40,000 lives saved. And that was just last year.

Sometimes a seemingly simple observation, combined with the passion of a nonprofit entrepreneur, can lead to incredible results.

Consider the story of Eli Beer, a Jerusalem EMT.

As a teenager Eli drove an ambulance for two years.  He witnessed people dying while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, people who might have been saved if medical help could have arrived within 3 minutes instead of the usual 20 minutes that it took for a Jerusalem ambulance to navigate through the city’s notorious traffic delays.

What if, Eli reasoned, a network of trained volunteers could arrive on foot, or by bike, in just a few minutes, and stabilize the victim until the ambulance arrived?

This insight resulted in the development of the “ambucycle” and the formation of the nonprofit United Hatzalah.

Eli is not a client of ours, but I wish he was.  Though I’ve never met him, he is just one more example of why I, and the rest of our team at YPTC, work with nonprofit organizations.

Listen to this inspiring story, as told by Eli himself, at TEDMED 2013.

Link to Eli’s TEDMED talk: http://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=47048

Comments welcome.

Eric Fraint, President and Founder
Your Part-Time Controller, LLC

Tags: Eli Beer, Eric Fraint, Nonprofit organization, Nonprofit organizations, Nonprofits, TEDMED, TEDMED 2013, United Hatzalah, Your Part-Time Controller, YPTC