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“It’s quintessentially Australian. It’s ingenuity and determination, particularly in the view of supporting people in need. It’s a reputation that we’re very proud of. It’s a reputation that has seen us be awarded the most trusted charity 9 of the last 10 years.”
This video features Jonathan Green, Communications and Marketing Manager for the Royal Flying Doctors Service.
For his session, Green tells the famous story of the Royal Flying Doctors Service, a not-for-profit organisation founded to provide health care services to remote communities in Australia.
While it does receive some federal funding, RFDS relies heavily on fundraising and donor support to become operational.
Green starts with the story most Australians know. RFDS’ founder, Rev. Jonathan Flynn, who in 1912 had been working in the Northern Territories in Central Australia, found the dire situation of people living in the bush. Then a sparsely populated country, it was not difficult to find communities whose nearest hospital were hundreds of kilometres away.
Flynn soon realised that the best (and quickest) way to provide medical care to people in the bush was to use aviation technology, which was then in its nascent stages.
After securing some funding and with the help of some aviation pioneers, the first RFDS flight took off on 15 May 1928 from Cloncurry, Queensland. And the rest is history.
The RFDS would be known for flying into remote locations to provide emergency health care, and transport patients towards vast distances to reach big hospitals where more intensive procedures could be performed.
“Throughout the next 90 years, the legend of Flying Doctors just continued to grow, and often through storytelling,” Green said.
“It’s quintessentially Australian. It’s ingenuity and determination, particularly in the view of supporting people in need. It’s a reputation that we’re very proud of. It’s a reputation that has seen us be awarded the most trusted charity 9 of the last 10 years.”
Even in 1928, funding the RFDS took a great deal of financing and planning, and Green knew he had to find a way to get people to help finance the charity.
“One of his biggest issues was trying to get people in the city to truly understand the challenges that were faced by people in the bush,” Green recounted.
Fast forward to today, and the RFDS has different problems to solve. While they continue to provide critical medical services, much of their original function as emergency responders has since been subsumed by the government.
For the first century of its existence, RFDS was able to thrive as an organisation through the strength of its stories.
As marketing and communications manager, Green’s goal is to help write new stories that will help RFDS continue its mission for another century or more.
Get full access to Jonathan Green’s session recorded during the 6th Corporate Comms Leader Summit here.
