How Funds Become Hope

Meeting the Community’s Cancer Research Funding Needs

By fulfilling its mission and objectives, The Morgan Adams Foundation serves a tremendous need in the community.

Cancer is the leading disease-related cause of death in children — 1 in every 330 kids is diagnosed with cancer across the US each year.

And yet pediatric cancer research is seriously under-funded.

The Morgan Adams Foundation helps fill the gap between the limited pediatric cancer research dollars available and critical projects that might otherwise go unfunded. Here’s how we do it:

  • Seed, bridge, and research grants: By providing seed grants, bridge gifts, and grants for research exploring more effective and less-toxic therapies for the treatment of pediatric cancers, we are funding hope.
  • Collaboration: We also focus on funding collaboration so that the money we’re investing provides the greatest number of new treatments in the most efficient way.
  • Wise decisions: Through careful placement of funds, we encourage and support crucial research initiatives intended to improve treatment effectiveness, treatment outcomes, and the overall quality of life for children battling cancer.

Foundation Funding Priorities

Our goal, as we grow, is to fund an ever-increasing number of new research projects and studies that will produce better therapies for children with cancer. We will:

  • Provide funding for both basic science and clinical investigations in the areas of pediatric oncology and neuro-oncology, which will translate into potential therapies for pediatric cancer.
  • Increase overall funding of collaborative studies designed to speed the development of new therapies for children with cancer.
  • Assist children and their families who are facing financial hardship due to their child’s cancer diagnosis. Click here to read about the Emergency Financial Assistance Fund.

How funds become hope. From February 2001 to December 2022, The Morgan Adams Foundation has funded nearly $9 million in research funds for pilot, seed, and translational studies.

Research grants

The goal of the research grants we provide is to foster and increase basic and clinical research in the area of pediatric cancer.

Bridge grants

Bridge funding is typically used to support on-going research projects that have lost funding. Grants and gifts of this nature are critical to providing the funding to further an idea that has already shown merit, but needs support funding until larger grants are available.

Seed funds

Seed grants and gifts fund pediatric cancer research projects from the “idea” stage and help scientific investigators begin exploring and proving their theories.

Because there is so little funding available for pediatric cancer research projects, too many good ideas and possible new approaches to finding a cure go unexplored. Seed grants:

  • Help researchers nourish and develop their theories.
  • Provide the initial funding they need to help their ideas take root and grow.
  • Strengthen their progress toward becoming eligible for grants that will take them to the next level of funding and the next level of discovery.

Each project holds great potential to lead us to a cure. Often, these seed grant projects yield major breakthroughs in research.

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