Alberto Garcia
Marshall McCready
Jared Palacios
Table of Contents
I. Introduction 2
A. Backgound
B. Executive Summary
C. Research Problem 2
D. Research Question 2
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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
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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
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
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
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
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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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
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
Appendix
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