I am thrilled to announce Relay’s 8th annual fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Since 2019, the Relay community has given over $4.8 million to this life-saving work.
That number astounds me. When we started this, I expected to raise $75,000 in the first year. We cleared $315,000 that year, and it’s been more and more amazing every year since.
If you have followed along for any given amount of time, you know that in 2008, my wife Merri and I welcomed our first son into the world, and that just six months later, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He underwent a year and a half of treatment at St. Jude, which included chemotherapy, several surgeries, and an untold number of MRIs, appointments, and sleepless nights.
Through it all — and throughout the next 16 years of checkups and scans — St. Jude has never charged my family a dime, true to its word:
Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food. Because of your support, we can provide children cutting-edge treatments not covered by insurance. If a family has insurance, we will bill the insurance company, but no family ever receives a bill from St. Jude for care and no family is asked to pay St. Jude for co-pays or deductibles.
In the most stressful time of our lives, having to worry about paying for the care Josiah was receiving would have crushed us. Instead, we could focus on our son and his care.
This fall, Josiah turns 18 and is no longer the child he was when undergoing treatment. However, St. Jude continues to be part of our lives through programs like the St. Jude LIFE Study, which aims to understand the needs of long-term childhood cancer survivors. Even now, seventeen and a half years later, St. Jude continues to care for him and our family, and it’s that love we aim to reflect back through this campaign.
Go check it out. You can sign up to lead your own fundraiser. You can donate directly or give through a donor-advised fund. Your company likely has an employee-matching gift program; we have details about that on the campaign page as well.
I cannot wait to see what we can do together this year. Please join us.