Cancer Cartel: Funding the Fight Against Cancer Through Fashion
Shelly, Kerry & Katy
“While in the fight of your life, you should be able to focus 100% on getting well—NOT on how much money cancer is costing you.”
—Cancer Cartel
I first heard about Cancer Cartel when they sent me a DM on Instagram back in April last year. They asked if I would feature them in one of my #fridaymatters posts.
There are many initiatives to fight cancer. But this one…involved fashion? Their hashtag read #fashionfundsthefight. I was completely intrigued.
As I learned, Cancer Cartel is a nonprofit foundation spearheaded by three amazing, beautiful women, all of whom are cancer survivors themselves. Kerry Solmonsen and Shelly Tinney-Miller survived breast, skin, and thyroid cancer, while Katy Tinney faced non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Shelly and Katy are sisters, and Kerry is their best friend.
These three women are both the founders as well as the face of their foundation. And their energy, passion, and joy for life is incredible! And equally so is the business sense with which they’ve rolled their nonprofit out!
A unique idea
They realized there was one aspect to the realm of funding support against cancer that had been overlooked: When you undergo treatment, suddenly everything else about the cost of your life goes up too. But funding has most often been for research or covering treatment.
They took this insight and combined it with their love for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle, and Cancer Cartel was born: a nonprofit which raises money through the resale of luxury fashion items to provide financial relief to cancer patients for the cost of living!
The money is meant to help with expenses of real life apart from treatment. This could be anything. Parking fees for all those trips to the hospital. Groceries. Bills. Car payments, mortgage payments. Even a birthday gift for a child, when families are forced to forego other family expenses in order to shoulder urgent medical costs.
How it works
What a creative approach and what a sharp insight! They’ve already given away $80K dollars since they began in 2019, but they’re determined to become able to give away $11M a year. Here’s how they’ve worked so far:
Their basic fundraising model is having luxury items that are new or otherwise in very good condition donated to them. Then then they resell these on their website. When COVID restrictions ease up sufficiently, they’ll also resume selling at live events. The full 100% of the proceeds go to current cancer patients.
They’ve also formed partnerships with brands, where a portion of proceeds go towards the nonprofit’s mission. Their most recent, high-profile one was with global platforms FashWire and GlossWire, which donated $1 to Cancer Cartel for every download of these apps.
The team also sells their own Cancer Cartel branded clothing and accessories on their website. This provides a third, and growing, source of revenue.
And, of course, they welcome cash support too! These can be through monthly pledges or one-time donations.
How to get involved
As individuals, you can get involved through providing a luxury item for resale, purchasing Cancer Cartel branded goods, or straight up contributing cash. If you go check your closets, you may find a designer item—handbags, clothes, shoes, accessories, jewelry—that you might be ready to part with to bring relief to someone struggling with cancer.
I started with my first donation of a luxury bag via a live auction that my friend Elan Bongiorno (@beautybyelan) did for Cancer Cartel. After that, I donated 100% proceeds of my own sale of clothing items, which I did via my Instagram stories. I also continue to make a small monthly donation.
Hollywood celebrities have lent a hand to their project, too! Eva Longoria and Ellen DeGeneres have donated, and Drew Barrymore featured the founding trio on her show, which lent them a much-deserved boost.
I just love the concept of #fashionfundsthefight against cancer. And earlier this year, with the inclusion of beauty items, they added #beautyfundsthefight!
I am just really drawn to the mission by these three amazing women to help alleviate the financial burden of people battling cancer. These women bring themselves so fully to their mission, you really can’t help but be drawn in. They have a passion for giving. And watching their calls with beneficiaries, you can see the way they connect with them is so valuable. (And they’re also doing all this on top of day jobs and raising kids!)
When I decided to write about Cancer Cartel on my blog this month, I hadn’t realized that June also happens to be Cancer Survivor Awareness Month! So, ladies, let’s team up to fund the fight, and as Cancer Cartel declares, clean up the cost of cancer by cleaning out the closet!
Visit www.cancercartel.com to make your contribution today.
Then check out Cancer Cartel on Instagram (@cancercartel) for survivor stories, quotes to inspire strength, and the latest news of how their beautiful work is growing.
(Just to note: Although pink might be the most prominent element of their visual branding, the nonprofit neither focuses solely on breast cancer nor women with cancer. They extend support to patients of all genders and all ages. All that’s important is, if a patient finds themselves struggling with their finances because of cancer, they want to help!)