PROGRAM RESOURCE NEEDS:  (and thank you for helping if you are able)

As with any charitable operation, there are expenses to be covered that cannot be passed on to the charitable clients being served – so, of necessity, we need donors to help fill the gaps.

Mercy Medical Airlift® (MMA) is fortunate in that the actual cost of most of the aircraft or ground transportation we provide for patients and their escorts are being funded by others and thus a large portion of the total value of the services we provide are made available to MMA without our involvement in generating funding to cover those costs.

Good examples of this are the flights made by volunteer pilots or volunteer motor coach drivers using their own vehicles to serve a patient/escort in need.  MMA has the job of putting it all together, doing scheduling and coordination and all the communication involved; however, the volunteer pilot/driver in this case comes ready to cover his or her own vehicle operational expenses.

Thus, for most programs MMA only seeks donations and grants from the public or foundations only for the cash cost to facilitate and coordinate the trip or mission for clients. The exception to this is within the Angel Bus program where MMA must purchase commercial bus or rail tickets when no volunteer drivers are available to meet the transportation need.

Another example would be the handling and provision of free or charitable airline tickets.  The ticket is usually provided by the airline’s customers who donate frequent flyer miles to the cause.  This is a real blessing to everybody involved.  To effectively and responsibly utilize that ticket, however, involves definite coordination and communications tasks with known expense to MMA.  It typically costs MMA about $65 to fully and responsibly provide the airline ticket to a patient.  The airline ticket may be worth perhaps $600; however, MMA has to raise $65 in donated income to utilize that ticket to benefit a patient.

Current resource needs are as follows:

  • Donated income to cover costs to properly utilize the increasing number of charitable airline tickets we have for patients;
  • Donated income to cover special project costs such as funding for software development to automate flight coordination process
  • Donated income to cover software and hardware costs for automation assistance to the National Patient Air Transport triage and referral process;
  • Donated income to upgrade and refurbish office space used for flight coordination and communication processes;
  • Donated income to retire current mortgage on office building property

If you have questions or want to help, please call our President/CEO on his direct personal office line, 757-271-2286.  Giving directions and suggestions are on the giving section of this web site.