Business - a case study


Raising Funds



An ongoing problem with most research facilities around the globe is funding. Now that Vertoxin has been discovered, the next step is to get it onto pharmacy shelves across North America. In order to do this Dr. Lingwood and his research team must put the drug through three stages of testing in living human patients. These three stages are estimated to take up to seven years to complete. With the help of additional funding, Dr. Lingwood hopes to bring that number down to three or four years. This is where I come in. My case study problem is raise enough money through government funding to support the testing procedures throughout the four years. When looking at this problem we decided that the best strategy for reaching our objectives would be to use the strategic planning process. This involves setting objectives, developing strategies and creating action plans to accomplish specified goals. Inside are the results of this process.

Objectives:

When setting objectives we looked at two main points. First, how much money we need, and second how to decrease the time estimated to complete the experiments. After brainstorming, these are the two objective we came up with:

1. To obtain $1.5 million - $2 million in funding,

- to be split evenly over four years

2. To shorten the completion time of the three stages

Develop Strategies:

Once our objectives had been set, Dr. Lingwood and I began to develop goal-achieving strategies. When deciding on a suitable strategy we decided to take snap shot of Dr. Lingwood's department in a "perfect world". In other words, we looked at how the department would operate at peak efficiency and work to find ways to achieve that level of performance.

Objective 1: To obtain $1.5 million - $2 million in funding

Strategies: a) Apply for a grant from the Canadian Cancer Society and/or other appropriate government agencies.

b) Fund raise among wealthy donors

c) Improve awareness of Vertoxin

Objective 2: To shorten the completion time of the three stages.

Strategies: a) Create a list of experiments and procedures along with corresponding deadlines.

b) Increase lab organization to ensure that unnecessary time isn't lost searching for misplaced equipment (it is proven that humans waste one full year of their lives looking for things).

c) Look into new innovative lab procedures and equipment that might decrease the time spent on experiments.

d) Contract out to companies that specialize in doing lab tests for other organizations. This would ensure that our scientists could concentrate on the important tests.

e) Stream-line: Department will examine the procedures needed to complete the project and decide whether any of them might be easily combined or avoided.

Action Plan

Now that we have developed our strategies it is necessary to create action plans to implement them. When we approached this stage, Dr. Lingwood and I took each strategy and broke it down as much as possible to ensure that all aspects were covered. These are our results:

Objective - To obtain $1.5 million - $2 million in funding

Strategy - Apply for a grant from the Canadian Cancer Society and/or appropriate government agencies.

Action Plan - obtain application form from C.C.S

- create a resume of past publications and experience

- create a list of project goals and objectives

- create a report outlining the departments organizational and operational structure, a plan for interactive activities involving the C.C.S, a description of core facilities necessary to support goals and a description of how we will monitor the use of their funds.

- discuss how the department will incorporate women and minorities into testing

- creating two separate detailed budgets

- budget one is required to outline where the money is to be spent

- budget two is required to outline the departments financial history in regards to previous grants

Strategy - Fund raise among wealthy donors.

Action Plan - obtain a list of people who have previously donated money to fight cancer

- create a newsletter ...