Preparing For Transformation: What It Takes To Get Big Things Done – The Discovery Dialogues Toronto With Kelly Cole, President & CEO, Sunnybrook Foundation, & Aaron Sanderson, CEO, Kids Help Phone Foundation

So as we said at the outset, the theme of this is about transformation.

So maybe I'll start with you, Kelly.

What has transformation meant for your organization over the last number of years?

Well, we've been on a long journey, as you know, and so some of the things that I want to share are things that have taken time to build.

I don't want you to think that it started and was accomplished overnight.

So when I first was recruited about five, five and a half years ago, the hospital was wanting to build a big building.

And that started their ambition.

And they thought about how much money that was going to require to build a massive, so $4 to $5 billion type building.

And this was taking us into fundraising that we hadn't done before.

And at the same time, they were thinking about their research and innovation agenda and wanting to transform it.

And again, very significant ambition.

And it was very exciting.

But what we came into was an organization that had had, it was very entrepreneurial, I think, in the way that I kind of categorize it.

It was having some really great years.

It wasn't sustainable, kind of ongoing delivery at a certain level.

And they hadn't done a campaign yet.

For about 20 years and even the last campaign, it was, I'm not sure we would have defined it as comprehensive.

So it was a big undertaking and a big shift for the organization.

And the board knew what they wanted.

The hospital knew what they wanted.

But of course, they didn't know how we were going to get there.

And so the initial phases was really around working with the leadership team, aligning with the board around a growth plan and figuring out where do we need to fill in gaps? Where do we need to grow? Where do we need to add? How do we focus? How do we pick the right things? How do we ensure that the board understands what those right things are and get them all down on paper and get everybody aligned? And so what happened over the five years was there was huge cultural shifts, greater collaboration across the team, across divisions.

There was greater collaboration across the hospital, between the fundraisers and the hospital, shifting to data decisions.

driven decisions, shifting to a major gift team that could go out on their own and raise money with hospital leaders, not needing the CEO to be the front of every major gift solicitation.

It was a big shift.