National Breast Cancer Foundation

The National Breast Cancer Foundation was founded in 1991 by breast cancer survivor, Janelle Hail. NBCF's mission is to help women now by providing help and inspiring hope to those affected by breast cancer through early detection, education and support services.

Our vision is that no one will navigate breast cancer alone.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Expanding access to care across the U.S. by advancing early detection and patient navigation services, educating, and empowering more women about breast health, and expanding support services.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Two: Protecting and retaining partnerships while diversifying donor engagement revenue streams to maximize multiple lines of support for the sustainability of the organization

Goal Type: Invest in the capacity of our organization (financial, management, technical, etc.).

Goal Three: Increase brand trust by delivering consistently strong content through powerful storytelling, with a focus on engaging our community of patients and survivors in the ways most meaningful to them.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Describe an investment in leadership

NBCF cares about our employee’s success within the organization and invests in both formal and informal leadership opportunities. We give each employee opportunities to grow in their professional development through various resources such as utilizing LinkedIn Learning’s online courses and assigned training on various topics such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) and manager skills for all type of levels. We offer an advisory program for our coordinators and interns to learn from mid to upper-level leaders with 1:1 relationship. Another investment is periodic training sessions offered from community leaders and advisory council members so employees can benefit from various skill sets and industry knowledge. Finally, we are continuously offering breast cancer training to learn more about the state of breast cancer care from our medical advisory council, so all staff is as up to date as possible with current information to share with patients, partners, and donors.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

The problem of breast cancer is larger than any one organization. That’s why NBCF engages in strategic partnerships with other breast cancer nonprofits, hospitals, patient advocacy groups, governmental entities, and businesses. To deliver clinical services, NBCF partners with some of the top cancer hospitals and evidence-based care providers in communities across the U.S. In some cases, NBCF partners with State Health Departments to ensure the most impactful reach. Over the last decade, NBCF has built strategic partnership with organizations like Academy of Oncology Nurse Navigators, Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, Breast Cancer Clinical Trials, American Cancer Society, C-Change, Convoy of Hope, Nurse.com, and dozens of other organizations. These partnership lead to lives saved through early detection and increased access to quality care for underserved patients. Through cause marketing and media partnerships, NBCF has spread its message of early detection to millions across the country.

NBCF adapted to the past year in 3 major areas: 1) leaning into virtual and videoconferencing technology to continue offering critical services to patients, 2) re-directing our strategy within partner and donor engagement to focus on industries that were not hurt by the pandemic, while working to retain those who were, and 3) taking care of the needs of our staff and team to ensure each role was supported and maximized based on the shifting landscape, resulting in a lower than 5% turnover rate. Due to prior efforts to enhance our remote and videoconferencing capabilities, NBCF was ready to quickly shift to virtual program offerings. We hosted the first ever virtual metastatic retreat, educated tens of thousands via our Navigating Breast Cancer in the Workplace virtual program, and offered our support groups to support isolated patients. NBCF also surveyed our hospital partners, listened, and responded to their needs. Our continued funding of patient navigators prevented staff furloughs and significant lapses in navigation services. The funds normally used to host outreach events were reallocated to our Patient Relief Fund, which offered low-income breast cancer patients funds for food, groceries, transportation, and childcare, all proven barriers to health equity. We also increased our screening funding to help meet the growing demand by patients facing job and health insurance loss. Our donor plans shifted with many of our corporate partners, and we focused our outreach on industries who were less affected to help raise support for the year. We also were selected by another breast cancer charity for their large Legacy Grant as they were having to close their doors and were looking for the right trusted partner to continue their work. We were able to take advantage of the Payroll Protection Program that was the gap of support to bridge us over the past year and helped us to maintain our program services throughout the pandemic.