2009 Look Ahead and Key Funding Needs

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Looking ahead to 2009, here are a few of the milestones we are targeting:

Holding our inaugural Celebration for Life and bringing together many more local foundation partners to help build awareness and funds for both Accelerate Progress and the many excellent organizations helping patients now
Expanding the breadth of partners signed on to our Coalition for Faster Progress and will be presenting our “Tenets of Progress” document to new FDA leadership
Convening our first in-person meeting of our Scientific Advisory Board, which will take place at the annual ASCO meeting held in Orlando this year. We piggyback off this meeting to save funds, paying only for room rental and refreshments since our advisors will already have paid for their travel and lodging for this event
Participating as a speaker at the 2009 Onco-Biotechnology Summit at the Northwestern Lurie Cancer Center in September of 2009
Finalizing organizational Platform Document to be used to inform national policy discussions
Initiating and complete first Accelerate Progress whitepaper to provide additional support and analysis of the need for major systemic improvements now
Adding additional partners for our “Acceleration Engine” project. This project focuses on our expertise in accelerating the speed and quality of learning within research conducted by other organizations. This is our “We don’t do the research you fund, we make the research you fund better” effort.
Creating specification for an “Open Journal of Progress” to create a peer-reviewed Journal that would publish what has historically been called “failed” research but the publication of which will significantly increase the rate of systemic learning and progress and adequately support researchers who create high-quality studies
Holding policy briefings for more staff of more than 50 members of Congress or other national policy leaders
Beginning state-level legislative and policy awareness building campaign to help drive national action
Expanding our Board of Directors and Advisory Boards to bring additional expertise, insights, and potential funding partners to our organization

To do this, we will significantly expand both our grassroots base of funders (everyone from $5 to $500) as well as create an institutional level of funders who can support us at higher levels. The Celebration for Life, our symposia and briefings for national policymakers, travel for meetings with key policy leaders, our efforts to create a schematic for the Open Journal of Progress, and the expansion of “Acceleration Engine” collaborations to accelerate progress in research against cancer and other life-threatening diseases are anticipated to drive our most significant need for funds in 2009. We expect these events to springboard awareness of our organization and the issues we’re fighting to new levels as well as to directly impact research for patients both short and longer-term.

A brief summary of those items listed above as driving our funding needs follows below.

The Celebration For Life

This will be a community-wide event to build awareness and raise funds for both Accelerate Progress and other local organizations doing great work in the support of patients’ needs. We recognize that many people need to become aware of the continuing need for better policy choices and the development and use of better science to help us build a more efficient system of development and regulation to improve the speed at which we translate advances in the lab into advances for patients. We also recognize that our community is a great place to start because, sadly, we’ve already lost a large number of wonderful members of all ages and from many different backgrounds.

We’ll also be allocating at least 50% of all the proceeds from this event to the other non-profit groups who might choose to attend and participate. That amount, then, will be divided evenly amongst those groups, so if five of them participate, each will get 10% of the total proceeds, etc. Given the difficult economic times, it seemed a good way to reach a larger audience to build awareness of the many common barriers to progress faced by patients, their families, the doctors who treat them, etc. Also, each organization would have the opportunity to tell their own story and help reach this audience of community members concerned about such issues and provide any handouts or other materials they bring along.

We see it as a great way to bring together the many groups who recognize common barriers to faster, better progress against cancer and the need to continue devoting ourselves to working with urgency on behalf of patients in need. Increasing awareness by bringing together multiple groups with high degrees of affinity seems like a perfect opportunity in this busy time where we could introduce folks to a lot of good people and organizations all at one time in a positive atmosphere celebrating life and progress.

Expected Gross Costs of Event: $29,000

Symposia/Briefings for National Policymakers

These are crucial to informing national health policy discussions, allowing us an opportunity to make our experts available for presentation and discussion via panels and other keynote speaking opportunities. It is our goal to bring together over a single day as many staff and principals involved in national health policy implementation as possible. The breadth of attendance at the meeting drives both costs and effectiveness of the events. If we are able to hold more targeted briefings on a more frequent basis, which is our general preference to maximize quality time with staffers and other policy personnel, we will, but to make the best use of initial funding, we are targeting two briefing events for 2009. The first event will be a typical legislative briefing on health policy and the second will be a health policy symposium targeting additional policy leaders, on which we anticipate collaborating with other national policy organizations.

Total expected Accelerate Progress contribution to briefing/symposium cost, including meeting space rental, food, and travel reimbursements: $19,000

Travel for meetings with key policymakers and other strategic leaders as well as major fundraising trips

This budget allows us to maximize our time with national policy leaders. Each trip is subjected to rigorous cost/benefit analysis and price conscious websites (Priceline, Hotwire, etc.) are used as often as possible to maximize value per trip. Most travel is undertaken by our Executive Director, but it will be necessary for certain key meetings to reimburse other volunteer members of our Scientific or Policy Advisory Boards for their travel expenses. Bringing Dr. Phil Schein or Dr. Scott Gottlieb or Dr. Bruce Bloom or Dr. Dave Alberts, etc., etc. to a meeting with a key policymaker increases the effectiveness of these meetings dramatically, so when schedules allow and the meeting is with high-level policy personnel, we will endeavor to coordinate for these advisors to attend. The less we need to travel for direct fundraising, the more time and budget money we have for meetings with national policymakers.

Total expected travel budget in 2009 (including rental of space at ASCO meeting for Accelerate Progress’ Scientific Advisory Board meeting): $22,000

Creation of Schematic for Open Journal of Progress

In accordance with World Health Organization (“WHO”) findings, as much completed and even abandoned research as possible should be published and publicly available for researchers across the globe to use to inform their own efforts. Society, however, does not properly laud those who ‘fail’ even though these learning steps are necessary to inform future successes. An open-access, peer-reviewed journal is needed, for instance, in oncology to house all such studies and help inform international research efforts. Publishing these efforts will speed the path of learning by eliminating unintended research redundancy, informing future research hypotheses and real-time adjustments to in-progress research, and providing a necessary positive avenue for researchers to secure the necessary peer-reviewed journal publications to support their own careers.

Total expected costs to create schematic and provide background research to support to grant proposal for Open Journal of Progress in Oncology: $6,000

Expansion of “Acceleration Engine” Collaborations

With these collaborations, we will act as an ‘Acceleration Engine’ for our collaborative partners (who will typically be research-focused foundations like Partnership For Cures, our first such collaborative partner) and improve the rate of learning by connecting researchers and philanthropists to our world-class scientific advisory board and helping design better trial protocols that include the use of adaptive design elements and advanced statistical analyses when appropriate.

Many of our collaborative partners are funding researchers focused on driving both short and longer-term benefits for patients. Through their collaboration with Accelerate Progress, we can provide their researchers with powerful new tools and methods to help them design research that will reach patients faster and provide more robust results at a lower cost. To expand the number of protocols we are able to review and improve in a timely manner, we expect to bring on one Statistical and Trial Protocol Support staffer.

Total expected Accelerate Progress contribution to costs in support of two additional “Acceleration Engine” collaborations: $70,000

Total Expected Key 2009 Costs to Accelerate Progress: $146,000