125 Pennsylvania schools of nursing worth over $56 million.
Growth in enrollment and graduation rates over the past five years have seen an increase of nearly 60% in undergraduate enrollment and 86% increase in graduation rates of undergraduate nursing students. Since 2003, nursing schools in Pennsylvania increased from 95 to 125, reversing a ten-year decline.
Growth in graduate nursing school enrollment in the past two years have seen an increase of 500 graduate school students enrolled.
Improvement in nursing position vacancy rates (The 2007 Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania Workforce Study).
“I ardently believe that HAP’s partnership with the Foundation, representing our 225 member hospitals and healthsystems, has helped to expand and enhance our nursing education capacity to meet the growing demand for nurses.
Through this initiative, we are helping to assure access to care for the nearly two million patients who seek care, treatment, and services provided in Pennsylvania hospitals each year.
HAP looks forward to being able to continue these worthwhile efforts.”
Carolyn Scanlon
President & CEO
The Hospital & Healthsystem
Association of Pennsylvania
Kingdom Communications Group, LLC, with it’s partners and supporters, is currently embarking on a campaign to introduce this concept of the Nursing Education Initiative, that has been so successful in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to all states that are dealing with a critical shortage of nurses.
