BTAM2021 state of the union
GBMRO x Cure Glioblastoma Limited Edition BTAM Tee (see below for ordering information)
Greetings and thank you for your continued interest in Cure Glioblastoma. Despite the difficulty of 2020—including from a nonprofit fundraising perspective—our organization rapidly and continually adapted. It is emblematic of our nimble “startup” ethos to maximize our impact given our limited resources and, gratefully, we did it with many successes. I would like to highlight some of these here, but first wanted to focus on this month, May, which is of course Brain Tumor Awareness Month (BTAM).
Throughout BTAM we will be featuring new content here and on social media channels including blog posts, collaborations, research/science updates, and fundraisers. In particular, we are excited about our collaborations with the Glioblastoma Research Org (aka, GBMRO) and @neurology.club. Yesterday, we launched our GBMRO x CG collaboration on social media. We co-designed a limited edition tee that is available for presale all month and will be shipped in early June (CLICK TO PURCHASE). We will equally share the proceeds from sales. Please stay tuned to our social media for the latest BTAM news and info.
I recapped most of 2020 (as well as the origins and vision of Cure Glioblastoma) in a blog post from October 26, 2020. Here, I will update you on progress to date. In addition to our several highly successful CGAP Team fundraisers last year, we were finally approved as a nonprofit organization on the Facebook platform in the fall (a process that was supposed to take two weeks, but oddly dragged on for several months… likely another fallout of the pandemic). Since September, there have already been 25 Facebook fundraisers on our behalf which have raised many thousands of dollars. We encourage you to take advantage and perhaps consider a Facebook birthday fundraiser in 2021 or a mini-fundraiser on Instagram through a post or stories. Also, be sure to check with your employer for donation matching opportunities. Corporate matching resulted in many thousands of dollars of additional donations in 2020.
In part, thanks to these generous donations, we continue to operate our internal laboratory research programs at BioLabs in South Bay, Los Angeles. Laboratory research typically moves quite slowly, however, I am happy to report that we have already filed TWO provisional patent applications for Cure Glioblastoma inventions. In fact, the research model we used was so successful that we are spinning it out into a separate for-profit entity with a mission of broadly increasing innovation in the medical sciences to benefit patients. Cure Glioblastoma will be a minor equity owner in this new venture aligned with our long-term goal of creating new avenues for revenue beyond individual and corporate donors for long-term sustainability. We will update you upon launch.
A snapshot from the Cure Glioblastoma Laboratory.
As mentioned in my prior post, celebrity gala events were originally a major annual fundraising model for our organization. Of course, the pandemic forced us to put this on hold. Now that vaccines are widespread, I’m pleased to reveal we have initiated plans and partnerships for a national gala event in spring 2022. We are currently assembling the planning committee and teams so we hope to provide more information very soon. If you would like to help volunteer or become a sponsor of the event, please reach out.
Finally, speaking of volunteers, Cure Glioblastoma is still a 100% volunteer organization. As part of our efforts to scale and grow in the next two to five years we will gradually, as funding allows, start building our internal full- and part-time team to complement the volunteer roster. Until then, on behalf of the organization, I would like to say thank you to the volunteers past and present, many of whom have been with us for a year or more. We take great pride in mutually advancing our mission and the personal missions of each and every one of our volunteers. I won’t put them on the spot, but two have recently gone on to full-time employment in the life sciences, one was accepted to medical school, two matched into medical residency programs, and one has accepted a prestigious research fellowship. Contact us if you are interested in volunteering. As ever,
With gratitude,
W. Shawn Carbonell, MD, PhD
Cofounder & President