Imagine your child is having odd symptoms during a routine check up. After careful examination, your physician schedules a follow up appointment with a specialist.This encounter changes your life forever after you hear the word, “cancer.”
How will we afford this? Will she survive? Will she receive the best healthcare possible? Where do we go?
Your specialist will recommend the specialty hospital in your area, likely one of 170 Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals in North America. At your local hospital, your child will experience whimsically painted corridors, art and music therapy, smiling staff, and most importantly, the guarantee of patient care driven by cutting edge clinical research. To operate a specialty, child-centered facility, however, comes at a cost that is often not reimbursed by insurance.
Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals (CMN Hospitals) fundraises ~$400M annually to offset those costs and we are proud to be their partner.
CMN Hospitals started as a telethon in 1983 with the mission to support local children and the hospitals that treat them. This initiative was spearheaded by celebrities, Marie Osmond and John Schneider and longtime friends, Mick Shannon and Joseph G. Lake. Now, 30 years later, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals is a vital player in the pediatric nonprofit space, successfully delivering more than $5.7B to member hospitals and 32 million medical treatments annually. It is important to understand the magnitude of the money raised because most of the model is carried out through Point-of-Sale dollars raised from local communities. The organization operates on a national scale, but drives local impact in 170 communities across the Unites States and Canada.
As we launch into a new year, I’d like to share my thoughts on the strengths of our company’s technology-based partnership with CMN Hospitals and why I love their mission:
3 Reasons Why I Love CMN Hospitals
- A laser-like focus on children. Every member of our start-up has had a sister, niece, cousin or husband treated at a Children’s Miracle Network hospital. I have had asthma my entire life, so it’s comforting to know that children like me have access to the continuum of care they need.
- True community activism. CMN Hospitals increases grassroots conversations about pediatric healthcare within communities through their longtime corporate partnerships and campaigns. Our team got to hit the road last year with the 400+ local CMN Hospitals fundraising representatives across the country to learn how they want to use In Flight and understand their needs. We saw firsthand how an involved local retailer like Costco or Ace Hardware can raise funds for their local children’s hospital by learning a local child’s story from their hospital representative, sharing it with customers and using their passion as fuel to raise more money.
- CMN Hospitals is ambitious. Their strategic priority is to raise $1B annually for kids by 2022 by investing in leading technology and continuing to engage their corporate partners in meaningful ways. After having dozens of conversations with nonprofits that are not willing to change the way they run their organization or raise money, CMN Hospitals is driven by its mission to support kids and willing to experiment beyond their comfort zone.
We are lucky enough to work closely with Children’s Miracle Network and I am proud to be a partner of theirs. As we continue partnering with this leading nonprofit, I want to extend a huge thank you to the wonderful work they’re doing for kids across the country. This week is a tumultuous one, with the inauguration and marches, but it is nice to remind ourselves that organizations like Children’s Miracle Network are here to drive real social impact for kids and society.
Jared Sheehan is the CEO at PwrdBy, which partners with leading nonprofits to drive social innovation through mobile technology.
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