Kernls, a New York-based online giving platform that matches motivated donors with researchers that need funding, announced today it has forged a partnership with The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation (The PMCF), the fundraising arm for University Health Network’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, one of the world’s top five cancer centers, to empower those who have been touched by cancer to drive progress towards a cure.
The Kernls platform showcases various in-flight medical research projects from world-renowned institutions, and invites donors to support the projects and teams by donating directly to the project, or by ‘championing’ a project and soliciting donations from their own network.
Specifically, The PMCF will leverage Kernls as a new way to reach a broader and younger donor base for promising cancer research such as a study on the potential of slowing tumor growth in pancreatic cancer by cutting off cell communications, led by Dr. Armand Keating within the Cell Therapy Translational Research Laboratory at University Health Network. This project has already raised more than half of its $60,000 fundraising goal through the platform.
According to Meaghan Stovel McKnight, Chief Operations Officer of The PMCF, the Kernls partnership is part of a larger strategy to diversify fundraising sources beyond its traditional geographic and demographic boundaries: “Eighty-five percent of donations to The Princess Margaret research projects through the Kernls platform are coming from outside of Canada, with donors increasingly skewing younger. We are excited to further this reach and increase engagement with Millennials and GenX professionals.”
The Princess Margaret is one of a growing number of esteemed university research institutions who have started working with Kernls in the past year, including the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Kernls Founder Driven by Personal Tragedy and Search for Cure
Kernls founder and CEO Mike Haughton, who lost both his parents to cancer, was inspired to create the company by his own personal frustration trying to fund research that might help others avoid his family’s tragic outcome.
“After losing both my mom and dad to cancer, I looked for ways to make a personal connection with researchers who were working to develop cures and treatments and found a pretty big gap,” explained Haughton. “It can be challenging to easily identify and directly fund specific, current research projects -- and maintain meaningful communications about progress being made. I created Kernls as a solution for both donors and researchers that uses technology to bring greater efficiency and transparency to the process.”
About Kernls
Kernls is a giving platform that matches motivated donors -- often people who have firsthand experience with an illness -- with researchers that need funding. Based in New York City and aligned with world class institutions such as Toronto’s University Health Network, University of Southern California, Cornell University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Kernls provides the only way to allow donors to connect directly with medical researchers to see and share the impact of their work. Kernls pairs researchers with motivated donors, which it calls “Champions,” who drive awareness and giving by sharing the projects with their network and/or matching donations.