Walking with Jane will have its own team for this year’s Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk September 9.

This was not an easy decision to make. Last year I walked with the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation team. My original plan was to walk with them again this year and try to recruit some additional people to walk with us from among my friends and former students. The members of their team were particularly helpful in keeping me going all the way to the finish line last year. CFCF also has played an

important part in the decisions about how to build Walking with Jane, the vision I have for this organization, and this web site. And I hope I have had a similarly positive influence on what they are and do. I fully expect that we will engage in aa number of co-operative ventures in the future as we both strive to find ways to bring this form of cancer to its knees.

Unfortunately, the way the accounting is set up for the Walk, participating under the CFCF banner would prevent the money Walking with Jane raises from going to the Walking with Jane Dybowski Fund for Neuroendocrine Cancer at Dana-Farber. That fund did not exist last year so I was content to raise money for CFCF and let them invest it in whatever programs seemed best to them. This year we need to be concerned about the $20,000 minimum commitment per year we made to Dana-Farber when we created the Walking with Jane Fund.

By walking under our own banner we open up additional ways to raise money for the cause. By developing our own shirt, for example, we can solicit local and regional sponsors more effectively since we can offer them a place on our shirt at a price they can more readily afford. And since most of our walkers will have local connections those businesses will earn greater local name recognition. In addition, when I make our first direct mail appeal next week, we will be able to offer donors the inducement of a Walking with Jane Marathon Walk Team shirt. This will raise the value of those business sponsorships at the same time it gives donors something tangible for their support since, again, many of our donors will also be local.

From the beginning it has been important to me that we grow the money available for research beyond what was here when we started. If all we do is shuffle the money around from one organization to another we will fail to achieve that goal. For example, Novartis sponsors a large number of anti-cancer groups. I have no interest, however, in getting Novartis to sponsor us. There is a limited amount of money in their coffers for sponsorships. In sponsoring us they might well have to cut or reduce their commitment to some other group. The point is to find new sources of financing.