Recruitment Products as Revenue-Producing Resources

Podiatric applicant development should not depend primarily upon repeatedly asking people to donate money.

Many of the products developed for recruitment can simultaneously solve educational, healthcare, workforce, community, research, business, and government problems.

The organization should therefore continuously ask:

Who else has a problem that this product can help solve?

Who already has a budget associated with that problem?

What modifications would make our existing product useful enough that they would pay us to provide it?

Can we satisfy their need while preserving or expanding exposure to podiatric medicine?

This creates a different development relationship:

Recruitment Need

→ Product Developed

→ Related Social Need Identified

→ Product Adapted

→ Outside Organization Purchases Service

→ Outside Need Is Served

→ Recruitment Exposure Also Occurs

→ Revenue Supports Product Improvement

→ Improved Product Serves Additional Markets

→ Additional Revenue and Relationships Develop

The same original resource can therefore travel through several useful environments.

Establish a Needs-Discovery Function

The nonprofit should continuously search for problems rather than merely search for donors.

A small Needs-Discovery Team can examine publicly available information for organizations that have already announced problems they are trying to solve.

Sources include:

• hospital community-health assessments,
• government strategic plans,
• public-health reports,
• workforce-development plans,
• school-district career-education plans,
• university strategic plans,
• employer workforce reports,
• healthcare job vacancies,
• foundation priorities,
• Requests for Proposals,
• Requests for Information,
• government procurement notices,
• grant announcements,
• professional-association surveys,
• conference agendas,
• accreditation concerns,
• community surveys,
• business strategic initiatives,
• healthcare quality-improvement programs,
• social-network discussions,
• patient-community discussions,
• professional social-media groups,
• university student organizations,
• faculty research interests.

This should become a systematic activity.

Do not merely search for:

“Podiatry funding.”

Search for:

diabetes education

healthcare workforce shortages

STEM career exposure

rural healthcare recruitment

student career exploration

health literacy

biomechanics education

sports injury prevention

chronic-disease education

mentorship programs

healthcare career pipelines

workforce retention

community health outreach

undergraduate research opportunities

career advisor training

first-generation professional-school preparation

healthcare workforce data

professional mentoring

clinical shadowing infrastructure

science curriculum development

The potential market becomes vastly larger.

Hospital Community Needs as One Major Opportunity

Tax-exempt hospitals provide an unusually useful source of publicly stated needs.

Hospitals subject to IRC Section 501(r) generally must conduct a Community Health Needs Assessment at least once every three years and adopt an implementation strategy addressing identified community needs. Those assessments must be made publicly available.

This means the nonprofit can systematically review hospital assessments across the country.

Suppose a hospital identifies:

• diabetes,
• obesity,
• access to preventive care,
• health education,
• chronic wounds,
• mobility,
• healthcare workforce shortages.

Instead of asking the hospital:

“Would you donate to podiatry recruitment?”

approach it with:

“Your Community Health Needs Assessment identifies diabetes education and healthcare workforce development as priorities. We have already developed educational programs involving diabetic lower-extremity health, undergraduate healthcare exposure, clinician participation, and outcome documentation. We can adapt and administer a community program addressing both needs.”

Now the nonprofit is offering a solution.

The hospital can potentially purchase a service rather than simply make a donation.

And the same activity introduces students to podiatric medicine.

Example: Turn a Recruitment Curriculum Into a Hospital Service

Suppose the nonprofit develops:

Diabetic Limb Preservation for Undergraduate Students

Its original purpose is to expose students to podiatric medicine.

It contains:

• diabetes education,
• anatomy,
• vascular concepts,
• neuropathy,
• wound prevention,
• patient cases,
• clinical demonstrations,
• podiatric career information.

That same curriculum can be adapted into:

Community Patient Education

Hospitals, clinics, insurers, county health programs, and community organizations may purchase delivery.

Caregiver Education

Organizations serving older adults may need diabetic-foot and mobility education.

Community Health Worker Education

The curriculum can be adapted for workers interacting with high-risk populations.

High-School Health Education

School districts can use appropriately simplified versions.

College Healthcare Career Education

Universities can purchase workshops.

Employee Wellness Programs

Large employers with diabetes-prevention initiatives may purchase programs.

Hospital Community-Benefit Programming

Hospitals may integrate appropriate components into community-health activities.

The original recruitment investment therefore creates several potential revenue products.

Universities Are Customers, Not Merely Recruitment Locations

Universities have needs beyond supplying applicants.

They need:

• career exploration,
• student retention,
• experiential learning,
• professional mentoring,
• undergraduate research,
• career placement,
• health-profession advising,
• STEM engagement,
• first-generation student support,
• faculty-development resources.

The nonprofit can package existing recruitment products around those needs.

Career Exploration Package

Sell a university a semester program containing:

• health-profession workshops,
• physician speakers,
• clinical cases,
• mentoring,
• shadowing coordination,
• career-planning resources.

Podiatric medicine becomes one substantive component rather than an advertisement.

Health-Professions Advisor Training

Develop a paid advisor-development program.

Provide:

• current profession information,
• admissions pathways,
• specialty comparisons,
• student counseling resources,
• clinical cases,
• referral resources.

The university receives improved advising capability.

The nonprofit gains revenue and long-term student exposure.

Undergraduate Research Administration

Universities may pay the nonprofit to organize:

• podiatry-related research mentors,
• project matching,
• research methodology training,
• poster development,
• physician collaboration.

Recruitment occurs naturally because students are working within the discipline.

Clinical Exposure Administration

Some universities have difficulty finding and managing clinical shadowing opportunities.

The nonprofit can provide:

• physician recruitment,
• student matching,
• scheduling infrastructure,
• orientation,
• documentation,
• feedback,
• program evaluation.

This becomes a paid service rather than repeatedly asking physicians and universities to reinvent the infrastructure.

Community Colleges

Community colleges represent another substantial market.

They need:

• transfer pathways,
• healthcare career exploration,
• STEM retention,
• allied-health career information,
• career counseling,
• local employer relationships.

A recruitment organization could sell or contract for:

Healthcare Careers Exploration Series

while including podiatric medicine prominently among the professions.

Another product could be:

Community College to Medical Profession Pathway Planning

The student receives broader value.

Podiatric medicine receives early exposure.

The college receives a useful service.

The nonprofit receives revenue.

High Schools and Career Technical Education

Recruitment materials can become educational products for:

• anatomy,
• biology,
• health science,
• sports medicine,
• career technical education,
• STEM programs.

Examples:

Biomechanics Laboratory

Students measure:

• gait,
• pressure,
• balance,
• leverage,
• force,
• joint movement.

Originally developed for podiatry recruitment.

It is also a legitimate applied physics, biology, anatomy, and sports-science lesson.

School districts could purchase:

• curriculum,
• teacher training,
• equipment kits,
• instructional support,
• virtual demonstrations.

Podiatry exposure remains embedded in the exercise.

Sports Organizations

Recruitment products involving biomechanics can serve:

• running clubs,
• youth sports,
• collegiate athletics,
• coaching organizations,
• athletic-training programs,
• recreation departments.

Potential products include:

• injury-prevention workshops,
• gait education,
• footwear education,
• lower-extremity anatomy programs,
• sports-health career workshops.

These can be sponsored or purchased.

Participants simultaneously encounter podiatric sports medicine.

Businesses

Businesses should be approached according to problems they need solved rather than simply as sponsors.

Potential partners include:

• medical-device companies,
• footwear companies,
• orthotic manufacturers,
• imaging companies,
• wound-care companies,
• healthcare software firms,
• staffing organizations,
• rehabilitation companies,
• healthcare systems.

Products might include:

Workforce Research

The nonprofit already surveys students.

It can produce paid research concerning:

• healthcare student attitudes,
• workforce expectations,
• career decision factors,
• educational preferences,
• mentoring preferences.

Do not sell personally identifiable student information.

Sell knowledge developed from appropriately collected and aggregated information.

Educational Content Development

Companies often need clinically sound educational material.

The nonprofit may produce independent educational content while retaining appropriate editorial controls.

Professional Education

Recruitment-developed clinical teaching materials can sometimes be extended into professional or employee education.

Public Education Campaigns

A wound-care or health company might sponsor a public diabetic-foot-awareness project.

The program can simultaneously contain healthcare-career exposure components.

Corporate Sponsorship Is Another Path

Corporate sponsorship can support specific programs.

For example:

National Student Biomechanics Initiative
Supported by XYZ Medical Technologies

The IRS distinguishes acknowledgment of a sponsor from advertising. Qualified sponsorship payments generally involve recognition of the sponsor without providing a substantial return benefit such as promotional advertising or endorsements.

This makes it possible to finance educational programs while keeping commercial influence separated from educational judgment.

Government Should Be Treated as a Customer

Government funding is not limited to grants.

Governments purchase services.

Potential needs include:

• healthcare workforce development,
• career education,
• rural workforce programs,
• public-health education,
• diabetes initiatives,
• youth employment,
• STEM exposure,
• workforce research,
• community outreach,
• educational technical assistance.

The organization can become a contractor, subcontractor, grant recipient, or subrecipient depending upon the program.

Federal entity registration through SAM.gov permits organizations to bid on federal contracts and apply directly for federal assistance.

Nonprofit organizations are also explicitly eligible applicants for many federal grant opportunities, although eligibility is determined individually by each funding announcement.

Become a Subcontractor Rather Than Always the Lead Applicant

This can substantially accelerate early growth.

Suppose a university receives a $2 million healthcare workforce grant.

The new nonprofit may lack the history to win such an award directly.

But it might provide:

$35,000 of student career-development programming.

The university remains the prime recipient.

The podiatry nonprofit becomes:

• contractor,
• subrecipient,
• curriculum provider,
• program evaluator,
• mentor-network operator,
• research partner.

That produces:

• revenue,
• documented experience,
• institutional relationships,
• performance history,
• future grant credibility.

Workforce Organizations

Regional workforce entities continually face questions such as:

• How do we expose young people to healthcare careers?
• How do we recruit professionals to underserved areas?
• How do we improve STEM pipelines?
• How do we retain healthcare workers locally?

A podiatry recruitment resource can often be broadened into:

Healthcare Career Pipeline Development

Podiatry remains a substantial component.

But nursing, physical therapy, laboratory science, medicine, dentistry, and other careers may also be included.

That broader product may be far more attractive to a workforce agency.

The nonprofit gets paid for solving their workforce problem.

Podiatry gains exposure within the solution.

Rural Communities

A rural hospital might not care primarily about increasing podiatric-school applications nationally.

It may care intensely about:

getting healthcare professionals into its community.

Develop:

Rural Healthcare Career Development Program

Bring together:

• high-school students,
• community-college students,
• university students,
• clinicians,
• rural hospitals,
• healthcare schools.

Podiatry becomes one pathway.

The rural hospital may help finance the program because it addresses its own workforce needs.

Foundations

Do not approach every foundation asking it to finance “podiatry recruitment.”

Find the social problem it already wants to address.

If its priority is:

First-generation college students

Offer:

First-Generation Healthcare Profession Pathways.

If its priority is:

Rural health

Offer:

Rural Healthcare Career Development.

If its priority is:

Diabetes

Offer:

Diabetes Education and Future Healthcare Professional Development.

If its priority is:

STEM

Offer:

Applied Biomechanics and Medical Careers.

The underlying recruitment products are reused.

Social Networks Become Needs-Discovery Systems

Social networks can identify problems before formal institutions publish reports.

Monitor discussions among:

• pre-health students,
• parents,
• advisors,
• physicians,
• athletic trainers,
• diabetic communities,
• teachers,
• rural-health professionals,
• residency programs,
• healthcare employers.

Repeated questions reveal unmet needs.

If thousands of students repeatedly ask:

“How do I find physician shadowing?”

That is not merely a recruiting observation.

It identifies a potential product:

Verified Healthcare Shadowing Network

Universities, healthcare organizations, foundations, or students themselves may have reasons to support such infrastructure.

Turn Databases Into Services

The nonprofit’s database can itself create products.

Examples:

Mentor Matching

Universities pay for access to a managed mentoring program.

Shadowing Administration

Organizations pay the nonprofit to coordinate experiences.

Workforce Mapping

Health systems purchase analyses showing:

• student supply,
• universities,
• healthcare programs,
• underserved areas,
• clinical mentors.

Advisor Resource Platform

Institutions subscribe to continually updated health-profession educational materials.

Program Evaluation

Organizations pay the nonprofit to measure whether their career-development programs actually produce continued participation.

Personal data should remain protected. The product is the service and knowledge, not the sale of individual participants.

Turn Research Into Revenue-Producing Expertise

Recruitment research creates expertise that others may purchase.

For example:

The nonprofit studies 5,000 students and learns why students abandon healthcare-career pathways.

That knowledge may interest:

• universities,
• health systems,
• foundations,
• workforce agencies,
• professional associations,
• government agencies.

The nonprofit can provide:

• commissioned studies,
• program evaluations,
• presentations,
• consulting,
• reports,
• implementation services.

The recruiting research has now developed an additional professional capability.

Turn Curriculum Into a Family of Products

One curriculum should rarely remain one product.

For example:

Original Product

Podiatric Sports Medicine Introduction.

Then create:

High-School Edition

College Biology Edition

Kinesiology Edition

Athletic Trainer Edition

Coach Edition

Patient Edition

Community Education Edition

Teacher Training Edition

Virtual Edition

Train-the-Trainer Edition

The intellectual development has already occurred.

Adaptation becomes progressively less burdensome.

Each version creates another potential payer and another distribution channel.

Train-the-Trainer Programs

Instead of continuously paying nonprofit staff to present programs everywhere, sell or contract for instructor development.

The nonprofit develops instructors who can independently deliver:

• biomechanics programs,
• healthcare-career programs,
• diabetes education,
• shadowing orientation,
• advisor education.

Revenue comes from:

• institutional training contracts,
• curriculum packages,
• implementation assistance,
• continuing updates.

Scale increases without proportional increases in central labor.

Licensing

Some educational products can be licensed.

Potential licensees include:

• schools,
• universities,
• hospitals,
• associations,
• workforce programs.

Licensing can include:

• curriculum,
• videos,
• assessment tools,
• implementation manuals,
• digital resources.

A modest annual institutional license multiplied across hundreds of institutions can provide recurring baseline support.

Implementation Services

Giving someone a curriculum does not mean they can successfully implement it.

Therefore sell both:

Product

and

Implementation Assistance.

For example:

Curriculum: $1,000

Faculty training: $2,500

Local adaptation: $1,500

First-year implementation assistance: $3,000

Evaluation: $2,000

These numbers are illustrative, not recommended pricing.

The important principle is that implementation knowledge itself becomes a product.

Evaluation Services

Every organization receiving grants eventually needs to answer:

Did the program work?

The podiatry nonprofit is already developing outcome measurement for its own programs.

That capability can become a paid service for:

• universities,
• community organizations,
• healthcare systems,
• foundations.

Evaluation revenue then funds further measurement capability.

Grant Administration

A foundation or company may want to finance dozens of small healthcare-education programs but not administer every award.

The nonprofit can eventually become the intermediary.

For example:

Corporate foundation provides:

$250,000

The nonprofit:

• solicits local applications,
• evaluates proposals,
• distributes microgrants,
• provides technical assistance,
• collects results,
• produces the final report.

An agreed portion supports administration.

The remaining funding goes to programs.

The organization is now being paid to expand the same distributed development system it wanted to build anyway.

Convening as a Product

The nonprofit’s network itself becomes valuable.

It may organize:

• workforce summits,
• advisor forums,
• healthcare education workshops,
• university-health-system meetings,
• research collaborations.

Participants or institutional sponsors may pay for valuable convening when the gathering addresses an actual problem.

The objective should not be another expensive ceremonial conference.

Every gathering should solve identifiable problems or develop useful products.

Intellectual Property Should Accumulate

Whenever possible, contracts should preserve the nonprofit’s ability to reuse generalized knowledge and internally developed tools.

For example:

A hospital pays for a customized diabetes career-education program.

The hospital receives the customized deliverable.

The nonprofit retains its underlying curriculum framework and lessons learned.

Those improvements can support the next hospital.

Therefore:

Customer 1 helps improve Product 1.

Product 1.1 is better.

Customer 2 pays to adapt Product 1.1.

That creates Product 1.2.

The development cost is progressively distributed across many customers.

Establish a Product-to-Need Database

For every recruitment product, maintain fields such as:

Recruitment Product

What was originally developed?

Other Problems It Can Solve

What adjacent needs exist?

Potential Purchasers

Who experiences those problems?

Evidence of Need

Where did they publicly identify the problem?

Existing Budget Source

What department or program normally pays for it?

Required Adaptation

What must change before it solves their problem?

Purchasing Mechanism

Donation?

Grant?

Contract?

Subcontract?

Sponsorship?

License?

Training fee?

Service agreement?

Recruitment Connection

How does providing the product continue exposing people to podiatry?

Reusable Development

What improvements can be retained for future customers?

This turns fundraising into systematic product development.

Search for Budgets, Not Merely Needs

A problem without someone responsible for solving it may not produce revenue.

Therefore, after finding a need, identify:

Who owns the problem?

Who has authority to purchase a solution?

Which budget contains money for it?

When is that budget allocated?

How does that organization buy external services?

Who writes the specification?

Who approves the expenditure?

That is fundamentally different from sending generic donation letters.

Build Relationships Before Requests for Proposals Appear

If the nonprofit learns that a county wants better healthcare-career exposure, do not necessarily wait for a formal RFP.

Approach the appropriate program managers.

Ask:

• What are you trying to accomplish?
• What prevents you from accomplishing it?
• What populations are difficult to reach?
• What resources are missing?
• What measurements do you need?
• What would make an external partner useful?

The nonprofit may discover that a recruitment-developed product can solve much of the problem.

Sometimes the resulting conversations help define future procurement requirements.

Create a Product Development Flywheel

The desired system becomes:

Recruitment Problem

↓

Develop Product

↓

Use Product

↓

Discover Adjacent Social Need

↓

Adapt Product

↓

Sell Service

↓

Generate Revenue

↓

Develop Better Product

↓

Gain Evidence

↓

Enter Larger Markets

↓

Develop More Participants

↓

Win Larger Contracts and Grants

↓

Finance More Recruitment Development

↓

Create More Products

This provides the missing economic relationship.

Example of Compounding Development

Assume the nonprofit initially spends $8,000 developing an undergraduate biomechanics recruitment program.

It does not stop there.

Stage 1 — Recruitment

Use it at three universities.

Stage 2 — High-School Education

Adapt it for high-school anatomy teachers.

A district purchases teacher training.

Stage 3 — Sports Organizations

Adapt it into injury-prevention education.

A regional sports organization contracts for delivery.

Stage 4 — University Curriculum

A kinesiology department licenses laboratory exercises.

Stage 5 — Research

Student outcome data produce an educational research project.

Stage 6 — Foundation Support

The evidence supports a larger STEM-education grant.

Stage 7 — Train-the-Trainer

Thirty educators are trained to deliver the program.

Stage 8 — National Distribution

Other institutions license the material.

The $8,000 did not simply purchase recruitment activity.

It created intellectual infrastructure capable of participating in multiple economic relationships.

Another Example: Shadowing

Original problem:

Students do not understand podiatric medicine.

Product:

Structured physician shadowing program.

But hospitals also have a problem:

They struggle to administer student clinical observers.

Universities have a problem:

They struggle to find legitimate clinical exposure.

Physicians have a problem:

They receive poorly coordinated shadowing requests.

Students have a problem:

They cannot identify willing physicians.

The nonprofit builds:

Clinical Exposure Management System

Now several parties may have reasons to financially support the infrastructure.

Podiatric recruitment remains embedded within it.

Another Example: Applicant Research

Original problem:

We do not know why students reject podiatry.

The nonprofit builds survey and analytical capability.

That capability can subsequently investigate:

• nursing shortages,
• allied-health recruitment,
• rural workforce preferences,
• student career decisions,
• mentorship effectiveness,
• STEM persistence.

Organizations can commission studies.

The organization has transformed a recruitment expense into a research capability.

Design Each Product for Three Uses

A particularly useful development discipline would be:

Every major recruitment product should be examined for at least three possible uses.

Use One — Direct Recruitment

How does it increase podiatry exposure?

Use Two — External Social Need

What problem outside podiatry can the same resource solve?

Use Three — Resource Generation

Who might pay for that solution?

This does not guarantee that all three will exist.

It forces developers to look for them.

Revenue Should Create More Than Revenue

A $20,000 contract should ideally produce:

• $20,000 revenue,
• another institutional relationship,
• another tested implementation,
• additional evidence,
• another version of the product,
• additional participant experience,
• potential referrals,
• stronger grant credibility.

Again, these are incompatible dimensions and should remain separately visible.

The important observation is that the transaction leaves the nonprofit more capable than it was before the transaction.

Avoid the Wrong Commercial Model

The nonprofit should generally avoid becoming:

“a business that sells unrelated products and gives the profits to podiatry recruitment.”

That relationship is weaker both strategically and for tax-exemption purposes.

The IRS specifically notes that using profits from an unrelated activity to support an exempt mission does not by itself make the underlying business activity substantially related.

Instead, strive for:

“We are paid to perform educational, research, workforce-development, mentoring, healthcare-awareness, and related activities that themselves advance our exempt educational purposes while simultaneously generating resources for continued development.”

That is much closer to the architecture being proposed.

The Nonprofit Ultimately Becomes a Problem-Solving Network

At maturity, its primary asset would no longer be money.

It would have:

• physicians,
• students,
• educators,
• researchers,
• universities,
• hospitals,
• businesses,
• government relationships,
• curriculum,
• software,
• databases,
• research,
• implementation experience,
• grant capability,
• contracting capability,
• educational content,
• mentoring infrastructure.

When an outside organization says:

“We have a healthcare education problem,”

the nonprofit should increasingly be capable of responding:

“We may already have part of the solution. Let us determine whether our existing resources can be adapted to your need.”

The outside organization obtains something it needs.

The nonprofit gets paid.

Participants gain experience and relationships.

The product improves.

Podiatric medicine gains additional exposure.

And the improved resource is available to solve the next problem.

That is how applicant recruitment can evolve from a recurring expense into a self-expanding resource-development system.

 

The hospital-CHNA route is especially promising because those documents are publicly available descriptions of problems that hospitals are already required to consider and address; the IRS expressly permits hospitals to develop implementation strategies collaboratively with other nonprofits and organizations. IRS Government contracting creates another distinct channel: active SAM registration allows an organization to compete for contracts as well as federal assistance, rather than relying only on philanthropic grants. SAM.gov

A more concrete next step: create a matrix of the 45 podiatry-recruitment pathways × potential paying customers × products/services they could purchase × likely budget source × recruitment benefit. That would probably expose several hundred realistic revenue pathways rather than merely a handful of fundraising ideas.