If you want to change the world, there’s more than one way to do it. You could start in your community, helping friends and neighbors. You could also turn to a nonprofit organization—as a volunteer, donor, advocate, or even by joining the staff—to widen your impact.
We know a lot of changemakers at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). Passionate, amazing people who work hard to help us make life better for blood cancer patients, survivors, and their families. They know that we can make the most progress toward a world without blood cancer together.
To honor this National Nonprofit Day, we asked some of our community why volunteering with LLS is important to them—and what ripple effects they’ve felt from getting involved.
Sophie: Finding Community
Both LLS regional Board of Trustees member Sophie Hayes and her son, Eliot, have faced blood cancer in the last five years. “No one chooses cancer,” she says; “your only freedom is what you do with it.”
In LLS, Sophie found “a source of knowledge, community, meaning, and friendship” that she sorely needed. Connecting with people who can understand what her family is going through, and can support them through it, has gone a long way.
Sophie and her husband Mike (pictured) are determined to make life better for other patients and survivors like her and her son. In addition to being a trustee, she’s a member of the Dare To Dream Team—advocating for The Dare To Dream Project, LLS’s initiative to transform treatment and care for kids with blood cancer.
“I’m proud to be involved in eradicating painful treatments for children facing blood cancers,” she shares. And we know she’ll keep pushing with LLS until it’s done.
Fredia: Honoring a Beloved Daughter
Fredia Webb is one of the millions of people in the U.S. who has lost a loved one to blood cancer. After her young daughter Kristen passed, Fredia set out to honor Kristen’s memory by helping patients just like her. She joined LLS’s Team In Training and put her all into supporting LLS’s mission—hiking, biking, and climbing her way to changing patients’ lives.
No event has been more thrilling for Fredia than LLS’s Hike Grand Canyon event in May 2024. She assembled a team of 30 climbers, dubbed Kristen’s Klimbers after her daughter, and prepared to push further than she ever had. “We trained in the North Texas heat, got creative mimicking the effects of the Grand Canyon altitude, and found ways to train indoors when the weather outside didn’t cooperate,” she recalls.
That persistence paid off: Kristen’s Klimbers raised almost $180,000 for LLS’s mission! Named the country’s top fundraising team, they dedicated their funds to LLS’s health equity efforts.
“Sharing this achievement with this great group of volunteers will forever be a special memory, and motivation for me to keep pursuing the mission to cure blood cancers,” Fredia shares.
Marilyn: Helping Patients and Families
Marilyn Zydlo knows what it’s like to feel lost. Her son Jimmy’s diagnosis of Hodgkin lymphoma at just seventeen threw her family into uncertainty. But there was help available she didn’t even know about.
LLS reached out to her with free resources and the support Jimmy and their family deeply needed. “LLS helped our family through the worst time a parent could ever imagine, and I just wanted to give back to the organization that gave me so much!” Marilyn says.
As a Dare To Dream ambassador based in Illinois, she’s worked with LLS in lots of different contexts. Her favorites so far? First, seeing Student Visionaries of the Year candidates raise awareness and funds—”it’s so amazing to see our youth working so hard to raise funds and awareness for blood cancer,” she shares.
Second, participating in LLS’s advocacy for policy change: “Being a part of recent legislation getting passed in the state of Illinois that will forever help many families like ours—I’m very proud of that.”
Sam: Moving Toward Better Outcomes
Scientists are constantly developing new blood cancer treatments—not least because some blood cancers are still incurable. Multiple myeloma is one of these, and it’s what Sam Winegrad’s wife Leigh Anne was diagnosed with in 2016. Sam started volunteering with LLS to help push for new treatment options for patients like Leigh Anne.
“Volunteering lets me support an organization that is ‘best in class’ in blood cancer research funding, community support, saving lives, and improving outcomes for patients and families,” he shares. “That includes people close to me, as well as tens of thousands of others.”
His passion has stayed constant, even in the toughest circumstances. In the early, grief-stricken months of the COVID-19 pandemic, he participated in—and won!—LLS’s Man/Woman of the Year campaign (now Visionaries of the Year) in Denver. “The support I received from my community and from the LLS staff was overwhelming,” he recalls, “especially considering the anxiety that was gripping our country and the world.”
Sam keeps looking forward—to better lives for patients like his wife, and to the day every blood cancer has a cure.
Want to Get Involved?
If you’re looking to roll up your sleeves and show up for blood cancer patients and their families, there are plenty of ways to get started:
Your passion can help change lives. Join LLS to make it happen.