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We have spent countless hours this past year crafting our three-year
strategic plan because the success of Gift from a Child (GFAC) for
improving outcomes for children diagnosed with brain cancer is far too
important to wind up someplace else. We are excited to share a summary
of where we have been and where we are headed.

To say it succinctly, the past three years we focused on building an
If you don’t infrastructure that will allow all families to choose post-mortem donation
and know their child’s precious tissue will be processed to maximize
know where scientific discovery leading to better treatments for children with brain
cancer. GFAC infrastructure is currently processing donations at about
you are going, one-third of its capacity.

you might wind Therefore, our next three years will be focused on advocacy, education

and changing the culture within the pediatric cancer community. The best analogy
up someplace is organ donation. Once it became possible to harvest organs after a tragic human

else. death to benefit the lives of others, it took a sustained effort
of education and advocacy before we knew of its value.
— Yogi Berra Now it is possible to make this choice when tragedy

strikes by simply signing our driver’s license. Please
read on for the details.

History of Swifty Program

Investments and Future Direction

Swifty’s Gift from a Child Program began in February The infrastructure is
2019 with three Centers of Excellence facilitating the now in place to facilitate
collection of post-mortem tissue. We have now invested donations across the
nearly $2.6 million in GFAC and it has become a trusted country and ensure the tissue
brand and family childhood cancer resource. In 2021, will be processed to maximize

GFAC processed 60 tissue donations using the expertise scientific discovery. Build it and they will

of tissue navigators at its six Centers of Excellence come, and we are confident this is true not just because
with tissue from each donation being shared with the of Michael’s experience, but because we have gathered
Children’s Brain Tumor Network (CBTN). data from across the pediatric cancer community. Our
upcoming publication in the Journal of Clinical Oncology
From 2019 to 2021, Swifty also invested $2.1 million speaks this message to clinicians in their own language,
in the enhancement of the open-source data with empirical peer-reviewed data, demonstrating
infrastructure developed by the CBTN. The Swifty families want the option to donate.
investment was matched dollar for dollar by other
philanthropy and ultimately allowed CBTN to secure In the coming three years we will continue to support and
funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH), strengthen the infrastructure AND we are going to invest
a $48 million in-kind gift to genetically profile all 8,000 our time and resources in a very concentrated effort on

brain tumor specimens in the CBTN repository. The education and advocacy. Cultural changes take time; and
CBTN continues to become more robust as evidenced we are working toward the day when the standard practice
by established metrics that monitor number of includes every family being asked to consider post-mortem
subjects, researchers served, preclinical models, donation when it becomes clear their child is not going
data sets, research sharing and publications. survive their brain cancer.

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