Recap - 2025 KCA Regional Challenge: Oregon

Team – 2025 KCA Regional Challenge: Oregon

Team Captain – Lindsay Walker, chromophobe RCC survivor and patient advocate. This is Lindsay’s second year leading Oregon’s KCA Regional Challenge!

Location – Tualatin Community Park in Tualatin, Oregon

Date – April 12, 2025

Attendees: 60

Fundraising Goal: $8,100

Amount Raised – $37,840

Activity – “Choose your Own Adventure” for 81 minutes! Participants could walk around the beautiful trails, ride bikes, walk the dog, read, knit, play frisbee, color, make cards and Love Rocks, learn about kidney cancer, organ donation and cancer prevention, or whatever your hearts desired!

Event Highlights – I was able to have some really good conversations with the urology team at my hospital – Oregon Health & Science University Hospital (OHSU) – that I wouldn’t have had during an office visit… they were open to hearing about the patient perspective. We also brainstormed how we could reach other kidney cancer patients across Oregon for this event since that is my biggest struggle. They had an idea of asking patients if they might want to be on a list serve about events, and then they would share that with me, which would be so incredible not just for events, but also for mentoring. All of that is to say, having a platform like this (both last year and this year) to have conversations with the doctors in a casual setting was really invaluable (and I believe they would say the same). So thank you for helping create a space where that’s possible.

I’m also so appreciative that participants and donors could choose what funds they wanted their donations to go to, and that chromophobe research was one option. Rare cancers need as much funding as possible so to be able to have my friends and family be able to donate to chromophobe specifically meant a lot to me. 

Cancer prevention is very important to me and this year I was able to have the OHSU Mobile Outreach Van at the event. They shared resources about cancer prevention.

Of course hearing from my doctor at the event that the urology department would be donating $10,000 again was a huge highlight and surprise! I certainly thought that would be a one time thing!

Everyone seemed to have a good time, the weather held out (I was worried as it started raining when I was driving there!). Since I did the exact same event the year before, it was much easier to plan and pull off. It’s nice to have goodies for participants as a way of saying thank you. It was great having swag from the KCA as well as from one of my sponsors (OHSU) and from Donate Life. My surgeon brought bagels which was so thoughtful and we had coffee and cocoa donated as well. I also shared patient stories which I think is an important way to connect donors and participants to the cause.

Lastly, I loved hearing people talk about “next year” meaning this has now become something people know about, plan for and want to do again!

What advice do you have for other event captains?

• Start planning early!
• Ask friends and family who own businesses about sponsorships or in kind donations
• Share your story and other kidney cancer stories to connect people to the cause
• Promote as much as you can and in as many places as you can
• Ask friends for help promoting
• Reach out to your kidney cancer team for sponsorships and promotion
• Get local media involved
• Encourage people to sign up!
• Ask for help with planning/set up/etc

Final Thoughts

Absolutely I’ll do it again! I do think I want to do it differently next year though – whether that’s a different location or a different activity. I think in order for the event to be sustainable long term, something has to be a little different each year and it has to reach new people each year. I’m sooo grateful for my friends and family who have supported this cause, but as mentioned above, I know there are others out there!  I’ve also come to realize after just two years that I’ll need more help in the future in order to continue to host events of this size (and hopefully each year it gets bigger). I’ll especially need help spreading the word.

I still can’t believe that we’ve been able to raise over $72,000 for this cause in just two years. When I was diagnosed and looking for a way to fundraise and advocate, I was so disappointed that I couldn’t find anything in Oregon. I knew “someday” I’d help make sure that wasn’t the case for other Oregonians with kidney cancer. I’m still shocked how quickly I was able to do that. When you’re really passionate about something, there’s no stopping you! Thank you KCA for helping me make this a reality in Oregon.