American Heart Association

American Heart Association

Although the Western States Affiliate's (WSA's) organizational model successfully increased fundraising revenue for the American Heart Association (AHA), the task force's initiative to adopt this structure and strategy at a national level indicates a lack of understanding of the AHA's overall vision and business strategy. If the AHA wishes to achieve even greater success while continuing to maintain its long-standing strategy of raising funds for research and community education, it should focus on developing a hybrid organizational structure, improving operational efficiency and strengthening its community participation.

While the new WSA organizational structure proved successful in increasing fundraising revenues, certain design attributes and unforeseen byproducts of the initial changes may have a negative impact on the AHA when deployed at a national scale since the national strategy does not match that of the WSA. When the WSA re-designed the organization around fundraising activities, it diminished the importance of community education. It also deemphasized geography within the WSA. Senior vice presidents (SVPs) were given significantly more direct reports and had to invest large amounts of time on overhead activities like travel and performance reviews. Executive directors (EDs) experienced implicit demotions via a removal of authority, supervisory relationships, and a redefinition of their roles. Additionally, the focus on fundraising at the local office level fostered damaging internal competition, disrupted a once clean interface to the community, and caused a loss of focus on educational programs and dilution of the AHA brand as a nonprofit organization. The WSA restructuring would still be considered a local success because the new design complemented its strategy focused primarily on fundraising. However, the AHA Nation Center's strategy requires a balance of community education and fundraising, and a direct application of the WSA structure will not be effective without several changes.

The foundation for success begins with organizational structure. A structure using functional design at the national level supported by geographic design of the affiliates and a hybrid market/function design of the offices is recommended. In this design, national vice presidents (NVPs) oversee the four functions (AHW, Youth, Social, and Gifts) and will drive strategy, structure, process, rewards, and people within each function. While the primary responsibility of the NVPs would be functional, they would also supervise the fifteen affiliate executive vice presidents (EVPs).

The EVPs of the affiliates would have geographic responsibility first and foremost to ensure success in each region. However each of the 15 EVPs would also be secondarily responsible for one of the four functional areas which gives the EVPs a vested interest in their geography but also promotes a specific fundraising function. At the next level, senior vice presidents (SVPs) would have primarily geographic responsibility rather than become function-based like they did in the WSA. In offices that are not as densely populated, the WSA model would lead to multiple reporting relationships and confusion.

Within each office, a hybrid structure combining function and market would exist. The ED would oversee day-to-day decision making, and incentives would be based on the success of an office rather than the success of a function. Corporate Events Directors (CEDs) would have dual roles: specialize in one of the four functions and contribute to community education during the non-fundraising times of year. In addition, the office would have a front-end market focus with specific personnel (Liaisons) focused on education, community relations, and corporate sponsorship which will be further discussed.

By improving operational efficiency, AHA will be able to achieve greater long-term success. The AHA would benefit from multiple lateral processes that would help execute on its strategic vision as well as day-to-day operations. An American Heart Walk event in Texas, for example, would use the WSA's model with a specialized CED overseeing event execution, but prior to that, EVPs and SVPs from several regions, by nature of their dual-responsibility structure, would leverage the knowledge gained from AHW events across the entire country. At the same time, the community liaison, a new addition to the local office, would also benefit from the strategic coordination across all AHW events and would better represent the common vision and goals of the AHA.

A second lateral process that promotes operational efficiency is e-coordination. A