News

InMotion launches name change, prepares for fundraising campaign

By Toby Sells | Memphis Business Journal

With a new name and a new game plan, InMotion Orthopedic Research Center is preparing for a local fundraising campaign in a “perfect storm” of industry and recession woes. 

InMotion’s board approved its new, “friendlier” name last week. Its former name, InMotion Musculoskeletal Institute, was a bit “esoteric,” says Dick Tarr, the nonprofit research group’s executive director.  

“Now when we say our name, we don’t have to explain what we do,” Tarr says. “We wanted something people could relate to.”  Especially now, Tarr says, as the organization has set its sights on local donors. He says these will be the known givers in the community like the names of patrons “seen on the walls” at venues like the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Orpheum Theatre and Cannon Center for the Performing Arts. 

This new strategy comes from necessity. The recession has sent many research foundations into their financial shells and the recently settled Department of Justice investigation of many large orthopedic companies has cut off that revenue tap. 

Tarr says big orthopedic givers like the Arthritis Foundation and the Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation just simply did not give out any grant money last year. 

In 2003, the DOJ began investigations into whether orthopedic companies’ financial relationships and consulting agreements with orthopedic surgeons violated federal anti-kickback statutes. The companies settled out of court for $311 million and agreed to 18 months of federal oversight. 

Since then, the rules on industry contracts and awards from companies like Smith & Nephew, Inc., and Medtronic, Inc., have changed so much that they are virtually impossible to get, Tarr says. In fact, one of the only ways they can give the funds to groups like InMotion is through third parties like OREF. 

For example, Smith & Nephew made its first donation to OREF in May due to the rule change. 

“The landscape for funding research and education is becoming much more complex, not just in orthopedics, but in all of medicine,” OREF chairman William Cooney said at the time. “We believe that this program may serve as the model for how such funding can be provided in the future.” 

Tarr says the recession and these new industry rules has made a “perfect storm” that has “set orthopedic research back 3-5 years at a minimum.” 

InMotion’s new fundraising effort is set to help it out of its start-up phase and into its “sustainability” phase. In this phase, Tarr hopes to get one-third of InMotion’s revenues from philanthropy, another third from contracted research and the final third from government research contracts. 

InMotion has been running on $8.5 million raised in initial capital just after it began in 2005. Tarr says the organization spent roughly $2 million last year, but has spent down much of its start-up money opening and equipping its laboratories. 

The company began as Memphis Musculoskeletal Research Institute and changed to the InMotion name in February 2006.