CUNY School of Medicine

The Client Brief:

The CUNY School of Medicine/ Sophie Davis Biomedical Education Program challenged our team to make them more competitive in gaining donations without sacrificing its empathetic approach to medicine.

Decipher | Discover | Develop | Design | Deploy

Goals

The first step is always to understand the client's perspective.

I needed to figure out:

• What the heck is"The CUNY School of Medicine/ Sophie Davis Biomedical Education Program"? 

• From their perspective, why are they struggling to garner philanthropic donations?  

Method

Secondary Research:

Analyzing online and physical resources to understand the development of the Program.

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Primary Research: 

• 2 In-depth interviews

  • Executive Director of Institutional Advancement

  • Current 1st-year physician assistant student

Learnings

This school has an idenity crisis

"The CUNY School of Medicine/ Sophie Davis Biomedical Education Program" is currently deciding how they would  like to identity.

Some believe the school should acknowledge their legacy through Sophie Davis and others believe the CUNY name has a stronger repetition.

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And has a  mission to serve underserved communities

This a rigorous 7 year BS/MD program focused on delivering highly-skilled medical practitioners of from underrepresented backgrounds to underserved communities.

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Understanding Donors' Philanthropic Profile

Time to look outwards for our Discovery phase.

To develop a target audience, secondary research was conducted. 

We discovered the demographic whos was most likely to donate are:

• White, female, Baby Boomers who are married with children, college-educated, and have household incomes of $100K to $149K.

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We needed to understand the motivations and aversions of our target audience so we conducted primary research consisting of 

• 5 Philanthropic feedback sessions

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​Philanthropists' Motivations and Aversions​​

• Philanthropists want transparency and proof of how their funds support the efforts of the mission.

• Philanthropists don't know how much to give, suggested donations are helpful.

• E-mail cadence is important, they need to be reminded not annoyed.

• Faces are convincing, participants were frequently recruited by friends, family, and in-person solicitors. 

"The expert" and "The highly influenced" donors want to be involved in justifiable causes. They are more inclined to donate when they feel they are involved in the solution.

Insight: Big donors are eager to support nonprofit Actions.

Decipher | Discover | Develop | Design | Deploy

First our team decided which identity The CUNY School of Medicine/ Sophie Davis Biomedical Education Program would assume and used all the collected information to develop the CUNYMed Manifesto.