Melinda Dossett attended Drake University for Art History. After graduation, she taught preschool. During that time, Melinda became interested in desktop publishing. In May of 1999, she joined the Alzheimer's Association as a temp. Her boss, John Maloney, asked her to apply for the full-time order fulfillment position. Melinda had no specific training in purchasing but was familiar with the print lingo. The rest is history. Melinda has been with the Association for three years and has made great strides in coordinating their print and distribution needs with the association’s various departments.

The Alzheimer’s Association is the premier source of information and support for the 4 million Americans with Alzheimer’s disease. Through its national network of chapters, it offers a broad range of programs and services for people with the disease, their families and care givers. The Association also represents their interests before federal, state and local government and with health and long-term care providers. The largest private funder of Alzheimer research, the association has committed nearly $120 million toward research into the causes, treatment, prevention and cure of Alzheimer’s. For more information on Alzheimer’s disease, visit the Alzheimer’s Association Web site at http://www.alz.org/ or call (800) 272-3900.





Melinda, tell us about all the responsibilities related to buying print services that you have for the Alzheimer’s Association.

Besides buying print, I manage our relationship with our distribution center in Georgia - we're in Chicago - that stores, distributes, invoices and collects payment for our order fulfillment activities. I also work with various departments within the association to prepare and present new or revised materials. I also update and produce our catalogs, help ship materials to and staff the exhibit booth for our national and international conferences. I work closely with our Memory Walk team to distribute incentives to our chapters for the Memory Walk fund raiser.

I am privileged to work for the Alzheimer's Association and with so many people, from my national colleagues to our board of directors to our chapter network and volunteers, who are passionate in their work and the work of the association.

Does an Association change course or strategies during tough economic conditions?

Our day-to-day activities remain the same. Our mission, "to provide leadership to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research while enhancing care and support services for individuals and their families," remains the same.

Most associations put jobs out for bid to get the best price. How does this process work for you?

I currently have five to six vendors that bid on various projects. Two of the vendors have had a close relationship with the association for more than five years. Our vendors have been exceptional at obtaining the best pricing they can so that we can print our materials at the most economical price. The association reprints materials that get distributed to our network of chapters and to the general public. Our most popular brochures are printed about every six months in lots of 50,000 to 150,000. The vendors I rely on are very good at large run jobs.

Earlier this spring, the Smithsonian Institute asked us to provide two fact sheets for children and teens for a "traveling brain exhibit." One of the fact sheets needed a few updates before reprinting. As it turns out, the film for this piece was not readily available and had never been put on disk. One of our vendors was able to completely recreate the piece and have 25,000 printed and delivered in time for the exhibit.

Many printers are sensitive to the price factors associated with printing for non-profits. In fact many have special programs for those groups. Do these programs get printers in your door?

Some salespeople tell us they want to work with the association and "make a difference" because a family member has Alzheimer's disease. Unfortunately, that's the common denominator for almost everyone who works for and with our association: We all know and loves someone who has Alzheimer's disease, and we all want to help those individuals. If people really want to make difference, they should contact their local chapter at (800) 272-3900 to see how they can volunteer or what they can do help raise additional research funds.

How has new technology like the Internet helped you in your job?

Slowly, the Internet has made a huge difference. I spend more time communicating to everyone via E-mail than by phone. Although we still have old storyboards on file for some of our oldest pieces, all of our new material is electronically stored in addition to film. We used the Internet to transmit files through an FTP for one of our most recent catalogs.

Tell us about one of you most recent projects.

I managed the entire Public Publication Catalog project, from verifying and correcting information in the last catalog to designing the cover and negotiating the printing - the easy part, my job isn't very production oriented. Although we had some computer glitches and production was behind schedule by about a month, it was a tremendous success.

Being an association, what role does paper selection play into your printing and requests for quotes?

Paper quality can make a remarkable difference in pricing and how you compare the price of one printer to another. About eight to nine months ago, when we were interviewing printers, we also began looking at paper. We finally came to a conclusion: Regardless of what paper a piece was originally printed on, we would try to reprint it on a very bright white, opaque paper. So that I'm comparing apples to apples, I request all of my reprints on the same paper.