Over the years I have wrestled with how to articulate our value. I once decided to strike the entire “non-profit agency” description from our elevator speech, suggesting a new tagline for us: Care Ring is a poverty-fighting, life-affirming, people-loving organization.
We are poverty-fighters, we affirm and give dignity to every life we care for, and, yes, we love people, especially those who have fallen on difficult times in their life and have few places to turn for care.
But at the end of the day, how can donors who support our mission know they are getting a good return for their contribution? How can we demonstrate that investing in Care Ring brings significant savings to the community?
One way to look at impact is from a purely financial perspective, emphasizing the monetary savings to our community that result from investing in Care Ring. For each of our signature programs, we have developed a formal return-on-investment figure to capture our financial value.
Primary Care for People With Modest Resources
- Our Low-Cost Clinic provides high-quality preventive care to 2,600 uninsured and underinsured neighbors each year. Our clinic team treats chronic illnesses and offers wellness checks, health screenings, employment exams, vaccinations, and health education. We estimate we save the community more than $2.5 million each year through reduced Emergency Department visits due to the care we provide in our clinic. The ROI for our clinic comes out to $6.36 for every $1 invested.
Comprehensive Healthcare for People Most in Need
- A network of 1,600 volunteer medical professionals donate their talents through Care Ring. Through our provider network, we provide access to primary and specialty care, labs, and diagnostic tests to 4,000 low-income, uninsured people in Mecklenburg County each year. Doctors and dentists participating in our program donate more than $10 million each year in uncompensated care, and this program generates an annual ROI of $31 for every $1 invested.
Community Health Nursing
- Care Ring’s home visiting program, Nurse-Family Partnership, is designed for moms with limited resources who are pregnant for the first time. Each mother is partnered with a registered nurse from pregnancy through her child’s 2nd birthday. These new moms gain tools to provide their children a stable home and discover a path to self-sufficiency. NFP is an evidenced-based program, with an ROI of greater than $6.00 for every $1 invested.
The real life stories we hear from our patients – stories I get to hear nearly every day – are about changed lives and the transformative power that comes from reaching out to care for folks during hard times.
What our ROI “stories” are able to show is that while we are a poverty-fighting, life affirming, people-loving agency, we also do our work with a clear eye on the financial return on investment we bring to donors and to our community through our work.
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