Customer Service Perspective for Non Profits

Michael J Fox Foundation

Customer Service Perspective

There are three priority areas that the Michael J Fox Foundation focuses on the could also be considered the customer service perspectives for the organization (MJFF, N.d.). The first is the attempt to alter the disease in meaningful ways; preferably in something that could be considered a cure or at least significantly improve the quality of life of the patients with Parkinson's disease. This represents the top priority for the organization and they devote over half of their investment activity for this priority area.

The second highest priority area for research is summarized as defining PD. One of the critical missing links in the research is the ability to understand the biomarkers of the disease (MJFF, N.d.). If scientist could better understand the biomarkers of the disease, then it would be possible to track the progression of the disease as well as have a better understanding of whether treatments are working or not. The final priority area is addressing the untreated symptoms. While some symptoms related to Parkinson's can be managed, there are many more that cannot be. Therefore, the MJFF also invests a significant amount of resources into finding treatments that can mitigate the worst effects of these symptoms.

The MJFF does not conduct any research internally. Rather it funds research projects either directly or indirectly. However, the organization can also play a valuable role in helping different organizations and agencies coordinate their research efforts. For example, if the Federal Government is researching some specific aspect of Parkinson's, then the MJFF can fund some other research project and ensure they do not duplicate efforts. There is also the opportunity for knowledge sharing between organizations so that organizations can potentially develop a sense of synergy by working together. Therefore, one performance metric could be related to creating a knowledge sharing and coordination platform to facilitate these relationships. These relationships would serve as the target, and the metric could be designed to align these efforts and this could support the first metric.

The second organizational objective is to identify biomarkers. This effort represents another area in which knowledge sharing could help to facilitate the advancements in research. One idea to help researchers share knowledge across organizations might be to develop a wiki or some technological platform to upload their latest findings. One metric that could help the organization to judge the effectiveness might be the number of researchers engaged in the project or possibly the number of organizations that the researchers represent. One foundation discovered that scientists operated in a strikingly siloed fashion, viewing others in the field more as competitors than collaborators; this observation represented a painful realization for any observer who wishes to expedite scientific progress (Shaywitz, 2015). Although it might be difficult to get researchers to participate, it could vastly improve the search for Parkinson's biomarkers.