Mentoring with Marek Šedivý 2019
APO Mentoring continued in 2019, Mr. Marek Šedivý provided individual consultations in the Association of Innovative Pharmaceutical Industry (AIFP) from March to June 2019. These consultations took altogether 22 hours and were attended by 15 patient organizations.
REPORT AND FEEDBACK OF PATIENT ORGANIZATIONS
The most frequent topics of consultations included:
- Management of non-profit organizations,
functioning of management boards, strategic planning - Public Relations – cooperation with journalists,
event organization, brand building, networking, lobbing - Fundraising
Mentor feedback:
- The most frequent questions within a wide topic of management, fundraising and public relations were seemingly simple, such as: How do we raise more money? What should we do to get greater visibility in the media? How to motivate our association members to become more active?
- The colleagues from patient organizations and I tried to find answers that were not often that easy to find. It became obvious that the theory of management of non-profit organizations also applies to patient organizations that do not perceive themselves as “classical” non-profit organizations.
- It became apparent how important it is to know in fundraising, brand building and management in general what exactly we want, where we are heading, for whom we are working and what we can offer. This is key information for generating money for the running of non-profit organizations.
- We talked about problems with discipline, which is essential for achieving plans and with which struggle the organizations where only or mostly volunteers work. We talked about the responsibility of management bodies that should set up a clear plan and work rules and should create such conditions so that PO non-members, who have a direct experience with a certain illness or handicap, could work there as well and not just PO members.
- It is obvious that people in patient organizations are still enthusiastic and passionate about what they do, which helps them to handle difficult situations during their gradual professionalization. I believe that we were able to figure out together how to continue and develop the activity of patient organizations and to feel good about a great job done, which is one of the basic preventive cures against burnout.