Fundraising solutions that save lives

Spurred by innovative treatments, roughly 80% of children diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. today will likely survive the disease. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis, has played a major role in this encouraging trend. Since its founding in 1962, St. Jude has made its treatments accessible regardless of a family’s ability to pay. St. Jude has now renewed its focus on the rest of the world, specifically poorer countries where cancer cure rates are still around 20%—what it was in the U.S. when St. Jude first opened its doors. American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC), the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude, is also working to close that gap. ALSAC partners with foundations around the world to develop fundraising solutions to support improved care and outcomes for children with cancer everywhere. “Our approach at ALSAC is to identify a need, then empower people to determine the best way to meet it,” says Rick Shadyac, president and CEO of ALSAC. “We encourage our team to be curious, continuously learning, and seeking innovative solutions that meet our most pressing business needs.” Many ALSAC endeavors have come from ideas suggested by its employees. Its commitment to fostering a culture of creative problem solving to tackle seemingly intractable issues has earned ALSAC a place among Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators for 2024. A GLOBAL APPROACH 2018 saw the launch of St. Jude Global, a worldwide alliance of hospitals with a shared focus on improving survival rates for children with cancer. Shadyac oversaw ALSAC efforts in this initiative, which began with building a team to deliver fundraising training support to pediatric cancer foundations around the world. Team members engaged with local officials to better understand each organization’s specific challenges and provide tailored educational resources. For a multifaceted program to train fundraisers, leaders, and content developers, ALSAC hosted online courses and immersive events at its Memphis headquarters. At program launch, ALSAC worked with 20 nonprofit entities; today, that number is more than 100 in more than 60 countries. Success stories abound. In Moldova, a foundation’s successful fundraising enabled the purchase of a $145,000 flow cytometer to provide more accurate cancer diagnoses. And in Honduras, ALSAC training helped a local foundation boost its year-over-year revenues by 65%, which allowed the construction of a state-of-the-art outpatient center. HEARING EVERY VOICE ALSAC leaders understand good ideas can come from anyone—and invite employees to test new strategies, measure how well those strategies perform, and share what they learn. ALSAC staff is encouraged to access its Enterprise Strategy Toolkit—a comprehensive learning approach to innovative problem-solving and educational content.Initiatives such as Data Storytelling Hackathons and Intern Innovation Projects have generated a slew of innovative ideas from all levels of the organization. In 2023, the organization’s Enterprise Innovation Challenge received more than 140 submissions from ALSAC employees. The winning group—four women of color—proposed creating “Giving Circles” to bring together underrepresented donor groups to make a more powerful financial impact through their shared giving. The team (who also won a cash prize) received internal funding to kickstart their program. More recently, ALSAC launched a companywide program designed to give the staff more confidence in expressing themselves—from sharing mild concerns to proposing ambitious moonshot ideas. Children’s lives, Shadyac says, literally depend on ALSAC’s ability to encourage open discussion and creative problem solving. “We make sure everyone knows innovation is a priority that should not only be supported but also recognized and celebrated.”