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Chronic illness advocacy is pretty much a patchwork and not always as pretty as a quilt. Each condition has its own way of being engaged in feedback to organizations and actually connecting is very much a matter of luck.

Savvy Cooperative is changing that.

What Is Savvy?

“Savvy is an online platform that acts like the Match.com for patient insights,” explained Jen Horonjeff, Founder and CEO of Savvy Cooperative in a telephone interview. Companies and researchers looking to work with people with chronic illness post these opportunities on the Savvy virtual bulletin board. Members then sign up to participate and afterwards get paid for their efforts.

Revolutionary, isn’t it?

“The whole impetus for Savvy came from my own personal experiences,” Jen said. She grew up with juvenile arthritis and due to her openness about it, she was often asked to provide insight. But not a lot of other people were. “There’s a lot of people out there working to help improve the patient experience … yet there were never actually talking with patients.” Savvy is changing that.

Savvy the co-op

”Our members have a voice in organization and they are actual shareholders that we have to listen to. As a co-op, we end up awarding patients, or our members, dividends based on their activity and contributions to the co-op,” Jen explained. “That means we are in fact paying them for how much they’re contributing to our growth and success.”

Becoming a member of Savvy isn’t expensive. “Our membership costs $34 by single share of the co-op and it gives you voting rights and makes you eligible for our dividends.” If the fee constitutes a financial hardship, Savvy will waive it, and it’s covered by other members. “They also know that diversity is what’s going to make us stronger,” Jen explained.

Puppets and success

Savvy uses puppets to explain who they are and what they do. This brilliant marketing tool actually came about because they needed an explainer video. “We were being priced out at $10,000 to make a two-minute video,” Jen said. “I decided to buy a couple of materials online and create this explainer video of me with puppets and props and trying to explain what we do in maybe an unconventional but engaging way.” It’s cute and it works — what could otherwise be complex concepts becomes easy to understand in the Savvy videos.

Savvy is only two years old, but already increasingly successful, having won a number of awards. They have also recently rolled out the Savvybassador program, engaging with “those who want to help us to get the word out about various initiatives and are helping us with our membership growth.” Jen said.

The Cooperative has also made some significant decisions. The latest was a vote to make Savvy a Public Benefit Corporation. “Becoming a public benefit corporation is a natural progression for the organization as we commit to empowering diverse individuals to have a voice in the systems, solutions and decisions that affect them in their health,” Jen said in a news release.

Get Savvy

Jen encourages you to be curious and explained that “there is no risk to signing up, either as a member or a free user. You can create an account, join our mailing list, you can even just subscribe on our website and then you will start to get emails with different opportunities. That way you will be able to see the kinds of things that are out there.”

My take

I signed up to become a Savvy Cooperative member earlier this year. Although most opportunities are US-based, there are quite a few that are open to people all over the world and this is an area of planned growth. I have already participated in one opportunity, which resulted in a sponsored post that helped raise awareness about a rare childhood condition called Farber’s Disease. And yes, I got paid for it — an entirely reasonable fee that arrived promptly once the post was published.

I highly recommend you become a member of Savvy Cooperative. Join the movement!