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Meet Dr. Douglas Jackson of Project C.U.R.E. in Centennial

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Douglas Jackson.

Dr. Jackson, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My path is one of the unexpected turns and not the destiny that I had expected or designed, and that is a great story. I set out originally to be a judge, but after spending some time working for one, I decided that the practice of corporate law would be a better fit. So after passing the bar at the early age of 23, I joined an agricultural manufacturing firm to head their legal affairs. We began to purchase some of our competitors, and the world of mergers and acquisitions seemed like an exciting possibility. So I left my corporate job, returned to academia and pursued a Ph.D. in Finance and Econometrics.

My goal was to go into hedge-funds or investment banking and with a Ph.D. and corporate law background, there was a lot of interest in my skillset. Somewhere along that route, my parents were in the middle of a profoundly different experience. My dad had been a very successful real estate developer and my mom earned a Ph.D. in Education and had started her own academy for gifted students. They had achieved a tremendous amount of career success but realized that the money doesn’t make you happy. So they started a foundation and gave their wealth to other people. My dad kept telling me that it was important for me to find a way to be a steward over the things I had been given.

At that point, I didn’t have money, but I did have a lot of education, so I went to teach finance and investments at the university in a way to give back for a short time. What I thought would be a couple of years turned into seven, and we did some remarkable, innovative things in the education space. Soon, though I tired of academia and wanted to get back to the plan of high finance. It was during that period that my mom and dad had begun shipping medical supplies and equipment to poor communities around the world.

They called the work, “Project C.U.R.E.” which is an acronym for the Commission on Urgent Relief and Equipment. When I shared with my dad that I wasn’t fulfilled in a university teaching career, he asked if I would come take the leadership reigns of Project C.U.R.E. We only had six months of money, and I really didn’t think I would be there too long. That was 1997, and I have been engaged in helping save lives around the world now for nearly 25 years.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have been very few smooth places along this journey, going back to the first days. We had a donated warehouse space and a small office with an inadequate furnace, no air-conditioning and a very leaky roof. We were given the use of an airplane hangar at Stapleton airport, and our growth skyrocketed. Then the landlords at both facilities decided to use their property for something else and we were kicked out.

We have had financial woes, broken trucks, scary situations overseas. The 9/11 tragedy profoundly impacted our fundraising, and I found myself on a ladder doing the interior build-out of office space – all on crutches with a broken hip. The personal toll on me has been tremendous, from health to wealth and all points in between. As I sit on this airplane reflecting on this question, I wonder if there have been any smooth portions to this journey.

We’d love to hear more about your organization.
In a nutshell, what my family started in 1987 has grown into the largest organization in the world delivering medical supplies and equipment. When our team is really “on our game” we will deliver more than 20 semi-truck sized cargo containers of medical relief a month! The contents inside those containers range from catheters to CT scans and include everything that doctors and nurses need to save lives. We operate distribution warehouses in six cities that we call C.U.R.E. Communities across the United States, and a small city of over 30,000 people come to volunteer with us each year.

On the receiving end, our average client will work 12 hours a day and get paid about $2 on average, and at that rate, they can’t afford healthcare. So when they get sick, they die. Our donations change that. We save lives and ease suffering for thousands of people in over 130 countries. And we come alongside the medical professionals with C.U.R.E. Clinic programs that administer hands-on healthcare in conjunction with our receiving partner hospitals and clinics, and our C.U.R.E. College teaches skill sets such as the Helping Babies Breathe/Helping Mothers Survive and Essential Care for Every Baby programs.

One of the key elements that make Project C.U.R.E. unique is the ratio of volunteers to staff; it is about 1,000 volunteers to every paid staff. We created this organization with the volunteer at the center of the effort rather than asking them to pick up pieces on behalf of staff. At the time, my parent’s greatest weakness was that neither understood medicine and healthcare, so they had to ask for help from nurses, doctors, and scores of other people. That weakness has become our greatest strength.

Project C.U.R.E. is also unique in that we start every project with a Needs Assessment study, which means that someone from this organization goes “boots on the ground” to every potential hospital and clinic to ensure that we are addressing what they really need rather than our assumptions. I’m sure that we still make mistakes from time to time, but this one step makes our work infinitely better for the recipient. And that makes all the difference.

Pricing:

  • We operate on funds provided by donors, and encourage anyone we meet to get involved by sponsoring our work. It’s simple. We know that it costs Project C.U.R.E. approximately $25 to deliver a box of medical supplies, and inside that box are about $500 of items that nurses and doctors need to save lives. So and easy way to think about pricing here is that a monthly donation of $25 delivers about $6,000 to people who make less than $5 a day! On a larger scale, it costs Project C.U.R.E. about $25,000 to deliver a semi-truck sized container packed with x-ray machines, ultrasounds, beds, anesthesia equipment plus all of the supplies needed to make those items effective into just about anywhere in the world. We work with other NGO’s, corporations, civic organizations, individuals and governments to raise these funds and get the relief to the people who need it the most. All partners are welcome.

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Image Credit:
Dr. Douglas Jackson

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