The document discusses a fundraising strategy for the Multiple Sclerosis Society. It notes that MS is a low prevalence but high severity disease that does not garner as much sympathy as killer diseases. It suggests segmenting donors into those who want to donate, are unsure about donating to MS, or do not want to donate. The strategy should maintain existing donors, take market share from competitors, increase usage, and expand to black communities. Flexibility in donation amounts and actively targeting black communities through awareness campaigns and medical checks are recommended over solely focusing on family memberships and rigid $3 donations.

1. Multiple Sclerosis Society: Fund Raising Strategy<br />The need for segmentation is very much necessary in this case. Some key points to note before we start are as follows.<br />* It is a low prevalence-high severity disease.<br />*The sympathy factor is less as it is not a killer disease.<br />*The environment consists of the following : Competitors (cancer and heart diseases), Types of person donating (Annual givers, major givers and planned givers), Type of product (This is a voluntary donation for a philanthropic cause, which will also result in membership) and Type of situation.<br />*The donors basically belong to the following criteria [approach-approach, avoidance-avoidance and approach-avoidance] – They do not want to donate to any cause, they have money and only want to donate to one particular cause like cancer or heart diseases, but not to MS, they want to make a donation, but are not sure to go for MS or others.<br />The crux should be on maintaining the current level of market share and look out for increasing the same. It can be done in the following 4 ways :<br /># Maintain existing customer base.<br /># Grab competitors share.<br /># Increase market share by increased usage.<br /># Expand to black society for increased contribution.<br />Our Suggestions :<br />The strategy of increasing donations by simply following the family membership does not sound judicious. As mentioned in the case, people also donate to church and charity. There are past donors also along with an unexplored black society market. So the customer data can be utilized for segmenting the market according to consumer behaviour. <br />The fixation with $3 as the donation amount also seems a bit rigid. What if someone wants to donate $6 or $2. In this case, we suggest there should be a flexibility in terms of the donation. If we refuse the donations from lower amount donors (suppose who is donating $2), we lose him out as a potential donor next time around (where he may donate a higher sum). Also by staying rigid at $3, we are losing out on people who are willing to make a far higher donation.<br />The black society should be actively targeted. Initially the black leaders should be contacted and made to propagate the theme of donating for MS. The ignorance about MS is rampant among the blacks. So they should be made aware of this, and medical check-ups must be conducted to find out the spread of the disease among them.<br />