Since Dean Crowe founded the Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research twenty years ago, the Sandy Springs-based nonprofit’s investments have netted researchers $1 billion in additional support.
Crowe is a Sandy Springs native and Riverwood High School graduate, turning her personal connection to a child with brain cancer into a nationally recognized nonprofit. Its mission focuses on finding better treatments with fewer long-term side effects, and ultimately, a cure.
“We really do see ourselves as philanthropic seed investors … we like finding things that are outside the box, but we also want to know that it’s good science,” Crowe said. “That billion dollars is from the government, other nonprofits, and other organizations that come in and fund those projects, too. It’s an incredible ripple effect that we’re having.”
Prayers led to action
Crowe can pinpoint when combating childhood cancer became her mission in life.
In 2003, a player on her husband’s eighth-grade baseball team, William, was diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer. After receiving a good prognosis during initial treatment, the cancer eventually returned and took his life.
“[My husband and William] had developed a really close relationship,” Crowe said, discussing the relapse. “I was driving over to William’s house to go to the prayer circle, and I was praying like, ‘Lord, let there be like 15 or 20 people here.’ I drove up, and there were 80 people.”
Dean and Reid Crowe have lived just across the Chattahoochee River in East Cobb for about 30 years, while raising their children, who graduated from Pope High School. Jonathan Crowe, Dean’s son, and William were in the same class at Pope.
The prayer circle met every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during William’s treatment. When Crowe saw him for the first time in the hospital, she said it profoundly impacted her.
That day, she spoke with William’s parents.
“I said, ‘This is so much worse than I thought. You have to tell me what to do to help you, and I will not make you dinner. We’re past dinner,'” Crowe said. “[William’s mom] said, ‘Raise money for childhood cancer research.'”
By the numbers
Last year, the Sandy Springs-based nonprofit awarded $5.5 million in grants to 75 researchers worldwide.
The Rally Foundation has impressive figures to back up its 20 years of nonprofit work: $40.5 million awarded in childhood cancer research grants, $317.5 million secured in federal funding since 2017, and 148,000 meals provided to families in the hospital.
Half of the research the nonprofit funds is eventually supported by federal grants, and 24 percent of them advance to clinical trials.
“We want to find the best research we can find, and we don’t care where it is,” Crowe said. “We do it through a dual, peer-review process, and we also like to go in early and fund research. So, that’s kinda been a little bit of a sweet spot for us from the beginning.”
Leveraging federal dollars
Since 2017, Crowe and the Rally Foundation have made trips to Washington, D.C., to advocate with think tanks and fellow nonprofits for more of the federal government’s cancer research budget.
“We were trying to find funding outside of the National Institutes of Health because at the time, the NIH was funding childhood cancer at about 4 percent, which is horrible,” Crowe said. “Chronic cancer is the number one disease killer of kids in America. When a kid dies of cancer, they lose about 70 years of life. Yet, we were only getting 4 percent of the cancer budget from the government.”
In 2017, Crowe said she was tasked with finding potential funding through the Defense Department’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP). At the time, she said she had never heard of the DOD’s program.
Since then, Rally has helped secure $317.5 million for cancers affecting children, adolescents, and young adults, resulting in 269 new federally funded research projects.
Because of her experience in oncology, the branch of medicine dedicated to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer, Crowe was asked if funding for children has improved in the last 20 years.
“There’s more, and there needs to be a lot more,” she said. “Immunotherapy was very, very new when Rally started, and I’ve just seen it grow exponentially, which is good,” Crowe said. “There is more openness among researchers and the FDA for combination trials, where we’re trying more than one drug at a time for the kids.”
Recognition for research
OncoDaily, an international media platform providing daily updates on cancer-related research, named Crowe as one of the “100 Most Influential CEOs in Oncology” in January. It’s not her first recognition.
Since 2021, Rally has received a perfect, four-star rating from Charity Navigator, which evaluates more than 200,000 charities in the United States. It shows donors can trust their dollars are being directed to research.
“In addition to getting the money allocated for cancers in children, adolescents, and young adults, we also work with the researchers and let them know that this money is there and that they need to apply,” Crowe said. “We have a great relationship with the researchers in the field, so getting their attention and saying we have this extra money is not very hard.”
Crowe said she wants to clarify that the nonprofit does not disburse federal funds, which she called a “would-be nightmare.”
The nonprofit has three chapters outside metro Atlanta, including Rally Gulf Coast in Pensacola, FL, and locations in Nashville and Salt Lake City. Founders of those chapters have a similar story to Crowe and her family.
To learn more and support the Rally Foundation, click here.