Our Vision: A World Without Kidney Cancer
Our Mission: The Elimination of Death and Suffering From Renal Cancers

Since it was established in 1990, consistent with the vision of the organization's founder, Eugene P. Schonfeld, Ph.D., the KCA's plan of work continues to be executed in these primary areas:

1) Education
2) Research
3) Advocacy

A summary of the past year's program service accomplishments

Education
During the Fiscal Year ending October 31, 2009, we provided more than 70 education and support opportunities for patients, survivors, and caregivers in various U.S. cities, and including large, regional meetings, from which enduring educational materials were produced.  We hosted online weekly informal chats for survivors and caregivers, and our online forum has grown to more than 3,000 members.  We sponsored the Fourth European Kidney Cancer Symposium in Berlin, Germany. More than 600 medical professionals registered. Later in the year, more than 300 professionals attended the annual International Kidney Cancer Symposium in Chicago.  Patient advocates who attended this meeting prepared summaries of the medical presentations that can be easily understood by patients and their families.  From our suburban Chicago offices, we mailed several hundred information packets to families and provided physician referrals to hundreds of patients. Our membership database includes approximately 55,000 people in North America, including Canada, the United States, and more than 100 other countries.

Research
The Maita Lynn Gerber International Working Group completed its seventh year of kidney cancer data analysis, in the largest global project of its kind in this disease. Our Nurse Advisory Board completed a comprehensive revision of We Have Kidney Cancer, our signature publication that has grown to more than 110 pages, and it has been distributed around the world.  Our partnership with EmergingMed, and other companies, resulted in the referral of dozens of patients to sites conducting clinical trials.  Our Nuse Telephone Information Service answered hundreds of calls from patients. We made grants to the AUA Foundation and to the ASCO Foundation to support the work of young investigators.  We also made a financial commitment to support a project associated with the Kidney Cancer SPORE.

Advocacy
In its role as an advocate on behalf of patients, we continued collaborations with organizations such as Lance Armstrong Foundation, National Cancer Comprehensive Network, Patient Advocate Foundation, the National Coalition for Cancer Research, Friends of Cancer Research, Research!America, and various groups concerned with improving the nation's health care. We continued highly effective collaborations with institutions interested in conducting cancer research, including our CEO's membership on NIH committes that are advisory to the Biomarkers Consortium and The Cancer Genome Atlas.

This brief report provides you with an overview of our charity's activities during the past year. We are pleased that our organization is able to achieve this level of service with a full-time staff of only three employees, plus our CEO, whose company serves as a consultant to the organization. This efficiency would not be possible without the dedication of our governing board, medical advisory board, volunteers, and other collaborators who contribute selflessly to advance our objective: the elimination of death and suffering from renal cancers.

For a list of officers and directors, click here.
For audited financial statements,  click here.
For our IRS Form 990,  click here.