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Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: A Research Study

Alberto Garcia

Marshall McCready

Muhammad Umer Modi

Jared Palacios

Juan (John) Sepulveda III


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Dr. Rajaratnam
April 20, 2017

Table of Contents

I. Introduction 2

A. Backgound

B. Executive Summary

C. Research Problem 2

D. Research Question 2

II. The Data 3

III. Data Analysis 4

IV. Key Observations 10

V. Conclusions & Recommendations 10

VI. Study Limitations 12

VII. Appendix 12

Background

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The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society began as a result of the terrible loss of the founders child

to blood cancer. In 1944, Rudolph and Antoinette de Villers lost their teenage son Robert de

Villers to Leukemia, which was an incurable disease at the time. The parents of Robert De

Villers were frustrated by the lack of effective treatments and began a fundraising/educational

organization in his name. In 1949, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) was founded and

is now the world's largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer

research, education services and patient services. Since then it has been their mission to cure

Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and Myeloma, while improving the quality of life of

patients and their families who have been affected by these terrible diseases. Our focus within

the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society was with their Student Series program. The Student Series

program created the Pennies for Patients campaign that allowed schools to collect pennies as

donations for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Faculty members from each school would

then count, collect and transfer the pennies to Bank of America.

Executive Summary

This report provides an analysis of schools reasons for dropping out of the Leukemia &

Lymphoma Societys Pennies for Patients campaign with the goal of discovering how to boost

the number of schools that participate in the campaign. Methods include analyzing targeted

answer data with cross tabulations and breaking down the answers to discover underlying trends.

Through the research data, we concluded that the primary reasons schools are dropping out of the

program and losing interest are their concern over where exactly their money is going, their

inability to donate in a more efficient manner like online or through an app, and a lack of

donation incentives for the schools student populations. Our recommendations to address these

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issues are the implementation of more transparent communication via social media, creation of

an online donation method, and new incentives for students to boost morale to donate more

towards the cause.

Research Problem

The primary issue the Leukemia & Lymphoma society faces involves their Student Series

Program. This programs objective is to retain schools as donors and ensure their continued

participation in the organization's campaigns. However, a concerning number of schools have

been dropping out of the donation program which has resulted in less funding for the society.

The nonprofit needs to identify the reasons that these schools dropped out in order to fulfill their

mission of raising funds to help those struggling from life threatening diseases.

Research Question

The purpose of this study is to answer the question Why are schools dropping out of their

Student Series program? through targeted surveys and data analysis with the hopes of

identifying the underlying reasons for this phenomenon.

The Data

Specific data is needed in order to attain a complete understanding of why schools are dropping

out of their student series program. Information on why individuals were motivated to cancel

their involvement and who these individuals are in terms of their positions in the schools is

absolutely fundamental to addressing this business issue on the part of The Leukemia &

Lymphoma Society. How this and other valuable data was gathered was through the means of

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targeted surveys. These surveys were sent to influential individuals namely teachers, principals,

and other school faculty members (who) working at schools that have dropped out of the

program (where) and inquired as to when they made the decision to drop out and if they had any

recommendations to help increase school retention in the Student Series Program. These surveys

also collected demographic information in order to assess whether perception of the

organization, the fulfillment of its goals, and/or opinions on the Societys methodology for

collecting funding correlated with any particular demographic traits or whether the choice to

drop out was reached for more objective reasons.

Data Analysis

Through our survey, we collected 78 total responses. From our first question, we can understand

that most people know the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. With 57.69% of respondents saying

they have heard of the organization and 42.31% saying they have not, we can infer that public

awareness of their organization could also have potential problems.

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From question two, we can see a problem on an individual level. With 62 out of 78 respondents

stating they have never personally donated to the LLS, the problem they are facing starts coming

into focus. The fact that almost 80% of respondents have never personally donated to the

organization could attribute to the reason they are losing schools in their recommitment program.

From this, we can see that on an individual level a majority of people dont support the

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

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With questions three and four, we split the respondents into groups that are participating in 2017

and those that participated in 2016, yet not in 2017. By comparing these two questions, we can

see that a positive trend going from 2016 to 2017. For instance, the respondents who participated

in or before 2016 totaled 15, yet in 2017 that total jumped up 20. The same comparison can be

made for the respondents that said no. In 2016, the number of respondents who werent

participating was 63 whereas in 2017 that number dropped to 53. These two questions exhibit a

small beacon of light for the LLS indicating that while they are having commitment issues, they

are still gaining participants going into 2017.

From question five, we wanted to gauge our respondents personal experience with the Leukemia

& Lymphoma Society. The results can either be interpreted positively or negatively. From our

results, 78% of respondents dont know anyone that has been helped by the Leukemia &

Lymphoma Society. One could interpret that to mean that either: a) LLS has made a significant

impact on the likelihood that people will contract these diseases and therefore less people have

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the diseases, or b) LLS has not showcased the impact that they have had on these diseases.

Question six was only shown to respondents who were not participating in 2017. From our

results we can see that the majority of respondents who arent participating attributed the reason

to a lack of transparency at 53%. For a majority of respondents, when they donate to the

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, they do not know where their money is going and have stopped

participating because of this reason. The second biggest reason respondents chose not to

participate was the fact that they chose another program at 32%. For LLS, this reason could

mean that other programs are simpler and easier on the school systems which could indicate why

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32% of respondents chose another program over the Leukemia & Lymphoma Societys.

From this question, we analyzed our respondents answers with their role within the school.

Within our cross-tabulation, we can see that among teachers and other faculty members the lack

of transparency is the most important issue. However when we look at the responses from

principals, we can see that the fact there is no sponsor for the program becomes the biggest issue.

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Upon further analysis, we can see that the issue of transparency is equally important to men and

women. For that issue to have 13 men and 13 women to equally respond means that there is a

clear indication that a lack of transparency is one of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Societys

biggest issues. Within this cross-tabulation, we can also see that men were more likely to chose

another program than women.

Question 7 was an open ended question that allowed respondents who are participating in 2017

to voice their opinions and let LLS know how they can improve their program. From their

responses, there is stuff that needs improvement. One respondent said that they way they manage

the schools and the online process is a nightmare. LLS could use this information to help

streamline their process and make it easier for schools to participate. One other key response was

that online donations are simpler than pennies. For many schools, the act of collecting, counting,

and transporting penny donations is cumbersome and inefficient. This alone would make many

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schools not want to participate because it would cause unnecessary stress on their teachers and

faculty members.

Key Observations

From our research, one key observation was that among principals the most important issue was

that there is no sponsor for the program. For most schools, the principal is the key decision

maker and will usually dictate whether a program is run or not. For them to say that a sponsor for

the program is one of their key reasons why they arent participating should show the Leukemia

& Lymphoma Society how important having a sponsor is.

Secondly, another key observation we derived from our study was the feedback that online

donations would be simpler than pennies. We regrettably did not include this option as a reason

why a school is not participating in the program, yet believe this to be an extremely important

observation. Online donations could make it easier for schools to participate and allow the

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to showcase where exactly the donors money is exactly going.

By doing this, LLS would also alleviate the pain they are experiencing from respondents saying

they dont know where their money is going. Moving towards online donations could eliminate

two problems at once.

Lastly, from our research we discovered that a little over 50% of respondents said they had heard

of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. For such a long lasting organization, this could indicate

that their brand has lost some presence. LLS could significantly benefit from spreading more

awareness about their cause, their programs, and what they are doing to help.

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Conclusions & Recommendations

We believe a major reason why donors are hesitant to donate to the organization is that they feel

like their money goes to the organizations pockets and not to the cause. As such, we recommend

that the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society implement a marketing campaign through social

media or other forms of media that showcases more transparency to help build more trust with its

donors. By spending more of their time in increasing transparency in their social media accounts

and other forms of advertisements, they can build further awareness and trust with their donors

by showing that the organization actually donates 0.80 cents per dollar to blood cancer research

and patients affected by blood cancers.

Since, we are moving into the digital age, the Pennies for Patients campaign, which has not

been too successful in recent years. Accordingly, we also recommend that the Leukemia &

Lymphoma Society alter their Pennies for Patients campaign which promotes students,

teachers, and faculty members to help by donating all their loose change. Although it has been an

effective marketing strategy in the past, it has more negative consequences currently because it

strains the relationship between the schools and the organization. Ideally, they should allow more

online and mobile donations which can include higher donations that range from a minimum of a

dollar to as much as a hundred dollars, whereupon schools may have a digital bank to facilitate

their funds. In addition, the school faculty, or LLS, should provide incentives to students for

achieving donation goals. We say this because according to our surveys, many of the teachers

and faculty members have found it quite difficult to transfer large donations of coins to Bank of

America since the weight was at times heavy. They also have to spend large amounts of their

time and effort to count out all the pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters to ensure there is an accurate

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amount donated to the bank. The original process is tedious and possibly too outdated for every

school to continue working with, which we believe leads to them dropping out of the program.

Study Limitations

Our email surveys didnt return as much as we hoped it would and later figured out how it

backfired on us. Fortunately, we were able to utilize the companys mobile app to message as

many teachers and parents on what their thoughts were about the Leukemia & Lymphoma

society and how it should run its marketing campaign.

Appendix

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