INTERPLAST
Business Plan
2005-2007
To accompany the nomination to GlobalGiving’s Marketplace of Dr. Shankar Man Rai of Kathmandu, Nepal
This business plan outlines Interplast’s strategic goals for the three year period from 2005 to 2007. Interplast’s Nepal Surgical Outreach Center, established and operated by Dr. Shankar Man Rai, is a key component of the implementation of these objectives.
Although the entire business plan is relevant to Dr. Rai’s project, the items in bold in the business plan below are related specifically to Dr. Rai’s surgical outreach project for children with burns, clefts, and other disabilities in Nepal. He is currently working with Interplast’s President & CEO and Chief Medical Officer on a site-specific business plan for this particular project, which we hope to share with you over the coming months.
INTERPLAST
Business Plan
2005-2007
Executive Summary
Background
Interplast is a nonprofit organization providing free reconstructive plastic surgery for children and adults in developing nations. Since 1969 Interplast has sent volunteer medical teams to over 20 developing nations and provided more than 57,000 reconstructive surgeries for the poor. Interplast is also building the capacity of surgeons and other medical colleagues in the developing world to care for needy people in their communities, twelve months a year, through providing medical education and through its Surgical Outreach Centers. The Interplast-affiliated outreach center in Kathmandu, Nepal is a complete success according to our current objectives, and will serve as a model for other similar sites around the world.
Vision
Interplast’s vision is a world in which no human being must live with a congenital deformity or injury repairable by reconstructive plastic surgery. In all its medical programs, Interplast will strive to provide access to the greatest number of poor people in need of reconstructive plastic surgery, at the earliest possible point in their lives—now, and for generations to come.
Objectives
Over the next three years, team trips will increase incrementally, while the bulk of the organization’s financial resources and program growth will be directed toward medical education of overseas colleagues and local empowerment.
Market Analysis
Interplast acknowledges that achieving its vision, and implementing its business plan over the next three years, requires fulfilling certain funding, personnel, and other resource needs to support the strategy.
Competitive Analysis
Among its competitors, Interplast is benefited by the following strengths: its
longevity, reputation, partnering model, educational offerings, QI process, broad volunteer base, professional staff, and involved board of directors. The organization realizes it will need to address issues concerning its poor name, the lack of broad awareness of the organization’s purpose, lack of resources, and a limited host base.
Services
Interplast offers several medical program models including team trips, visiting educators, surgical outreach centers, the Webster Fellowship, telemedicine, and several supporting programs. The organization has tailored these programs to fit the needs of its different site models.
Marketing
Interplast has developed a list of key message points so that the organization can present a unified message in all its communications. A comprehensive strategic communications plan is currently being developed.
Funding & Financial Projections
Consistent with this 3-year business plan, Interplast will grow incrementally during fiscal years 2005, 2006, and 2007. During that period, it will launch a $10 million comprehensive campaign (endowment, capital, and future program fund), thereby preparing the organization for a quantum growth in its services beginning no later than FY 2008.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Summary 5
Background 5
Current Situation 5
Organizational Structure 6
Financial Summary 6
Vision 7
Mission Statement 7
Core Values 7
Vision Statement 7
Strategic Goals 7
Gap Analysis 8
Strategy Implementation 12
Objectives 13
Market Analysis 16
The Overall Market 16
Customers 16
Customer Characteristics & Buying Decisions 17
Competitive Analysis of the Industry 18
Industry Overview 18
SWOT Analysis 19
Competitive Analysis with Key Competitors 21
Services 22
Interplast Medical Program Models 22
Positioning 24
Marketing 27
Funding 28
Strategy 28
Methodology 28
Planning 28
Financial Projections 29
Revenue Projection through FY 07 29
Interplast “Gift Pyramid” 30
Program Objectives with Direct Program Costs 31
Appendices 32
Appendix I: Surgical Outreach Center Burn Pilot Program 32
Appendix II: Interplast Grand Rounds 33
Appendix III: Board and Staff Credentials: A Note 34
SUMMARY
Background
Interplast is a nonprofit organization providing free reconstructive plastic surgery for children and adults in developing nations. For more than three decades, Interplast has made it possible for children and adults, in some of the poorest regions of the world, to live full lives as members of society. Without Interplast, individuals born with disfiguring birth defects or suffering disabling injuries are often denied such opportunities and the quality of their lives, the lives of their families, and the economies of their communities all suffer as a result.
Since 1969 Interplast has sent volunteer medical teams to over 30 developing countries and provided more than 57,000 reconstructive surgeries for the poor. The organization has also delivered hands-on training to hundreds of overseas surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and adjunct therapists, in their own hospitals, leaving them with the immediate ability to provide skilled medical care to the poor.
Interplast is also building the capacity of surgeons and other medical colleagues in the developing world to care for needy people in their communities, twelve months a year, through its Surgical Outreach Centers. With direct funding, ongoing medical quality assurance, and technology, Interplast makes it possible for 1,500 needy children per year to receive the free surgeries, follow-up therapy and care they require from local medical professionals, such as Dr. Shankar Man Rai in Nepal. Approximately 1,500 more poor patients receive treatment through Interplast team trips to developing countries.
Interplast is the most established organization of its type and is renowned for the highest quality of medical care, its lean organizational structure, and its close partnership with overseas medical colleagues that is always directed toward developing medical independence. Interplast is a collaborative effort of medical volunteers, overseas medical partners, donors, community volunteers, and staff, all working together to reach the poorest people of the world who wait for their help.
Current situation
Reconstructive plastic surgery is provided in the following ways:
Trips: Direct care in which the organization sends volunteer medical teams to select sites to perform surgeries for needy patients.
Education & Empowerment: Partnering with medical professionals in the developing world to help them advance their skills and manage their own outreach programs to treat their countries’ underserved populations.
Direct Surgical Trips
More than 200 volunteers participate in Interplast surgical trips each year. The medical teams include plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists, pediatricians, nurses, and trip secretaries/translators.
· 17 trips were sent in fiscal year ‘04
· The typical trip lasts two weeks
· 60-80 surgeries are performed on each trip
· Medical supplies and equipment are provided with the team
Medical Education and Empowerment Programs
· Visiting Educator program: Medical specialists provide lectures, consultation, and hands on instruction in specialized medical skills tailored to the needs of the host colleagues.
· Empowerment program: Interplast provides funding, medical consultation, equipment, and other guidance and support needed by select surgeons in the developing world to manage their own outreach programs. At this time, six surgeons from Nepal, Zambia, Bangladesh, Peru, and Ecuador are involved in this program.
Sub-components of Programs
· Web-based medicine: The outreach surgeons are able to document their cases using a digital camera, laptop computer, and access to the Internet. These resources also allows them and other international physician partners to log on to the organization’s Interplast Grand Rounds to post patient photographs and case overviews and ask other participating surgeons from all over the world for guidance in approaching treatment.
· Education materials: These tools detailing basic cleft lip and palate repair techniques are distributed to Interplast’s international partners to help them further develop their surgical and patient care skills.
· Medical Scholar Program: This program provides opportunities for healthcare providers from developing nations to study in the U.S. or other countries. Interplast selects candidates who demonstrate the motivation and capability to provide care for the poor in their own countries.
Organizational Structure
· 18 employees
· Departments include Development, Medical Programs, International Services, Volunteer Staffing & Recruitment, Marketing & Communications, Supplies & Equipment, and G&A.
· Volunteer medical professionals make up the specialty committees that dictate medical policy
· Active 30 member Board of Directors
· Over 700 medical volunteers
Financial Summary
Interplast currently provides its services in 12 developing nations, serving 3,500 patients per year, with a $10 million total budget, $3.3 million cash. Total assets are $2-3 million.
VISION
Mission Statement
Interplast’s mission is to provide free reconstructive surgery for people in developing nations, and to help improve health care worldwide. The organization’s goals are to establish, develop, and maintain host-country, domestic-patient, and educational programs with the following objectives:
· Provide direct patient care—reconstructive surgery and ancillary services to those with no other resources.
· Provide educational training and medical interchange.
· Assist host-country medical colleagues toward medical independence.
· Enable recipients of care to become providers of care to new sites.
Interplast maintains no political or religious affiliations. Sensitivity to, and respect for, other cultures as equals pervades the Interplast philosophy and deeply influences the manner in which we conduct ourselves as ambassadors.
Core Values
· Care for those with no other resources.
· Highest standards of medical ethics and quality of medical care.
· Sensitivity to, and respect for, other cultures as equals.
· Volunteerism and philanthropy.
· No religious, political, or economic motivations.
· Education and empowerment.
· Our work is guided by community need and humanitarian instincts.
Vision Statement
Interplast’s vision is a world in which no human being must live with a congenital deformity or injury repairable by reconstructive plastic surgery.
Strategic Goals
· In all its medical programs, Interplast will strive to provide access to poor people in need of reconstructive plastic surgery, at the earliest possible point in their lives
· Interplast will develop permanent reconstructive plastic surgical outreach centers wherever possible within the developing nations Interplast serves, affording free access to reconstructive care by poor people in those nations
· Interplast will provide medical education and training in reconstructive plastic surgery to medical colleagues within underdeveloped nations in order that those skills be used to give poor people free access to reconstructive care
· Interplast will develop ancillary care programs associated with restoring and sustaining function following reconstructive surgery in developing nations, in order that it be used to give poor people free access to such care
· Interplast will provide free direct surgical care to poor patients in developing nations, while working with local medical colleagues to provide medical education and skills transfer at those sites
· Interplast will customize its medical education and service programs in developing nations to meet the needs of the site
· Interplast will actively recruit medical volunteers qualified to fulfill the direct surgical, educational and empowerment needs of each site, and build and sustain that corps
· Interplast will work to develop economic models which will permit permanent surgical outreach centers to become self-sustaining
Gap Analysis: This is an analysis of the gap between current reality and the strategic goals; in other words, it describes where Interplast is as an organization and where it wants to be.
People
International Partners
As Interplast pursues its strategy of education and empowerment, international colleagues will need to be identified to fill the necessary medical specialties involved in reconstructive surgery. These specialties include reconstructive surgery, anesthesia, operating room and recovery room nursing, as well as post-operative care. Although some of the international colleagues fit into one of these specialties, this is not true at all sites. These medical partners, therefore, will have to be trained or new colleagues will have to be identified at the various sites to fulfill these functions.
Medical Volunteers
Our core group of volunteers, currently a strong organizational asset, will need to be further enhanced to meet our strategic requirements. Not only must the organization find more specialized volunteers in surgical techniques, all our medical volunteers must be comfortable with the notion of passing on their skills and have the ability to teach. Most importantly, Interplast will need volunteers who embrace and champion the new strategy. Recruiting for pure service trips in which teaching is very informal and on a one-to-one basis is much broader and, therefore, easier. Interplast has among its current corps of volunteers some excellent resources; the organization needs to annually reassess the specific skills of its volunteers to make the best use of their talents.
Medical Staff
One of the duties of the CMO at Interplast is to recruit and assure the expertise and effectiveness of the surgeons who volunteer with Interplast both on teams and as educators. He is also responsible for the educational curriculum in the surgical arena. With the growing need for skills transfer of anesthesia techniques at our sites, Interplast will need to bring an anesthesiologist on staff to meet the challenges that it will face over the next few years as it follows its educational and empowerment strategy.
Non-medical Volunteers
One of the greatest barriers to transfer of knowledge on our team trips is the language obstacles that exist at many of our sites. In order to bridge this gap, Interplast will have to supply more translators at sites that are underserved in this regard.
Board of Directors
There are two clear components that make up Interplast’s board—those members from the medical community and those members from the business community. Interplast will continue to search for ethnic and national diversity in its membership. The potential for overseas members to join the board will be researched. As Interplast looks ahead to strengthening its education and empowerment commitments, medical members of the academic community will have to be actively sought out to join the board. The organization will continue to bring highly capable and skilled business people to the board to help evaluate and guide strategy. Equally important will be the selection of individuals to the board who have a strong capacity to give and help raise money for major gifts.