Hopefully this article gives you an idea of how we arrived to our current research funding model.
At year end, when we know how much we can allocate, we ask for funding opportunities and the CCS (Canadian Cancer Society) sends us a list of doctors and their projects. It's important to note that these projects come from all sorts of areas and each are usually funded by many sources. A single project could be funded by several charities, government funding, private allocations etc.
Our project selections are based on several factors:
- A number of years ago we chose to largely fund the tougher cancers that have the worst outcomes and the least funding… the thought here is that the money has worked wonders for some like breast and prostate cancer but many remain poorly funded without the big campaigns.
- We also chose to fund projects earlier in the cycle of research where less money is put in because the outcomes are less certain. It seems many funding organizations want to claim credit for success when they put the money in at the end of the process when the good outcome is a foregone conclusion. We wanted to be more impactful by helping earlier in the cycle in areas where funding isn’t as available, even if it means success is not as clear.
- We look for matching opportunities and over the years have found several projects that we were able to double the donor dollars - this is doubly good thing as no costs come out of donations up front AND we get a matching grant!
- We look for BC projects and have funded many over the years, in fact, most have been BC.
- Sometimes we have funded a single large project and other times we have split our funds among two or three projects.
- Sometimes we are the sole funder of a project and sometimes we are one of many.
We are also asked if we only support projects in BC. While we do have a preference for BC projects, we also want to ensure we are impactful so that will guide us as well. The other reality is that the research community is widely connected so many people from many places may touch a project. But, BC has a large research pool so there are almost always good promising projects in BC to pick from. And, in my blunt fashion, 'do I care if the researcher that fixes my grandkid's cancer was in some other part of Canada?' Nope.
In terms of getting to a project we think is impactful, we have the very good fortune of having a retired Oncologist, Dr Kevin Murphy, on our Board who helps us translate the science into something that the rest of us can understand so we can make what we hope to be a good decision.
Below is a list of some of our funded projects so you have an idea of where we have sent our funds. One of our projects on ovarian cancer has delivered success to the point that it has hit the news and, as it turned out some time later, directly impacted some Ride2Survive members (I'll add Kevin's article to the blog so you can read about that). Another project in pancreatic cancer, directly impacted a donor who came back and told us she was being enrolled in a new study which turned out to be the one we funded and her outcome improved dramatically.
Coming soon... table of Ride2Survive funded research.