In just 12 short years, The Cure Starts Now has already been at the forefront of many of the world's most innovative cancer fighting strategies. Why? How does a small charity with a limited focus match the impact of some of the world’s largest charities? The answer is strategy.
Funding cancer research is just about how you fund as much as what you fund. And when you have limited funds, the last thing you want is to waste critical dollars. That's why every dollar spent by The Cure Starts Now observes five main objectives:
- Fund only that research that creates new work. Don’t fund chair positions, building endowments or scholarships. While this may help cancer research as a whole, it will never incentivize the creation of brand new, impactful research for trials and cures.
- Don’t fund what others fund. We don’t jump in on funding that may already be possible through venture capitalist funding, through another charity or by pharmaceutical grants. For us, being a named sponsor on a grant isn’t as important as creating new research. That’s while you’ll find us always asking if there is other funding mechanisms. And if alternative funding is solicited by the research after we grant, we view this too as an issue and have a history of asking that funds be returned.
- Do broadcast what you fund. We go to great lengths to let not only our partners know what we fund, but also the general public so that other researchers with other institutions don’t cover the same ground, thereby making the work so much more impactful.
- Fund efficiently. Watch overhead expenses and be efficient in your funding. We look at every expense from the eyes of a parent.
- Don’t fund in the future. We believe that if we agree to fund a grant, we have the reserves to back it up. After all, if you don’t there is little chance that the hospital will implement the complete project from the beginning, afraid that funding may run out. That’s why you won’t see us claim funding of millions of dollars in the future on funds we don’t have to spend.
