American Red Cross Blood Services, Greater Ozarks-Arkansas Region

In the early 1990s, the American Red Cross Blood Services, Greater Ozarks-Arkansas Region needed a transfusion.

It was constantly losing money and had low blood denotations and high turnover.

“We had to have a bank honor our payroll checks … because we didn’t have enough money coming … even to meet our payroll,” said David Chumley, chief executive officer for the Little Rock nonprofit organization. “Because we were losing so much money, we couldn’t reinvest in our equipment (and) we couldn’t reinvest in our people.”

The bleeding stopped when Chumley was hired as CEO in 1993.

Chumley turned around the organization that collects blood donations and provides blood and blood products to 70 hospitals in Arkansas, southwest Missouri and Memphis.

By the late 1990s, the nonprofit started posting a net income. The turnover rate among the 300 employees, which had been about 45 percent in the early 1990s, now is at 18 percent.

And revenue is climbing. Between 1999 and 2003, revenue jumped 76 percent from $19.3 million to $34 million.

Chumley said it wasn’t any one particular thing that turned the organization around.

“It was a slow but steady building of a good management team that understood what our needs are, development of a strong donor recruitment organization and a strong development of our collection programs and … lowering turnover,” he said.

It won the 2003 American Red Cross Biomedical Headquarters Regional Quality Award for outstanding accomplishments, and in 2001 it won for exemplary performance in goal attainment.

Even though Chumley has the nonprofit heading in the right direction, it’s a constant struggle to collect blood, a perishable that has to be replenished every 35-42 days.

But Chumley has seen collections grow from 60,000 units in 1993 to 123,000 in 2003.

“It’s an ongoing education process to attempt to recruit healthy, eligible donors to our program,” he said.