249. How a Sister’s Enduring Promise Launched a Global Movement + The Next Promise Kept - Nancy Brinker

Mission StoryLeadership

Mar 28

Written By Julie Confer

Nancy Brinker, The Promise Fund of Florida, Komen for the Cure, We Are For Good Podcast

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Overview

Meet Nancy💗⚔️. She made a promise to her sister, and that promise set off one of philanthropy's most powerful movements you know and love today. She's the founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and dedicated her life to ridding the world of breast cancer in honor of her sister Suzy. “I promised my sister I’d do everything I could to stop the heartless progression and social stigma of this disease, even if it took the rest of my life. And it has.” She's talking about the love of family, founding Komen, and that promise to her new organization - The Promise Fund of Florida - filling healthcare gaps for Palm Beach County citizens and reducing the number of deaths due to late-stage breast and cervical cancer. 🎧Join us for a powerful conversation with one of the biggest dreamers we've interviewed yet.

💡Learn:

Founding story of Susan G. Komen for the Cure 👚🏃‍♀️🎗
How a movement was built pre-social media 🤯
State of women's health in the U.S. today 👩‍🔬🧕👵🌡
Overview of the Promise Fund 🙏

Today’s Guest

Nancy Brinker
Co-Founder, The Promise Fund of Florida
Founder, Susan G. Komen for the Cure

“About three o’clock in the morning I woke up, and I saw my sister and her friends dressed in pink, carrying swords and running towards something.”

— Nancy Brinker Founder, The Promise Fund and Susan G. Komen for the Cure

Episode Transcript

Download Full Episode Transcript Here

Episode highlights

Nancy’s story and journey to where she is today (5:00)
The founding story of Susan G. Komen for the Cure (9:45)
The mission of The Promise Fund of Florida (24:00)
The framework Nancy is building at The Promise Fund of Florida (34:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Nancy’s life (43:00)
Nancy’s One Good Thing: No means maybe. (44:00)

powerful quotes

“That circumstance in my life, when I was so young, really, truly made me realize how much fun it was to create something to make someone's life better. That's all I wanted to make other people's lives better.” -Nancy

“Nothing worth doing is ever easy.” -Nancy

“About three o'clock in the morning, I woke up. And I saw my sister and her friends dressed in pink, carrying swords and running towards something.” -Nancy

“They were running towards something, they were trying to get rid of something and go towards something better.” -Nancy

“Because remember, in those days, you couldn't use the word breast in print, TV or radio, no public media, and you really weren't supposed to use the word breast in public, it was kind of taboo.” -Nancy

“We're dealing here with a disease that's exploding in size as women age, obviously. And nobody knows what's causing it. And nobody can talk about it because we can't use the word breast. So what am I supposed to do?” -Nancy

“When those cars started coming towards the parking lot on the race site, I knew we had something. I knew we had something that could communicate and translate and grow.” -Nancy

“You have to be very careful when you grow something, because you have to know how much it's going to cost. And when it becomes too expensive, it no longer can function. So you've got to be prepared to change to adapt to the current environment, whatever it is.” -Nancy

“We funded over a billion and a half dollars of basic science and research, most of which is responsible for the new drugs that are out today. Whether they're in immunology, whether they're in advanced, whether they're in genetics, whatever it is screening, we provide a lot of grants for the scientists to produce these kinds of products. And then we gave over $2.2 billion to communities all over the world so that they could do screening programs, they could have these affiliate groups who were also raising money to be used in their hometown.” -Nancy

“It took me a while to really look around and see and realize we had to do something that was much more granular. It wasn't enough to do an event and give money, we had to change the system.” -Nancy

“I realized and said to myself, the only way we're going to ever get around our hands around this problem is by promising our community that we will erase this problem. And it won't be based on necessarily event-based, but it will be based on consciousness-raising, everybody will want to do something because everybody involved in this is living here.” -Nancy

“We are not building a national charity, we're building a model that works and can overcome the people running it in this whatever area this happens in replication issues, different issues that occur in communities because people can solve those a lot faster than with a government, a large government program.” -Nancy

“think about what if Nancy would have gone back to bed and thought that that was just a dream of pink swords?” -Becky

“And this is how you revolutionize mission work. You take what you know, what you learn, and you share it, because we all want to accelerate faster, we want to get rid of these diseases.” -Becky

“I pity the poor fool who challenges when Nancy makes a promise.” -Jon

“Start with the end in mind.” -Nancy

“Tap into people's desires and watch them carefully you'll figure out something that tweaks their mind that the tweaks they're giving side.” -Nancy

“Never take no without the maybe And then maybe means that maybe if you tweak it, maybe if you do it a little differently because something gave you a good idea someone gave you or something touched your heart, listen to your heart and no means maybe.” -Nancy

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