We began in 2010 as a way to celebrate my five year cancerversary. I won a fantastic life grant from Cameron Siemers Foundation for Hope to hold an amazing fundraiser concert to try to start this nonprofit. This is a massive deal as many times the nonprofit world is highly competitive as grant funding and donors are limited, but Cameron fought for my life grant goal and I produced the coolest concert, where no one showed up. 

I had over a hundred themed baskets with autographs from everyone from JK Rowling *2010 Rowling when this was highly valuable to everyone* to several cast members of Lost to Chester Bennington (:_( ) and every theme I could possibly devise. I spent months working on the event and when the day arrived we sold less than 10 tickets. We ended up driving around giving away free pizza at the local college after. This was the first of many failed fundraisers, as I was planning on splitting all the proceeds with 4 charities with 4 baskets dedicated to the young adult charities I chose. I ended up making zero money after expenses, not wanting the charities to be empty handed, I ended up winning one basket at opening bid and donating $20 each to the other 3 charities on my own. I took me another 8 months of hard work and struggle to recover enough to start this nonprofit- my original life grant goal.

On July 4th, 2011 we were finally able to file our articles of incorporation and apply to become a formal nonprofit. *-Our documentation area is now housed here on our own server. -* All the while I was working on the next annual benefit with the hope that the denied donations that were promised if tax deductibility existed would actually be applied. Our second benefit was half in person and half online. The online portion was relatively successful on eBay earning us our first ever $500 scholarship amount. The in person portion, once again, was not successful. This began a trend to prefer online fundraisers even if they were also not very successful.

Long Story short, every September we have an online benefit of some sort- usually themed baskets at auction. Most are not horribly successful if proper accounting is applied. However, all help us reach a few more people and every year we are able to help more. In 2023, we have awarded two Kairi Love Caregiver grants and we are excited to see how many more people we are able to help!

We have been doing this for over 13 years now and we have a lot of connections to show for it. We have lost some really great supporters and winners in our history but every day that this site and nonprofit exist we are fighting to make the world a more magical place and strive to help young adult survivors find their footing in their artistic journey.

It is absolutely wild to me that in our time as a nonprofit there has been little to no change in the funding, research, and support for young adults. While we do not have our basis in research and funding we have always been very active in YA support. Offering a scholarship to YA survivors from inception, with the grant following a few years later, an online community available through both Facebook and extensive resources available on the Jetty’s Brain Book site, I have always tried to be as active as possible in this fight for representation and awareness. Even though I have shouted it from the roof tops for over 18 years, even those closest to me probably underestimate how little YA numbers are changing but even worse how GBM is completely stagnant.