For more than 130 years, Johnson & Johnson has worked to improve the health of individuals, families, and communities around the world through innovative ideas, products, and services. Through its CaringCrowd® platform, Johnson & Johnson is proud to further its commitment to improving global public health.
The world’s most pressing health challenges can’t be tackled alone—which is where CaringCrowd® comes in. The online crowdfunding platform enables you to make individual donations that, when pooled, can lead to big change.
Whether you work in the healthcare field, volunteer, or want to get involved with community health for the first time, you can create a global health project on CaringCrowd®. Individuals and organizations can publish a description of their project on the platform, set a fundraising goal and deadline, and find donors who want to support their project. To date, 77 global health projects in communities around the world have been fully funded through CaringCrowd®, and with nearly 4,000 backers, the community is growing every day.
“Ultimately, CaringCrowd® is a way that J&J works with the public on community health. We’re excited to see a growing number of nonprofits and individuals leverage our crowdfunding platform for public and community health projects,” says Derek Fetzer, Director of CaringCrowd® at Johnson & Johnson. "As the platform grows, we envision that we can begin to integrate other facets of crowdsourcing into the platform, such as people contributing skills, ideas, and assets to the projects.”
Nurses Making a Difference
Projects funded through the CaringCrowd® platform have enabled nurses to make a difference for patients in communities around the world, including a project through the African Mothers Health Initiative (AMHI), a non-profit organization whose mission is to improve maternal and child health in Malawi. Infant mortality rates, as well as maternal mortality and morbidity rates, in Malawi are among the worst in the world, and AMHI focuses on providing care to the most vulnerable babies and women who are critically ill following delivery. The organization found that a few home visits by a nurse resulted in hastened recovery. After spending thousands of dollars on routine maintenance for the organization’s tired vehicle, AMHI posted a project on CaringCrowd® to support the purchase of a new vehicle so that nurses could reach moms and babies in rural villages who were in desperate need of home visits. The project received donations from 48 backers and was fully funded.
CaringCrowd® projects have helped patients around the world and even right in the backyard of Johnson & Johnson. Mount Carmel Guild of Mercer County, N.J., published a project to CaringCrowd® to raise funds for their Home Health Nursing program, which provides in-home nursing services to seniors whose Medicare insurance has been exhausted and have no alternative care. Typically, the program’s participants are homebound, have mobility challenges, and do not have family to check in on them. Many have geriatric health issues, such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as various stages of dementia. The program’s goal is to prevent premature institutionalization of seniors into nursing homes and to support patients so that they can age with dignity and respect in the comfort of their own homes. Ultimately, the Guild raised $20,000 on CaringCrowd® to continue supporting their free nursing care program for seniors.
At Johnson & Johnson, we believe we are responsible to the communities in which we live and work, and to the global health community as a whole. If you have an idea for a project that could help make a difference in patients’ lives, Derek and the team at CaringCrowd® encourage you to make your voice heard by submitting your project to the platform.
“Be bold,” says Derek. “Crowdfunding is relatively new and most of our project owners are crowdfunding for the first time. We want to see you succeed in helping your community, and are here to answer any questions you may have.”
With your support, we can improve global health. To learn more about CaringCrowd®, visit caringcrowd.org or contact help@caringcrowd.org.
