December 15, 2012

December 14, 2012

We're home! I'm going to come back and tell everyone all about out trip, but first I want to answer a question I get a lot. Fairly regularly people ask what I think a good place for them to make a donation to in regards to childhood cancer and all that comes with it might be. Please feel free to keep asking me because it is such an important topic to me, but I wanted to post about it to. When it comes to helping out with childhood cancer, people have to decide which direction they want to go. Do you want to donate to help the families with their expenses or living arrangements? Or do you want to donate to something that provided fun for kids in treatment? Or do you want to donate for research?
If you want to help families with living expenses, etc., you can always participate in any personal fundraisers on behalf of the family (something most families always need when going through treatment), but these will most likely not be tax deductible if that is a requirement for you. So then you can donate or participate in any activities for foundations such as the Angel Ride. Organizations like this spread funds out so that they provide a little help to multiple families. Typically, these type of foundations have an application process a family must go through. Personally, I love to participate in any activities these type of organizations put on year round, but my personal choice for helping families with living expenses, etc., would be to donate to the Ronald McDonald Houses. Having learned how that works a little better, my suggestion would be to throw some change in the boxes you see at the restaurants whenever you go by...BUT to make a larger donation, it is best to make it to a specific house. George and I are partial to the Ronald McDonald House in NYC. There almost all of its inhabitants are cancer patients and their families. And the house does an amazing job of providing families with food and fun. I can assure people that if they donate there, their money would be put to good use and definitely put a smile on a child's face and bring a family a small sense of peace in a crazy crazy world. The Ronald McDonald Houses in Birmingham and Mobile are nice too, but they do not provide the activities and such for the children and their families. They also are home to many types of families and not just those of cancer patients. When Clayton was in the NICU as an infant, we lived in the house in Birmingham for a month. For us personally, the other houses just don't feel like home the way NYC does. I truly love that house with all my heart. I love what they do for the kids and I love the environment. Most of the families in that house don't just come for a month then never come back. Instead, those families come for months and sometimes years and the ones that do come for a short time come back regularly. It is a community...a wonderful community of love and hope...as cheesy as that might sound. So anyway to donate to a particular house, just google that house, call them up and ask them how to donate to their house specifically. Some houses will have a place to do this on their website. Again, just google them. You can google a house anywhere. You could do MD Anderson Ronald McDonald house or St. Jude Ronald McDonald House, etc., that would help you find the houses that might help families at those hospitals. Like I said, for me and George the Ronald in NYC is just close to our hearts, but it is whatever appeals to the person making the donation that matters for them.
The second thing, is how can you donate to a program that provides fun activities for children? As I said above, some houses will do that, but then there are the Child-life programs at the hospitals. MSKCC has an amazing program and Children's of Alabama has good child-life program as well. USACW does not have one, but they do have teachers that try and help patients with different things. Aside from that, there are some big companies that people might not even know are BIG supporters of kids with cancer. For example, HASBRO toys are always donating toys for these children. (I'll tell you what Clayton got while on our trip in the next post.) So by being partial to companies that support these children, you are indirectly supporting these children. Sometimes it's the small things.
Then of course there is donating for research. You can always donate directly to a hospital like St. Jude, but please remember the other cutting edge research hospitals as well...MD Anderson, MSKCC, CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) among others. The different hospitals often specialize in different cancers. St. Jude tends to lean towards leukemias whereas, MSKCC leans towards solid mass tumors (keeping in mind solid mass tumors also involve the bones and bone marrow). Some of these hospitals like MD Anderson actually have online stores and catalogs full of products with children's artwork of which proceeds all go to research. So you can check out the hospital that interests you and look for their store.
Then of course you can donate to a foundation that disperses funds to serve all of the ideas mentioned above. Look for a foundation founded by parents of a child that has or had cancer. At the heart of that foundation you will find a parent that understands where those funds might be best utilized. I hope that next year The George Clayton Foundation will be up and running (still working on paperwork for now). If anyone wants a recommendation though, let me direct you to the Arms Wide Open Childhood Cancer Foundation. It is founded by a wonderful woman named Dena Sherwood. She and her husband are also the backbone of The Truth 365 project bringing awareness to the world of childhood cancer. Her son is not only in remission from neuroblastoma, but he also had severe scoliosis similar to Clayton's. It is a wonderful foundation. They work with doctors from CHOP (the #1 children's cancer hospital in the country) and MSKCC. Just in the past few weeks, they presented MSKCC with a very sizable check for research.

So anyhow, lots of options and it seems with the holidays people are interested in making donations more than ever right now, so I hope these ideas help.

No comments:

Post a Comment