Arora General

Thoma Thoma

Building a Culture of Donation in Arkansas

As the largest organ procurement organization in the state, ARORA’s mission, mandate and revenue engine are all the same – maximizing organ donation in Arkansas. Success means influencing acceptance of donation among the population, and just as importantly, engaging hospital referral partners to actively identify and refer cases in a timely manner.

Extensive stakeholder research surfaced multiple opportunities to create stronger, more transparent, more engaged relationships with hospital partners. While hospital staff gave lip service to donation, they often tarried in making referrals and they didn’t actively support donation as a life-saving mission.

Thoma designed a multiyear, comprehensive development roadmap that was implemented with every client-facing department member – from Donation Development, to Tissue and Organ Procurement, to Family Services. With the support of the company’s board of directors, the program further expanded to the population at large.

Tactics:

Comprehensive customer experience design, producing new processes, key messages and behavioral principles that would be trained and acculturated
Multistep staff training experiences that oriented all to the scripts, provided reference materials and coached them in interpersonal communications
Multipart statewide campaign themed “Save 8. Donate.” that engaged everyone from the Governor of Arkansas to the statewide media to ARORA’s extensive volunteer base.
Extensive digital advertising program and statewide earned media program to blanket the airwaves with pro-registration messages.

Outcome:

Following the launch of the campaign, which was paired with key operational and process improvements, ARORA began rapidly increasing organ and tissue donations in Arkansas. By 2021, it set an all-time record for the greatest number of organs and donors in its corporate history, then again in 2022 exceeded that number to set another all-time record.