2018 Year-End Appeal: Why give now?
JDRF is the only global organization with a strategic plan to progressively remove the impact of type 1 diabetes (T1D) from people’s lives until a cure is found.
If you are planning on making charitable contributions prior to the end of 2018, we would greatly appreciate your consideration to include JDRF in your year-end giving in any of the following ways:
Ways to give
General Donation
Support JDRF by mailing a check to the Eastern PA Chapter Office at 555 Croton Road, Suite 111, King of Prussia, PA 19406, or make an online donation using the link below:
Tribute Donation
Honor a family member or friend living with T1D by donating to help bring life-changing therapies to those who need them most.
Memorial Donation
Celebrate the life of a loved one by honoring his or her memory with a donation to fund research that will lead to a cure.
Planned Giving
Include JDRF in your estate plans and help us improve the future for children and adults with T1D.
JDRF Store
Purchase branded apparel and a wide range of merchandise to show your support—and raise awareness for JDRF.
Shop and Give Back
Patronize one of our many partners, whose wide range of promotions makes it easy for you to contribute.
Stock Donation
Gift appreciated stock or mutual funds to help us fund T1D research—and receive financial benefits.
Workplace Giving
Take part in the Combined Federal Campaign, employee matches or fundraising drives to close in on a cure.
Vehicle Donation
Support our mission by making a tax-deductible donation of a car, motorcycle or other vehicle that’s just gathering dust.
Why give now?
When Ellen Leake, chair of the JDRF International Board of Directors (IBOD), visited the Eastern PA Chapter last month, she shared her excitement about progress in T1D research and the emergence of several big projects serving the JDRF mission—all of which require the support of generous donors like you.
Below are just a few excerpts from her conversation with JDRF staff and supporters:
IBOD Chair Ellen Leake giving a speech to JDRF Eastern PA constituents on November 6, 2018
Restoring Vision
“There are four or five exciting, big projects that are coming out of research. One is Mary Tyler Moore and Robert Levine’s “Restoring Vision: A Moonshot Initiative”. Very simply, that’s restoring vision because of retinopathy. Talk about a big, bold idea. We’re just starting to kick off fundraising for that.”
JDRF Centers of Excellence
“Another one is what we’re calling “JDRF Centers of Excellence” which specialize in unique research areas where the expertise exists. For example, a JDRF Center of Excellence might be at the University of Michigan, where a lot of the eye advancements are coming. You might see a Center in Israel where you can screen the entire population for autoantibodies. Or maybe University of California San Francisco and Stanford will partner up on immunology. We will probably see three centers in the first two years. All of this is additive to our regular budget of almost $100 million.”
Plug-and-play technology
“It’s taking the best pump from one company with the algorithm from another with the best CGM. This lets users—consumers—make choices. And it drives down costs when you’ve got that kind of competition. Choice is good. We just recently got a $17 million proposal from a company called Tidepool, and the FDA wants to see how we can help move that through the regulatory pathway. Previously, they had just been approving systems. But now, to approve the components and let patients combine them in their own way, is pretty exciting.”
Insulin access
“You all know the price of insulin is just ratcheted up in the last three years to the point where it’s ridiculous. There’s work to be done related to insulin access, especially for those who don’t have insurance. There’s also the need for insulin when there are devastating hurricanes like the one that hit Puerto Rico last year, south Florida, Houston. So JDRF is already working in that arena with other nonprofits in the diabetes space, like the ADA.”
Immunology
“There’s been some new research coming out of cancer called ‘checkpoint inhibitors’. In diabetes, the body’s on overdrive and it’s destroying beta cells—whereas in cancer, it’s not doing its business. It’s like the brake is on. The cancer cell—you wish the immune system would see it, target it and get rid of it. So the things that we’re learning coming out of oncology—in immunology—seem to have a real direct connection to the immune riddle around type 1 diabetes.”
“We had a very generous donor in Wisconsin who primed the pump, so to speak, and gave a little under $2.5 million, and his focus was on multiple sclerosis. But he said, ‘You know? We need to band all autoimmune diseases. There’s a common link here, and what is that?’ So we’ve committed to go out and raise the money for what we’re calling the JDRF Collaborative Autoimmune Research Project to see how we can take the lessons learned from other disease types and apply that to type 1 to see if that might turn things a little faster.”
Why we need your support
“All these are big ideas. They’re all $20 million and above. And maybe multiple years—five to eight years—and we’ll be out talking to big donors perhaps that have not found a reason to support JDRF. It’s an exciting time to think over and above what we’re already spending in our research budget—to go out and have a proposal for a foundation or a big consortia… I think we’re just as excited about this as anything that I’ve seen in my 10-year history on the Board. It’s a very exciting time.”
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Additional info
If you have questions about donating to JDRF, please contact Patrick Delaney, JDRF Eastern PA Chapter Executive Director, at pdelaney@jdrf.org or 610-227-0362.