Jennifer has packed Dina Dolls, worked Tag Days, and walked in our 5K. But mainly, she is a driving force behind our annual Fashion Show. She began volunteering with Compass to Care when we had our very first Fashion Show 7 years ago. Why then? What prompted her to volunteer?

“The kids were modeling, and knowing family, friends, and kids that have cancer, I just felt it was the right thing to do,” she explained. It turned into a valuable experience for Jennifer, and she has been involved in every aspect of every Compass to Care Fashion Show since that first one. With her leadership, this event has become our most successful annual event.

“What do I do? I work with Michelle to make sure everything is arranged and set up – the dj, venue, the food. I help find and train other volunteers, make sure they are where they need to be. I just love watching the Fashion Shows unfold – seeing the liveliness of our parents and kids has made me realize that year after year, this is why we do this,” Jennifer said.

But that’s not all – Jennifer has helped in other ways over the last 10 years. She and her daughter helped pack and ship Dina Dolls when they first came in. She has volunteered during Tag Days. She even walked in our 5K last year, but as a participant, not as a volunteer.

“I wanted to take a step back, instead of volunteering, and help raise money from that aspect,” she said.

When she is not volunteering for Compass to Care, Jennifer is a Project Manager at RR Donnelley. She also coaches her daughter’s volleyball and softball teams, and serves on the board for the softball organization.

To Jennifer, volunteering is just as important as making a monetary donation.

“People want to give, but not everyone can donate money. We always need volunteers, and time is just as important as the money. The impact that volunteers and donors make with our families – there are no words.”

If you would like to offer your time and talent to help Compass to Care and kids with cancer, please sign up on our website, and we will be in touch!

What is a matching gift?  A matching gift is a charitable donation by a corporation that matches an employee’s donation to an eligible nonprofit organization, most often dollar for dollar. Many employers will match tax-deductible charitable contributions made by their employees, retirees and employees’ spouses.

Matching gifts are a blessing for nonprofits, like Compass To Care, and for the families we help, because the donation that you make, could mean double – or even triple – the impact. Which means we will be able to help even more kids travel to the hospital for their cancer treatments!

How do matching gift programs work? All you have to do is fill out the matching gift forms (which can usually be obtained from your company’s Human Resources department), and then submit the forms to the appropriate personnel. Your employer will then validate that the donation was submitted to an eligible nonprofit, and will send a check of the same value (or higher, depending on the parameters of the program) to the organization you choose (Compass To Care, for example).  Why wait? (cancer doesn’t) Donate now, and check with your employer tomorrow!

Plus, any donation made before December 31st, will help us reach our year-end goal of $30,000 or 275 trips to cancer treatment!

Oh – and since Compass To Care is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, your donation is tax-deductible, too!

Compass to Care’s 4th Annual Dubuque Breakfast Benefit was a HUGE success! With more sponsors than ever before (30), and almost twice as many guests as in 2016, it should come as no surprise, when we tell you that this event raised $65,000 (the most ever) to help kids with cancer travel to treatment.

We cherish every opportunity to share the mission of Compass to Care, and the story behind it. And we feel blessed that so many of you took time out of your busy week to join us for this special day.

Once again, thank you to all of our sponsors. We could not have held this amazing event without your generosity – and we are ever so grateful.

Thank you to everyone who got up with the sun and joined us at the Hotel Julien, including:

Dr. Nicholas Wetjen, our volunteers, our supporters, friends of Dr. Wetjen, those of you who wanted to learn more about Compass to Care, Terry Slade and Hempstead’s Penn Avenue choir, Alice Greenwood (our photographer), and of course, the Hotel Julien staff! You all made this event the enormous success that it was.

From the photos, it appears everyone had a great time! We almost can’t wait until next year!

To see more event photos, click here.

Compass to Care – Helping Kids Fight Cancer, One Trip At A Time

www.CompassToCare.org

• It would take one person almost two years of driving 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 60 miles per hour to travel one million miles.
• You would have to follow the equator around the Earth 40 times to go one million miles.
• A spaceship could travel to the moon and back – twice – before it has gone one million miles.

​Your donations, your volunteering, and your attendance at our events have made it possible for our children to collectively travel 1,000,000 miles with the hopes of beating cancer.  Whether these kids have needed to travel 5 miles or 500 miles to get to treatment, you have given their parents relief from this financial burden while helping them get one step closer to a cure.

While we are incredibly proud of reaching this milestone, and sincerely grateful that you have stood by our side to make it possible, our work is not done.  So as we head into the holiday season, we ask that you keep Compass to Care and the kids we support, as a priority in your charitable giving.

Thank you, again, for supporting Compass to Care and making a difference in the lives of our youngest cancer fighters.
With appreciation,

Michelle M. Ernsdorff
Founder & Childhood Cancer Survivor

The Gold Ribbon Gala is the associate board’s main fundraiser for the year. It is how this group is spreading the word about Compass to Care’s mission among young professionals and raising money to help kids with cancer access life-saving treatment.

Nearly 70 young professionals joined the associate board to raise money for kids fighting cancer. Thanks to our attendees and our sponsors, we raised nearly $8,000! An average trip costs $108, so the impact from our gala is truly meaningful.

We could not have accomplished this without our sponsors:

• Platinum sponsors:
  • The PrivateBank
  • Brian & Christy Greenblatt
  • Scott & Kraus, LLC
  • DLA Piper
  • Chuhak & Tecson, Attorneys at Law
• Gold sponsor: Freeborn Attorneys at Law
• Silver sponsor: Carol’s Event Staffing
• Alcohol sponsors:
  • Revolution Brewing
  • Lagunitas Brewing
  • Lakeshore Beverage
  • Sazerac

We also want to thank our photographers Melissa & Isai Photography and our DJ, Norah Utley from Toast and Jam, who generously donated their services for our gala. Want to see more photos from the event? Visit our Facebook page.

Lastly, we want to shout out the Associate Board – a team of only eight people – who made this event happen!

• Agatha Kubalski
• Doug Hong
• Grant Dennis
• Austin Shadle
• Christina Bridges
• Vincent Murphy
• Megan Lehnert
• Cara Crumbliss

Grant currently lives in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and enjoys skiing (the photo shown above is from a recent skiing trip in Norway), traveling, running on the Lakeshore Path and trying new restaurants in Chicago.  He also recently ran a half-marathon raising over $1,000 for Compass to Care.  His favorite part of being on the board is seeing the relief on families faces after helping them with their costs for their children’s treatments.

To learn more about Grant, visit his LinkedIn page.

His grandmother had taken Tyris to the hospital because he was complaining about leg pain. X-rays showed that lymph nodes in his legs were causing so much pain he couldn’t walk. The doctors needed to find out why these lymph nodes were enlarged, which led to his diagnosis of AML.

The cancer diagnosis was hard for his mother, Cassandra, to hear. “My mind was literally everywhere. I felt everything and couldn’t feel anything at the same time,” she said. During that first hospitalization Tyris was really in pain, but typical of a 12 year-old boy, he quickly tired of all the poking and prodding that was taking place.

At first, Tyris didn’t really understand what was happening, but Cassandra said she would explain it to him as they went along, and he just accepts it now and goes with the flow. Unlike others in his position, Tyris didn’t really experience any nausea, but the AML and necessary treatments have produced a lot of fevers and nosebleeds. At one point, the right side of his heart enlarged and he ended up in the ICU for a while. And he certainly did not like losing his hair.

Tyris has been hospitalized almost continuously since the diagnosis. Although Cassandra has four other children at home to care for, help from other family members allows her to spend as much time as possible with Tyris at the hospital.

“I have tried to make his hospital room truly feel like home and make him as comfortable as possible,” she said. The 114-mile round trip to the hospital was quickly placing a strain on her budget and she was referred to Compass to Care.

“I end up spending a lot of money on gas and parking. Compass to Care’s support means a lot. I just love the fact that I can visit my son more often. If it wasn’t for your organization, I don’t know what I would do,” Cassandra stated.

She, in turn, rounded up three other Dubuque-area volunteers from Kwik Stop/Rainbo Oil, who joined about 20 other volunteers from Hills & Dales, and before we knew it, an enormous task turned into a morning of fun and laughter! We finished inserting, labeling and stuffing over 1200 envelopes in just under 90 minutes! View our photo album.

We can’t thank everyone enough. Without volunteers, Compass to Care would never be able to help as many children travel to cancer treatment as we do. Yesterday was another example that reminds us that there are so many people who care about our mission and want to help.

If you would like to be a Compass to Care volunteer, we request that you sign up here, and let us know what kinds of things you are interested in helping us with. If you have a talent/idea that you do not see on our list, please feel free to include it in the comment section and share your idea of how you think it would benefit Compass to Care.

How do you find out what we need right now? Our current volunteer opportunities are available under the Work & Volunteer tab on our website. As other opportunities arise, we will also post them to our Facebook page, so we recommend visiting it regularly.

Thank you again, to all of our past, present and future volunteers helping kids fight cancer – one trip at a time!

“I thought it was just growing pains,” Criston said. During their second trip to the hospital, Anderson ended up in the Intensive Care Unit for about an hour before things got worse. That’s when doctors performed a CT scan and found the baseball-sized tumor pressing into Anderson’s brain stem. Soon after, he was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma.

After surgery to remove the tumor, Anderson was left with a big scar on the right side of his head. “He keeps saying ‘The doctor broke my head’, other than that, he doesn’t really know he’s sick,” said Criston. Because Anderson is so young, he really has no idea what is going on, but sometimes gets very upset in elevators because that means he is going to have a procedure soon, she explained.

To comfort Anderson, his parents make sure that his blanket and music or movies are close at hand. Positive experiences with the doctors and nurses have also made it easier.

Anderson has been undergoing weekly chemotherapy in Columbus, Ohio and still has approximately four months to go. He has been hospitalized at least 15 times, but is responding very well to all his treatments. His family has also traveled to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where his 5-year old sister was finally able to visit him in the hospital.

“We came to Philadelphia because he needed proton radiation therapy and no other hospital was offering the treatment. We were referred to Compass to Care from our social worker. The 521-mile trip from our home to the hospital is a 9-hour car ride.” Six weeks of proton therapy means six separate round-trips. Not everyone has the resources to cover six weeks of gasoline, parking and lodging in addition to mounting hospital bills.

“It would be impossible without Compass to Care. A huge burden and stress has been lifted from our shoulders and gave us more time to focus on our son. We’re very thankful for Compass to Care. They are a wonderful service!” Criston stated.

Travel support funding, for children receiving proton therapy, is generously provided to Compass to Care by Ion Beam Applications S.A. A global medical technology company, IBA is focused on bringing integrated and innovative solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. IBA is the worldwide technology leader in the field of proton therapy, the most advanced form of radiation therapy available today. They are committed to making proton therapy accessible to more patients worldwide. Their support of the mission of Compass to Care is proof of that commitment.

Megan has been a school social worker for seven years and has worked with a wide range of school districts, families, and students across varying demographic areas and with different sets of needs.  Megan is also a huge Ohio State fan (Go Bucks!) and loves spending her free time exploring all the great culture (mostly food…) Chicago has to offer.