So this is kind of long, I know. But I only write one of these a year, so read it. Please. 

What’s this all about:

You, our Cancer Fuckers. Our extraordinary community have built Fuck Cancer into what it is today. I can’t believe we’re 3 years old or how much we’ve done together in 3 years!

In case you’re new to our community and don’t know what we’re about, Fuck Cancer is a movement that educates people about early detection, prevention and communication of cancer. We partner with influential brands, thought leaders and celebrities to create provocative campaigns that activate Generation Y to look for cancer when it is most curable.

We always said that we would listen what the community wanted and needed; that we would continue to grow and evolve with the needs of our supporters. We listened, they talked and what we heard was an overwhelming appreciation and identification with the community and communication aspect of what we’ve built. They initially join the movement because of a strong visceral connection to our name; an emotional response. They come to learn, share, and be around people that are going through the same experience and choose to take a raw, authentic, sometimes light approach. From our Communication resources to the outpourings of support, love, vulnerability and resilience posted on our Facebook wall we get thanked on a daily basis for taking the approach we have.

The value we have is creating a safe space for people to learn, share, and sometimes just exhale during a traumatic and difficult time. Moving forward, we will continue to focus on servicing the emotional needs of our community.

We are a human movement for a human experience. A place to find out not only what a biopsy is, but what it feels like. A place to learn how to tell your sibling that you have cancer, and then connect to someone who did exactly the same thing yesterday. A place to learn how to support your best friend with cancer. A place to find out the things your doctor might not tell you, or to talk about the realities of cancer in a way much more authentic than society currently endorses.

We take cancer; something that might be scary, overwhelming or just not talked about and make it human, simple and understandable. We talk to our community like I would talk to my mother.But to do this we need your help. We need funds to operate, and sadly the FC piggybank is running low. Really low. Last year, we came to our community in December and asked you to help fund us entirely for the upcoming year. This was brave (or stupid), but it worked, so we’re doing it again.

Last year, you, our awesome community, donated over $200,000 which kept us running all year. It allowed us to build amazing educational resources, a new interactive website and launch a bunch of campaigns with kick-ass organizations likeWomen’s Health Magazine, Men’s Health Magazine andFunny or Die. Most importantly we helped our community through some of the toughest days of their lives.

We’re just getting started and have so much in store for 2013. We’re starting to hit our stride as a movement, but we need your help. This year we are aiming to raise $300,000 between Nov 19th 2012 and Jan 10th 2013. We need this to operate, continue to grow, evolve and serve our community.

So, Fuck Cancer is hoping you’ll make your stocking stuffers count and help us raise funds to keep us up and running for another (obviously amazing) year.

Please help us by doing the following:

1.  DONATE Please provide any support you can. No donation is too big or too small.

2. JOIN THE TEAM to help us fundraise!

In order to ensure we hit our fundraising goal this year we hope you’ll raise or donate to sponsor a day, a week or a month of operations.

A day = $1250

A week – $6,250

A month = $25,000

Please view our annual operational budget here.

3. Obviously SHARING the fundraiser through email, Facebook, and Twitter with everyone you’ve ever met would be wonderful!

Hope your holidays are magical, like unicorns,

Yael and the FC Team

We all know social media is good for bragging that you’re engaged and complaining about your hangover. But this month, let’s use our voice to do good. So get into the holiday spirit and join F-tember (you can also dye your hair in the traditional red and white F-tember colours, but it’s probably just easier to sign up for the app).

Pull out the bouncy castle, bake a cake, and invite all your friends because Early Detection month is finally here!

Happy F-tembering,

The FC team

STARTS:   Wednesday, February 1st

ENDS:       Thursday, March 1st

WHAT:       Challenge to complete 21 days of exercise in one month

HOW:         Pick any sweat-inducing, fat-annihilating, pulse-electrifying exercise of your choice and do it 21 times in one month! It can be anything from yoga, running, spinning, rock climbing, jazzercize, water polo, weight lifting to zumba. As long as you get your sweat on, you can check that day off the list! We’re doing this on the honor system, so if you cheat, you must tweet (or Facebook) to fess up. We’re all making a $1 donation for each time we cheat during the month. To join the challenge, sign up below! For those who successfully complete 21 workouts in 30 days, the FC Team will be sending you a special little reward!

SIGN UP DEADLINE:         January 31st, 11:59 PM

For our fellow active Vancouverites, our good friends at Kalev Fitness Solution are offering their services to help you tackle our fantastic Fuck Cancer Fitness Challenge (say that 10x fast!). Get unlimited access to Vancity’s most exciting boot camp classes with 50% of the proceeds going to yours truly! Check it out here!

We are giving our biggest, loudest, most enthusiastic FC hugs & high fives to everyone who supported us during the Mozilla Firefox Challenge and our Lets Fund 2012 Now campaign. It was a tough battle! Seth Rogen, Ed Norton and Jonah Hill put up a good fight, but in the end our girl Sophia prevailed for us! Thanks to YOU, our thousands and thousands of amazing supporters, we will be able to spend every second over the next 12 months creating our most bad-ass early detection campaigns yet! We have planned out a year of Fuck Cancer awesomeness that will literally rock your world, and it is because of your generous contributions that we can make it happen!

Sending thanks to infinity and beyond,

The FC Team

While so many important charities are focused on finding a cure, Fuck Cancer takes a different approach. We aim to educate people on crucial early warning signs of cancer and inspire them to spread the word to loved ones who may be at risk. We’re shouting from the rooftops that over 90% of all cancers are curable if detected in stage one, something that we want everyone to know.

To everyone who has already supported us in any way, thank you for building with us, learning with us, and most importantly beginning putting an end to late stage cancer diagnosis with us.

It’s been a hell of a journey and I can’t believe that it’s been two years already- hell I can’t believe what we’ve done in two years!

As we look forward and plan for the year ahead I have a wish; a wish that we can fund our entire overhead for 2012 now. It would be remarkable to enter 2012 with no concern that our office rent, internet, or salaries may not be paid, to be free of worry and dedicate every minute of 2012 to creating and implementing the most revolutionary early detection campaigns we can imagine.

Our annual overhead is $175,000.

This includes our office space (and all an office entails), the day-to-day operations of Fuck Cancer, and supports our 24-person team of staff, interns and volunteers.

We have had a truly remarkable year, from being invited to lead a panel at the UN, to activating hundreds of thousands of people to have The Cancer Talk, our lean team really accomplishes a lot. As much as I understand that funding intangibles such as overhead is never sexy, it is realistic. We don’t build wells or feed the homeless; we educate. We are changing the way an entire generation thinks about cancer; from something you wait to get and pray there’s a cure, to something you’re actively looking for and finding when it’s most curable. We’re putting an end to late stage cancer diagnosis, and that’s not something you can touch. Without a team, there are no campaigns and no education, and without that there’s no paradigm shift, no change.

So, this December Fuck Cancer is hoping you’ll make your stocking stuffers count and help us raise funds to keep us up and running for another (obviously amazing) year.

We’ve had amazing donors agree to match donations up to $50,000. That means, for every $1 you donate or raise for Fuck Cancer, we receive $2 in funding, bringing us that much closer to raising our $175,000 goal.

Please help us by doing the following:

1. DONATE Please provide any support you can. No donation is too big or too small.

2. JOIN THE TEAM to help us fundraise!

In order to ensure we hit our fundraising goal this year we hope you’ll raise or donate to sponsor a day, a week or a month of operations.

• A day = $480
• A week – $3,400
• A month = $14,500

Please view our annual operational budget here.

We’re giving special shout-outs to you wonderful supporters who raise at least $480 and sponsor a day. We will officially recognize that day as yours and thank you until we’re blue in the face. For those who can do even more, we have a special edition (not available for purchase) FC shirt that we’ll send as a special thank you if you raise $14,500 and sponsor a whole month of FC amazingness!

3. Obviously SHARING the fundraiser through email, Facebook and Twitter with everyone you’ve ever met would be wonderful!

Happy Holidays,

Yael and the FC Team

Click on image to enlarge or download!

But in all seriousness, as we sit back and think about the last two years in all their awesomeness, we can’t help but think of where we would be without all of you. The answer is pretty simple: nowhere! Without all of you, FC wouldn’t have grown from a simple t-shirt into an international movement, we wouldn’t have been able to develop the amazing educational resources on our website, and most importantly, we wouldn’t have an incredible online community of thousands of twitter and facebook fans. Your passion and participation is what keeps us going, so consider this our way of reaching out to  you all and giving you the most enthusiastic high five EVER. Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s just throw in a few hugs as well, shall we? In other words, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for helping us become the organization that we are today. We couldn’t have done it without you!

So, you might be wondering, what’s next for FC? Without giving away too much of the top-secret content away, we can tell you that we have a really exciting project in the pipeline! We’re always trying to find ways get people talking about cancer before they have to, and our next campaign is going to start the cancer conversation in a big way. And now that we mention it, it’s going to absolutely rock your face off as well. Just sayin’. Stay tuned to find out what this hush-hush interactive project is all about, you won’t be disappointed!

So here’s to the last two years, in all their crazy, dance-tastic, sensational glory. We’re so lucky to have friends, fans and fuckers like you to keep us inspired and humbled each and every day, because together, we’re creating a generation that will put an end to late stage cancer diagnosis.

With all the hugs & high fives that we’ve got,

The FC Team.