Cancer Fundraiser Quotes

November 2014, focus on science communications full-time. I now work for a cancer charity, “translating” science into English for fundraising teams. My writing reaches so many people and helps raise money toward cancer research, and it feels very meaningful to me because of that.

I didn’t realize Farrah Fawcett had died of anal cancer. There were references to her ailment as cancer “below the colon.” It was like my mother, when I was a kid, calling the vagina “your bottom in front.” Up through 2010, anal cancer had no nonprofit society, no one to organize fund-raisers and outreach, no colored awareness ribbon. (Even appendix cancer has a ribbon.)* Like cervical cancer, anal cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus; people get it via sex with an infected person, and that seems like something they ought to know when making decisions about using a condom.

People who’ve adopted an individualist attitude aren’t necessarily sociopaths or assholes: they’ll still donate to a GoFundMe to help a local kid with cancer, or even stop to help someone on the side of the road if they look “safe.” They chip into the gift fund for a co-worker’s fiftieth birthday, tithe to their church, and fundraise for their children’s school. They do want to help others, but they want it to be on their own terms and arbitrate who’s worthy of receiving it. They are often obsessed with the idea of “fairness”: that one can benefit from something only insomuch as they’ve contributed to it themselves.

The short story is, our sponsors split on us. They wanted to distance themselves from us because we were being crucified in the media for investing 40 percent of the gross in recruitment and customer service and the magic of the experience, and there is no accounting terminology to describe that kind of investment in growth and in the future, other than this demonic label of ‘overhead.’ So one day, all 350 of our great employees lost their jobs … because they were labeled ‘overhead.’ Our sponsor went and tried the events on their own. The overhead went up. Net income for breast cancer research went down by 84 percent, or 60 million dollars, in one year.

He lied about having cancer! We all rallied around him, held fundraisers to help him pay for treatment. And every week, he’d head to Corpus Christi for his chemo and gamble away the money we’d given him.

Since Henry’s death, I have focused any fundraising I’ve done on both Rainbow Trust and Noah’s Ark. I have not, as some might have suspected I’d do, done any fundraising for pediatric brain cancer. The reason for this is that I saw how far a pound (or a dollar) goes in helping kids who are definitely going to die, and their families—and it is astonishing. An hour with a Fiona or a Lucinda or a Kirsty brings immeasurable peace and joy to a child who is grappling each day with pain, frustration, boredom, and fear. It gives solace and bubbling happiness to the parents who are watching their child suffer day in and day out. I’m forty-five as I write this, and so far I haven’t seen a better or more instantly effective use of money.