Devra (left) and Leslie were paired as college roommates more than 30 years ago. Today, Devra participates in the Avon Walk, not only to raise money for a cure, but to stay connected to her lifelong friend.

Nearly 2,000 of us gathered at the foot of the Washington Monument on an early May morning waiting for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer to begin. Clouds of coffee and sunblock hung in the warm, humid air and a song about being strong against all odds thumped out from the loudspeakers like a hopped-up heartbeat.

A group of women wearing pink tulle skirts and black T-shirts embroidered ‘Tutus for Tatas’ across the chest moved toward me as I bent over to tie my sneaker. The fronts of their hats were inscribed in black sharpie: “For Mom”; “In loving memory of Susie”; “For Cathy, Barb and Allison.”

One of them greeted me when I stood up. “Hi, I’m Mary. Who are you walking for?” she asked, smiling and scanning my unadorned T-shirt for clues.

“My friend Leslie,” I said, who was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years earlier.

The music faded as a man called our attention to the stage. “Good morning,” the speaker’s deep voice boomed. “My name is Mark and I’m walking for my three sisters who were all diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time and died within two years of each other.”

Some walkers stopped warming up their hamstrings to applaud. I reached into my fanny pack for a tissue and before anyone had a chance to recover a woman wearing a bright pink Nicki Minaj wig stepped up to the microphone. “Hello. My name is Margaret and I am 38 years old. This is my second Avon Walk. Four years ago I walked for my aunt Joanie, who is a 26-year survivor. Now, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, I am proud to say I am a survivor too.”

A woman from the Avon Foundation was the last to speak. She told us that every three minutes someone is diagnosed with breast cancer and every 13 minutes a life is lost to the disease, numbers many of us already knew by heart. I swallowed down the fear that I could become one of her statistics and applauded with the other potential victims around me as she officially opened the event.

As I started to walk, I thought about how lucky I was that Leslie and I were paired as college roommates more than 30 years ago. One evening, a month or two into our freshman year, Leslie and I walked back to our room after dinner to play backgammon, which had become a nightly ritual. We got to know each other over those games, taking turns asking questions about our families, our friends back home, and our likes and dislikes. We always sat on Leslie’s bed, made up with dark green flannel sheets and a red and black plaid wool blanket, all from L.L. Bean, a store based in Maine where her family had a vacation home. On the shelf next to her bed, she lined up three family photographs in matching black frames and a clock radio tuned to the local “Music of Your Life” station. Across the room, I had a rainbow striped quilt on my unmade bed and a poster of Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I. taped to the wall above it.

About 15 minutes into our first game, the fire alarm went off, and as we rushed out of the room, I caught my finger in the door when I tried to slam it shut. The pain was instant and excrutiating.

Once outside, I began to panic. “I need a doctor, but I think the student health center closed at 6,” I sobbed to Leslie, holding up my swollen finger. My parents had always handled situations like this, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Come on,” Leslie said, taking charge. “There’s a hospital three blocks down the street that I pass every day on my way to class. We can walk.”

Five minutes later we were standing in front of the emergency room of the local Veterans Hospital. It was dark and looked closed except for the lighted sign indicating an ambulance entrance. We knocked on the locked door, and a nurse slid open a peek-a-boo panel. All we could see was her face, tilted upward as though she were standing on tippy toes.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

Leslie stepped in front of me and said, “My roommate slammed her finger in a door, and we think it’s broken. Is there a doctor we can see?”

“Is your roommate a veteran?” The nurse’s lips were thin and creased. She smiled, but only with the bottom half of her face.

“Should she be?” Leslie asked.

“If she wants to be treated here, either she or someone in her immediate family needs to be a veteran.”

Leslie looked at me. “Know any veterans, Devra?”

I shook my head, then asked, “What if I split my head open and was standing here with blood running down my face? Would I have to be a veteran to see a doctor?”

Leslie looked at her shoes and stifled a laugh while we waited for a reply. Her right leg started to shake, her tell when she was uncomfortable.

“There is a public hospital half a mile east of here. They take anybody,” the nurse said sharply. Then she lowered herself and snapped the panel shut, so hard it made my finger throb even more.

To distract me from the pain as we walked, Leslie started playing a game to see who could come up with the most gruesome injuries that the veterans-only hospital would turn away.

“What if I were carrying your severed leg while you hopped on one foot. Do you think they’d let us in?”

I knew it was my turn. “Or how about if I just swallowed a pencil and was experiencing stabbing pain in my stomach. Would she open the entire door?”

“Good one. Or what if your eyeball fell out and you showed it to the nurse through the peep hole. Would you get to see a veteran’s doctor? Get it? Peep hole? See a doctor?” Leslie’s words rode out on waves of laughter. We had to stop walking for a moment to give in to our giggles.

I was treated right away at the public hospital, and Leslie and I continued to make each other laugh throughout our friendship. In the late ’80s, we were in each other’s weddings, and when my marriage failed, Leslie offered the wisdom that helped me move on: “Dev, I’m sorry you’re hurting, but everything in life is a crapshoot, so quit your crying and live your life.”

And when she found out a long-term boyfriend dumped me around the same time she was diagnosed, she called and said, “In a lot of ways cancer is easier to deal with than a broken heart because there are treatments for cancer. You’re going to be fine. So am I.”

I participated in my first Avon Walk in 2004 to help Leslie in some way, as she helped me so many times since the night I slammed my finger in the door. Even though Leslie said she didn’t need anyone’s help, I wanted to raise money for the cure she felt we were “this close” to finding. At the opening ceremony I listened to the stories of loss and survival but didn’t relate, because even though Leslie had been fighting recurring cancer for two years, she had everyone convinced that she was going to be fine. I felt the same at the 2005 Walk, probably because Leslie was still alive.

Leslie died in 2006, a few weeks before my third Avon Walk and just shy of her 46th birthday. While leafing through an issue of Oprah magazine during my post-walk pedicure, a J. Crew ad caught my eye. The male model was our dorm manager from freshman year, a closeted, flirtatious blond artist who had a steady stream of boyfriends he didn’t think we noticed. I started to tear out the page to send to Leslie, who I knew would get a kick out of seeing it, but froze when I remembered that she was gone.

The more time passes, the more trouble I have recalling the smell of Leslie’s Clinique Happy perfume, or her quick laugh when I said something she thought was funny, or the way she made me feel safe and loved with her caring wisdom. I miss all of that. As long as she lived, she never lost her sense of humor; around her I always felt as bright and sparkly as she was to me. Gosh, I miss that, too. When she died, our story, our inside jokes, our friendship died with her, and I struggle to keep the image of us—of who I was with her and who we were together—clear in my mind. It’s as though a photograph of her is fading, which makes me feel like I am disappearing too.

I continue to participate in the Avon Walk every year, despite the unwelcome bond I now have with the other walkers who have lost someone they loved to the disease, because when I walk I replay my favorite moments with Leslie. Somehow my grief gives way to the joy I used to feel in her presence, and, for a brief time, I am whole again. Yes, I am committed to raise money to help find the cure that Leslie believed was just steps away. I fundraise and walk with the determination that breast cancer will become something that used to be, like eight-track tapes and rotary dial phones. But mostly I walk to stay connected to Leslie—my lifelong friend—and to keep the part of me that was a part of us alive.

A Walk To Remember The Saturday Evening Post

Between the treatment and the travel, the expenses were devastating.

Help came when a family friend, Greg Selke, a high school athlete and classmate of Daniel’s, raised the idea of a charity footrace. The event, dubbed “Daniel’s 5K,” was first run in 2006. Daniel himself participated in that first race even though the cancer had already spread to his spine, liver, and lungs. Sadly, just a few months later, the disease claimed his young life. But the race that bore his name had taken on a life of its own. After Daniel’s passing, rather than letting the race become simply a memory, his father and mother, Dean and Tammie, took over administrative duties for Daniel’s 5K. They rededicated the event to raising funds for other worthy individuals and organizations.

Since then Daniel’s 5K has raised thousands of dollars for local and national causes. For Daniel’s family, as for countless others, charity begins with neighbors helping neighbors—using innovative means to confront the tragedies that hit us where we live.

The decentralized nature of this model of charity makes it different from the kind with which most of us are familiar. Using the latest technology it is increasingly possible to take direct action to address needs close to us—whatever the scale—whether a natural disaster, a medical catastrophe, or the renovation of a community center.

This approach requires work, to be sure, but many prefer the direct approach to sending a check to a distant foundation. The person-to-person aspect was especially important to Dean. “Everyone that participates in our race gets a thank-you note telling them the specifics of where the money is being spent,” he says. “And once we get the thank-yous from the people we donated the money to, we pass those along as well.”

Now grassroots tactics can intersect with contemporary social media—from Facebook to LinkedIn and beyond. Amanda Justus, co-founder of 31 Heroes, a charity dedicated to servicemen, managed to put together a national fundraising event at locations across the country using only Facebook, WordPress (the software behind many websites), and online message boards.

A resident of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Amanda was drawn to philanthropy primarily out of concern for her community. Just this past August a helicopter crash killed 30 American servicemen, many of them members of the famous Navy SEAL Team Six, plus one dog. Seventeen of the soldiers had been based in Virginia Beach. “It hit so close to home. The whole community was reeling, asking what they could do,” says Amanda. “People were frozen, wanting to help, but having no idea how.”

Brainstorming with friends, Amanda thought to address the crisis in her hometown using her affiliation with another community, albeit a virtual one. Amanda is a CrossFit athlete, practicing an intense full-body workout program favored by firefighters and, not coincidentally, military personnel. She drew upon the loosely knit, national network of CrossFit gyms and was amazed by the speed and scale of the response. “The crash took place on Saturday, August 6th. We set up a Facebook page on Sunday morning, and by Sunday night we had almost a thousand fans. By Tuesday we were up to two thousand.”

The 31 Heroes event played out very simply. Participants paid a registration fee—$31, in fact—and gathered at their local gyms on September 3 to participate in a special workout routine. “In the end we had over 10,000 people participate,” says Amanda. “The way it spread was just viral.”

The key to her success, she believes, was the speed with which it rolled out. “After a major tragedy, everyone wants to do something immediately—but that desire tends to fade away soon after,” she says. “We wanted to right away get on top of that, so the opportunity would be right there for people who were ready to give.” Social media made that rapid response possible.

For all the success of 31 Heroes, Amanda is content to stick with her strengths. Her passion for the cause made her a natural fundraiser, but, “we don’t ever want to be responsible for saying where the funds go,” she says. Indeed, few beginners have the financial background and connections needed for effective disbursal of funds. The solution that both she and Dean found was partnering with established charitable foundations—organizations with grantmaking know-how and apparatus already in place.

When choosing and evaluating charity partners, good neighbors stay close to home, often giving to organizations with whom they have had dealings in the past. The Myslivecek family, for instance, divides the proceeds of Daniel’s 5K among organizations that assisted them during their son’s illness such as Melanoma Hope, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and Rochester’s Golisano Children’s Hospital. “During Daniel’s treatment, without these organizations, it would have been impossible for us to manage on our own,” says Dean. “So we thought, let’s give something back.”

Using the latest technology it is increasingly possible to take direct action to address needs close to us. From left: Mackenzie Tobin-Padell, John Weiss, and Amanda Justus, the 31 Heroes team. Photo by Mario Gandia.

The choice of a giving partner was not difficult for Amanda either. A military spouse herself, she was familiar with the work of the Navy SEAL Foundation long before the tragic events of August 2011. “I have good friends who are military widows who have benefited greatly from the Foundation,” she says. “I knew that they were a trustworthy organization.” She stresses the importance of due diligence when choosing a charity with which to work: “You want to be a smart consumer with who you give money to.” (For advice on how to tell good charities from bad, and for instructions on how to file a complaint against a fraudulent charity, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s Charity Fraud website.)

Before these new charity organizations could start raising funds, their journey had an unlikely first stop—the Internal Revenue Service. Although the IRS may not inspire charitable thoughts, it is at the forefront of philanthropic support in the U.S. All nonprofit organizations are required to register with tax authorities, and, in return, the IRS provides step-by-step instructions for formalizing your organization, laying out your rights and obligations under the law.

The beauty of it is that you don’t need to know much to get started. “I had helped out with charity events when Daniel was first diagnosed,” says Dean. “I was behind the scenes with auditing and such, but that was the only time I’d ever been involved in anything like that. For the most part, the knowledge I’ve picked up has come from the person who does our taxes.”

Daniel’s 5K made the transition from a one-time, ad hoc event to an annual institution. 31 Heroes is still a work in progress. “We raised about $300,000 this year, which was fantastic,” says Amanda. “With that kind of response, everyone was asking if this was going to be an annual thing.” She and her team would like it to be, but the long-term prospects for either organization are far from certain. Studies show that approximately half of all nonprofits close up shop within their first 10 years of operation. One hurdle is unexpected overhead expenses, including permit fees and liability insurance.

Fundraisers usually take the form of athletic contests, games of chance, or auctions—all highly-regulated activities. “There are a lot of hoops to jump through, especially for a 5k race,” notes Dean. There can also be incidental expenses involved in helping participants get the most out of the event. The Mysliveceks, for example, employ an organization affiliated with U.S. Track and Field to ensure that the course for Daniel’s 5K is properly accredited and that race results are accurately timed and official.

Despite these high operating costs, charities can still thrive, even in the midst of a recession. “With the state of the economy right now, you’d think that more people would say no,” says Dean. “But I feel there’s some higher purpose at play. Because some people don’t really know exactly who Daniel was; they don’t know us all that well; they have no idea how a 5k can support melanoma. But they don’t say no.”

The most effective charities make it easy to say yes by finding ways to use donations of all types—not just cash, but goods, services, and the time and talent of volunteers.

“After the first year, we stopped buying trophies and started giving gift baskets as prizes,” says Dean. The baskets are stocked with donated merchandise and gift cards from area merchants. “People don’t just say yes for the exposure, or the advertising,” he says. “They do it because they think it’s a good idea.”

Donor partners are rewarded with advertising and exposure, of course—and it is this cycle of goodwill, of doing well by doing good, that keeps donors coming back. Even 31 Heroes, which came together quickly and on the cheap, offered a simple premium to entice participants—although Amanda groans remembering it. “That was the toughest part of doing it this year—handling 10,000 T-shirt orders!” she says, laughing. “It was brutal, because it was just the three of us, and we weren’t about to pay someone else to handle the disbursing of shirts.”

The tale of the T-shirts points to perhaps the most important lesson for any budding nonprofit: Be aware of your limitations. Keeping the organization’s goals realistic helps to avoid burnout and frustration and may be the best way to ensure sustainability. “The great thing about Daniel’s 5K is that the committee is kind of laid-back.” says Dean. “We don’t have outrageous expectations for what this is and what we can accomplish.”

Amanda agrees, adding that the same wisdom applies when an event succeeds beyond expectations. “When we put together 31 Heroes, I thought we might possibly get 2,000 participants,” she remembers. “But we quickly outgrew the capabilities of our registration software!” Despite the unanticipated work, the team never seriously considered capping participation at a manageable number. “People want to help, and it’s better to apologize for our slowness in processing the registrations than to cut off the potential money we could be raising.”

The community of participants, bound by a common cause, found it easy to forgive her; and that sense of fellowship, she says, is the greatest reward of her experience. “Just when you think that everything’s gone to hell, it’s very cool to see people come together, amidst tragedy,” she says. “Watching how people have been willing to rally together—I feel very blessed to be in the center of it, and watch it all around me.”

All You Need Is Love The Saturday Evening Post