Published July 22, 2014 By the Foundation
Dear Friends and Supporters,
As we start work in our new fiscal year, I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some of the successes we’ve had recently and how they shape our work. Let’s first go back to May and thank once again (because we can’t thank you enough) the more than 1,000 people who walked, volunteered, shared, or donated to our annual Walk With Love. With your help, we broke all previous records and raised an amazing $251,634 for breast cancer research.
Additionally, because of the generosity of our sponsors (see the complete list here), the expenses of the event were underwritten, enabling our private individual donors to directly impact our research programs. The Love Research Army and the Health of Women [HOW] Study™ are beneficiaries of this generosity, as are some of our current clinical studies, such as the Microbiome of the Breast project and the Mapping DCIS project. This financial support is critical to the ongoing success of these programs.
We may be a smaller charity, but because of our willingness to collaborate and our ability to facilitate additional research through the Love Research Army, we are effective. And we are careful with your donations – making every dollar count. I hope you saw the recent announcement that we received a 4-Star rating from Charity Navigator for the 3rd year in a row, putting us in the top 12% of charities in the country in terms of fiscal performance, accountability, and transparency. The Foundation is also a GuideStar Exchange Silver Level participant and a member of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.
Another very recent success is the announcement earlier this week that Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a portable self-reading ultrasound device that will enable healthcare workers in low- and middle-income countries to better diagnose palpable lumps. With our collaborators, we will use the first phase of this grant to develop the technology and test it in the Los Angeles area. (Read the complete announcement here!)
This is an amazing accomplishment for us and validation of our commitment to innovative research. We will receive almost $500,000 a year for two years to accomplish Phase 1. The funds awarded by the NIH are restricted, meaning that they can only be spent on activities directly related to the grant. None of this money can be applied to our other programs.
Although we will continue to seek funding from institutional and government grants to help us grow our research portfolio in promising new areas, we cannot build on our accomplishments without you as our partner. We hope we can count on your continued participation as a volunteer and a donor to help us accelerate progress toward the ultimate goal of a future without breast cancer.
With much gratitude,
Heather Cooper Ortner
