Known Profits
Sharing the untold stories of nonprofits in our community, making what's beneath the surface known.
Known Profits
Gilda's Club Grand Rapids | Wendy Wigger & Shawn Campbell
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In this episode, the guys sit down with Wendy Wigger, President & CEO, and Shawn Campbell, VP of Fund Development & Engagement, to dive into the impactful services Gilda’s Club Grand Rapids offers to individuals and families navigating the grief and challenges of a cancer diagnosis or the loss of a loved one. They also explore how laughter plays a vital role in healing, with a special focus on the community’s signature event, LaughFest.
Gilda’s Club Grand Rapids is a vibrant, free emotional support community for people of all ages who are dealing with cancer or grieving a death, regardless of the cause. Their inclusive programs are designed to meet people where they are, offering a wide range of social and emotional support tailored to each person’s needs.
Ready to learn more about Gilda's Club and get involved? Visit them at Gilda’s Club Grand Rapids to find out how you can be part of this incredible, life-affirming community.
Welcome to Gnome Profits. Each episode, we sit down with inspiring guests from nonprofits to share their journeys and the impactful work they're doing. We hope their stories resonate with you, sparking inspiration and excitement to get involved with a cause that speaks to you. On today's episode, we're sitting down with Wendy Wigger and Sean Campbell from Gildas Club. We're gonna dive into the incredible impact that they're having on our community, hear stories that inspire their work, and learn how laughter plays a big role in healing through their signature event, LaughFest.
SPEAKER_04If you want to support Known Profits Podcasts, you can follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, follow our socials too on Instagram at Known Profits Pod and on Facebook at Known Profits Podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to Known Profits. We are here again today. I'm with my friends Drew Myers, J.R. Roberts, and our special guests today from Gildas Club Grand Rapids, Wendy Wigger and Sean Campbell. Wendy is the president and CEO of Gildas Club, and Sean is the VP of Fund Development and Engagement. Welcome, guys. Good to see you here.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_04So we always have a question of the day. Um, it is February. Valentine's Day is right around the corner. And the question I have today is what is a guilty pleasure treat that you just can't get enough of? So a food item that you you really love that might not be the best, but it's still really good. So I'm going to kick it to Drew first. Drew, guilty pleasure treat.
SPEAKER_03So mine is ice cream. And yeah, and I recently made the decision, a little over a year ago now, to uh no longer drink alcohol. And I replaced that this summer with a whole lot of ice cream in the town that we visit most frequently in the summer. So it was the summer of ice cream at House of Flavors in Pentwater, Michigan.
SPEAKER_04Drew, if you had to pick one flavor though, like what is your go-to for?
SPEAKER_03I can never resist cookie dough. Okay. It's a good choice. Cookie dough is it. It could be a hundred flavors, and I might try something, and I always regret it that it didn't get cookie dough.
SPEAKER_04No, that's fair. I like it.
SPEAKER_03All right, Jared, what about you?
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna add one layer to Drew's. Mine is mint chocolate chip, but with a fresh waffle cone, possibly dipped in more chocolate. So it's like a recipe. Since it's guilty pleasure, gotta add extra chocolate.
SPEAKER_04Uh I'm gonna go like a really unique one. Um, and this has some childhood implications implications. But I used to, my mom made Scotcharoos. Is that a name that's familiar with you guys? So it's like peanut butter or chocolate. Yeah. Like that was a treat. I haven't had them in years, but I love them. And anytime like someone bakes them, I might eat the whole pan. So very much a guilty pleasure for me. Wendy, let's go to you. Guilty pleasure, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, guilty pleasure. I have to go with the ice cream theme. And favorite ice cream would have to be either cookies and cream or mint chip.
SPEAKER_03Okay, nice. I can sacrifice some cookie dough for cookies and cream, too. Cookies and cream is my second ice cream as well.
SPEAKER_02All right, Sean, what about you?
SPEAKER_01I'm going off to ice cream, but at $7 a cup, my guilty pleasure is my Starbucks.
SPEAKER_03$7.
SPEAKER_04What are you getting, Sean?
SPEAKER_01Just a grande skinny vanilla latte.
SPEAKER_04That is the saddest part is that price is very accurate. Uh it's a lot, uh, but no, Starbucks is delicious. Thanks guys for playing along. This is so fun. Um, also, as you're listening to this, this is the first time we've had two guests on our show. And so we're really pumped to have it have them here today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Uh Wendy and Sean, um, thanks for being here. Uh Wendy, uh, why don't you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself, but also Gildas Club of Grand Rapids uh and and how you came to be at the organization and the the mission and vision uh of the Gildas Club of Grand Rapids.
SPEAKER_00That's a mouthful. Okay, so I'll try to hit all of those things. So I've personally um I serve as president and CEO and I've been with Gildas since 2009. It's hard to believe, but time flies when you are truly having fun and working with the best team ever. Um our organization really resonates with a lot of people because we provide free emotional health support to anybody that's on a cancer journey or connected some to someone on a cancer journey, or anyone that's experiencing grief due to a death of any kind, not just cancer related. So we know one in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life. And all of us have experienced um the death of somebody at some point in our life. So we're really there to be able to provide that kind of emotional health support to the community.
SPEAKER_03Sean, how about yourself? Uh, what is your role at the organization at Guild's Club? And uh, how did you come to be at the organization?
SPEAKER_01I have the privilege of serving Gildas Club as the vice president of development. I've been there eight years, and it is interesting a bit how I came to join Gildas Club. I was familiar with them. I think people who have lived in Grand Rapids a long time know what a great reputation Gildas has and had a really good reputation for some of their events, particularly a golf outing that was in the early 2000s that was like the coveted golf outing of West Michigan. So, as a fundraising professional, I knew about the golf outing. And um I was touched by cancer in my life with some family that is out in Lowell, and we have a satellite clubhouse in Lowell. And I actually ran the Thunderware run during Laugh Fest in the March before I joined the team. But my favorite part is when Wendy did my telephone screen before I came on board, my son participated in kids' joke during Laugh Fest and had his picture taken because I'm all in Laugh Fest shirt. I'm helping support the nonprofit, I'm buying the merch. And he did his little kids' joke, and his picture was taken and started showing up on all the promo. So Wendy said, Is there anything else you need for me to know before we get off the call? And I said, That cute little guy on the cover of your Laugh Fest brochure, he belongs to me.
SPEAKER_04Not instant job, right? Totally sealed the deal.
SPEAKER_00And I had to think to myself, did we have him sign off on any photo consent form or not? But um, you know, I think I think that um in terms of the path, as Sean said, you know, we were so fortunate to be able to have someone like Sean's caliber in background join our team and grateful that she's been with us for eight years. And myself, I'm kind of a mutt mix. And so I, you know, one of the things that um we were talking on about before we came on air was just how did you find your path here? And so my background is really in health and wellness and marketing communications. So I had about 20 years, okay, I'm aging myself in the healthcare system and another five in third-party insurance. So I was always on the wellness side of health. And when I went to Gildas and I was starting to look at it, people were like, why is somebody that's been involved in disease prevention and health promotion interested in joining an organization that's focused on cancer and grief? And I think part of it is because the emotional health is the glue that helps keep us together when everything else is feeling apart, falling apart. So it really felt like home because um in reality, if there's if you can't be well internally and upstairs, then how do you be able to navigate through life, whether it's cancer, grief, or fill in the blank, whatever the disease or or challenge might be?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's really good, Wendy. Um I think so my wife's a counselor. Um, and so I get a lot of free sessions, which is great for me. But also um, I think, you know, over the past couple of years have really, really come to realize the importance of like mental health and um and also just acknowledging grief. Right. I think that's something as humans we maybe don't always think about, or we we try to be too strong uh or too strong in the moment to have to like say, hey, I need help. Uh how how easy is it for people that get connected to you guys to just let go of that, man, I have to do this myself. You provide resources. Um, but talk to me a little bit about the journeys of of people who come through Gildas Club for for research or for um for support for cancer and other diseases.
SPEAKER_01I think we recognize that the hardest thing for people to do is to walk through our signature red door at Gildas at the clubhouse. And we have had people because we are on Bridge Street, located just down from the medical mile, uh, we've had people come right from their appointment and I need help. And we've had people who've driven up and driven away, and people who've been in the car and you know, took some time to be able to make those resources because it feels real when you're coming in and you have to be prepared to deal with that. All of our support groups are led by licensed social workers, so they are available to help navigate that tough stuff and that really unknown. And then we really believe that our members, we call people who come to Gilda's Club members because Gilda Radner, our namesake, said having cancer makes you a member of a club you never asked to join or never wanted to be a part of. So we believe that our members are their experts in their own journey and that we don't let, you know, tell people how to participate at Gilda's Club. There's a it's a choose your own adventure for those of you who knew those books from back in the day. It's a some come and attend their support groups, some come and attend a social activity, um, some might attend a wellness group or a presentation that we're doing with a community partner. And people get to pick how they want to participate. And I think that helps them feel at ease when they can determine how best to use those resources. And it's different for every single person that comes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's so good. And it's so true, right? Not everyone's journey is the same. And um yeah, and we all walk through it together at the end of the day, hopefully, right? It's it's never just on one person to hold that by themselves. Um, very curious too. You mentioned Gilda Radner. Um, a lot of people might not know who that is. Um would love to just hear a little bit more about the history of her, uh, yeah, however much you want to tell us, but kind of talk to about us about the the history with her and and starting helping um get Gilda's club off the uh off the ground.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I know that people can't see us visually, but I did come from that generation where you saw Saturday Night Live only on Saturday night. There was no Netflix, there was no D VR, there wasn't even a VCR in those days for people that wonder what that might be. Um but Gilda Radner was probably one of the the key breakthrough female comics on Saturday Night Live. And um unfortunately for Gilda, she did get diagnosed, actually misdiagnosed for a very long time, and um died of her cancer diagnosis at a very early age in her early 40s. And at that time, uh her husband, Gene Wilder, the real original Willy Wonk of the Willy Wonk and the Chocolate Factory, um, Gene Wilder and uh Joanna Bull, which was her cancer therapist, together started the first Gildas Club in New York. And Gilda's Club Grand Rapids came along about 12 years later. Um, or I'm sure, sorry, not 12 years later. We came in as the 12th club that was open. Um, and the way we came to be was really there were three breast cancer survivors that had seen the conversation of Gene Wilder and Joanna Bull on the Today Show and felt like, you know what, we need like something like that here. And with their leadership and the community support, uh, we opened our doors for the first time in February of 2001.
SPEAKER_03How many folks do you then serve? How many members come into your facility on an annual basis? Uh, and what does the staff look like that's working with these folks?
SPEAKER_01We have a small and mighty staff of 24 full and part-time people, um, the majority of them being those social workers who are kind of the front line of the folks who are coming in. Uh, as we finished up last year, it looked to be about 6,000 unique individuals served through our services. That includes people coming to our clubhouse on Bridge Street, out at our satellite clubhouse in Lowell, and then we have some in-community programs as well. And we have a program in the schools called Tough Stuff, where we're helping elementary age kids get some additional tools for their toolbox on how to deal with emotional wellness. So the culmination of you know, all of those programs leads to about that many folks served.
SPEAKER_00With uh the school program. So we opened our doors in 2001, and about 2003, we started to have more and more people coming to Gildas Club looking for emotional health support, not just for adults, but for the youth. And as that program continued to grow, uh, we started to recognize that there was a lot of need and opportunity to partner with schools to be able to give kids some great skill sets and tools on how to deal with the tough stuff in life. So our school program is called Tough Stuff. It's largely targeted towards the fifth graders, but we do have activities and programs that we do for middle school and high school, sometimes support groups that we might do at a on a campus as well. And it's designed to really give, again, kids healthy ways to be able to navigate if it's a my family moved, my parents got divorced, um, we might get deported, uh, my dog has died, grandma. It doesn't have to be cancer or grief related. And we started to do that uh several, several years ago and have just continued to be able to grow that program and see what a difference it's made, not only just for the kids, but for the teachers as well. So they're able to start to see and hear the stories of, you know, if Johnny is acting out, is it because he just wants to be disruptive in class, or is it because there's a lot more going on behind that behavior? So that's something that we feel really um has been an extended part of our mission and something that we really enjoy being able to bring to the community.
SPEAKER_02One question that sits on my mind, um, especially reflecting I have a really close friend um saying in our wedding, and we just uh went to his wife's funeral the other day. Um, and the question that's on my mind is I think of others that maybe have close friends that are going through this journey or have just lost a loved one. Are there other chapters across the country? Um, or I think specifically like in Chicago, very close to here, are there chapters in the suburbs, just the city? You mentioned a virtual option. Um just kind of curious of how to refer people outside of Grand Rapids.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great question. And I know when I mentioned that the first one was opened up in New York City, uh, the first Gildas Club, and we were like a 12th organization to open up. We are part of a national affiliation called Cancer Support Community. So there are over 45 plus organizations across the country. One is in Chicago, um, and they're either called Gildas Clubs or they're called Cancer Support Community. But we are all independently owned and operated. So the funds that are raised here stays here to serve our community, our grand community here. Um, and I think one of the things that's unique about Gildas Club Grand Rapids is that we are the only organization that provides emotional health support to anyone that has had a death in their life due to any cause, not just cancer related. So that is a unicorn in the best way possible. Um, I think it is unique to our mission. And um, so that's something that you might not find at other cancer support communities or guildas club. But if you were to go to cancer supportcommunity.org, you could actually look at a map and look at the states and see if there is an organization nearby you.
SPEAKER_02Tell me a moment um in your time. You both have been with Gildas Club for a while now. So share a moment where you just stopped and said, this is why I do it.
SPEAKER_01Having been at Gildas Club for as long as I have, there's been many moments. So it's hard to pinpoint one. And instead of thinking of stopping and feeling like this just happened last week, I have to go back to one that was very early on for me. As part of our onboarding process, um, we have the opportunity to sit in on some of these support groups and really, as new staff, understand what's going on at Gildas Club. And prior to joining Gildas Club, I worked for a decade for the Alzheimer's Association. And I had somebody who was a top fundraiser for our walk, um, just very engaged with us there. And I knew her, you know, at a very surface level. And when I went into one of our support groups, she was supporting her dad who had Alzheimer's disease. And then I went to one of those support groups and she was in there. And it was like, oh my goodness, she was uh dealing with her own cancer diagnosis, but also helping a dad navigate an Alzheimer's journey. And I I think at that moment, I, you know, she pulled me aside at the end and she's like, I'm so excited to see you here at my other nonprofit, you know. And it was just so unexpecting to run into her and then just feeling like I'm so glad she's taken care of at Gilda's in a way that we were also taking care of her at my previous organization, too.
SPEAKER_00And I'd have to kind of tag team with Sean a little bit on an early memory. I mean, there are so many in the time that we've been there, but also in that orientation session, because we do uh have employees get involved and really get to learn the mission from the inside out and to know what it is to be able to walk in uh to a support group or to an activity. I happen to join what's called sit and be fit. It's an exercise class. First of all, I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake because I figured, well, I run and I do all these things. I was sweating, let me tell you. And there was a young woman next to me, and she said, Are you new here? And I was a new employee, but I didn't have a name tag on. And I said, Yeah, I'm new. And she goes, She told me her name, I told her mine. And she said, So, um what kind of cancer do you have? And it just hit me in that moment that it's like people that are going through cancer or grief, uh, it's not always visible. If you broke your arm or if you, you know, had an injury, sometimes it's physical and sometimes it's internal. And for me, that was such an eye-opener to recognize that she assumed I was there for either cancer in that case, or if I was there for a grief situation. And I realized, wow, you know, there is so much that is going on with the people that are coming through the door that we may or may not even be able to recognize and see on the surface, but thank goodness we're there to be able to help them navigate this journey together wherever they are in their spot. That would be probably one of the things. So, and then we could probably mention one just from last week if we needed to, but I think that one is the one that really hits.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. How how are people um finding you? Do you have referrals from healthcare systems, uh, family friends? Um where where do most of your members um how how do they find their way to Gildas Club?
SPEAKER_00Great question. Um so the biggest is family and friends. We can put all the great information out in the healthcare systems, and they do a beautiful job of helping to connect people uh to our free services. I don't know if we even mentioned that at all, but everything that we do provide is free of charge to the people that come there. Um and so family and friends are probably our greatest referral. Um, physicians, the healthcare system, and and then of course, we try to do things that might be somewhat innovative and different to get people to hear about guild is club because we have a mission that nobody wants to think about, because who wants to think about cancer or grief, right? So we have this little thing and we're gonna be celebrating our 15 years, um, and that's called Guild is Laugh Fest. And so in 2011, our first opportunity to kind of bring that out in a hidden fashion, people wondered why all these yellow smiles were popping up. Um, we boldly took on something that um we were probably great to be naive about in launching in 2011 because we had no idea. That is not our core business. Um, but with Gilda's Laugh Fests, it's been helpful for us to raise visibility of who we are and what we do.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's I I love that. And and obviously Laugh Fest has continued to grow. Um would love to just even hear more about it. Um where is it from 2011 to now? How have you guys seen it grow? And um yeah, just I would love to hear more about Laugh Fest.
SPEAKER_01So LaughFest was created in that 2011 as a way to celebrate Gilda's club's 10th anniversary. Um, so and you know, it's been a wild ride. We've had the opportunity. To meet really great artists. We've had the opportunity to connect conversations when people might not want to have them. We we often say if we can get people to laugh, we can get them to listen. So it's a a great way to meet new people and introduce them to the mission. After the pandemic, though, we we started that as 10 days. That festival was 10 days long, and that was for 10 years of Guild's Club. So, you know, that pandemic happened right in the second weekend of ours in March and just really taught us a lot of lessons. So when we came out of that and did a virtual laugh fest and then came back in um 2022, we brought it down to five days and um really still are delivering that festival for Grand Rapids in many forms with stand-up, sketch comedy. We have a Friday morning during the festival, we will be hosting Laugh R X, which is our continuing ed credits for nurses and social workers. We even threw in EMT last year as well to really have that serious behind the funny and know that people we want to be able to teach these things and bring good deliveries for folks for continuing ed so we can all help people's emotional wellness. So we're looking forward to the festival this year. It's gonna be March 5 through 9.
SPEAKER_03What what a unique idea that your primary line of work is helping folks in some of the most challenging parts of their life, the saddest parts of their lives that they're grieving. And the way you raise awareness of that is through laughter and joy, and just a reminder that in life you go through all seasons of of of joy, of happiness, but also grief and sorrow, and that all of those emotions are normal and okay. And I just find that fascinating that that you have that uh the the way that you are raising awareness is through with with joy in times of in times of grief. It's it's uh wonderful.
SPEAKER_00I am so grateful that you called that out because Gilda Randner herself, if you read her book called It's Always Something, or if you see her documentary called Love Gilda, she does talk about losing her funny and losing her smile. And it was when she came back into a community that understood what it was like to be going through a cancer journey that she was able to bring her smile and find her smile and laughter back. And she's like, Cancer's so unfunny, it needed somebody like Gilda Radner to make people laugh. And she embraced that. And I think that's that has really been important. And at Gilda's Club itself, there is something so beautiful and magical that happens when you bring together people that are navigating life's tough stuff together, be it cancer, be it grief, be it somebody that's connected to cancer, because our services are are for um children, adults, families, and friends, anybody that's on that journey, that there is just this opportunity to uh be able to be normal, so to speak, to be able to have somebody say, How's your day? And to be able to say, you know what, today really stinks. Today's really tough. And at Gildas Club, if you um ever come here to do a tour at 1806 Bread Street Northwest, that's your invitation. Anytime, Sean and I will take you on a tour. Every support group, every room, you will see Kleenex boxes, to be sure. But you walk through and you will hear as much laughter as you might hear tears. Because we do embrace the whole spectrum of joy and sorrow. And there's a Swedish proverb, and I'm not going to get it exactly right, but it goes something like this that it's um joy share is doubled and sorrow shared is halved. And I think there's something really beautiful about that community.
SPEAKER_03Your story even maybe you can tell I'm welling up a little bit because you remind me of a very close friend I had uh many years ago, um, Chuck Breen, a uh a very um giving person, and he gave everything of himself. He was a band teacher, and then he decided to go to seminary and he worked for nonprofits nearly full-time while going back to school full-time, and he was diagnosed uh with stage four skin cancer and only lived a few months after that. And I remember visiting him in the hospital. I just moved away, actually. I remember coming home and visiting him and just being uh in awe of the joy that he had for life. And it's just such a reminder that the giving to other people um brought him so much joy because he gave so much. And while all of us around him were were grieving deeply, he had a a sense of joy that was was brought to the rest of us. And um I think about that moment often. So thank you for sharing that story.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I think too, just the reminder of we've talked about this, I think, on this podcast before, but again, the ability to hold grief and joy, right? Like you the you can you can hold both in in two hands. And um again, we yeah, we don't have to pretend that everything is fine and we don't have to stay in a rut, but there's there's space for both, right? And I think I don't know, it feels like as humans sometimes we have a hard time remembering that. And again, when we have a community of people who surround us and lift us up and we could laugh in a group or we can we can just weep in a group, um, there's a lot of freedom in that, right? And there's a lot of healing in that. And so yeah, just just so grateful for for you guys and and what you continue to do for our community and so many people who who live here. Um yeah. Do I do have a question about um a volunteering? Um, whether that is at LaughFest, outside of Laugh Fest, how can people get involved in volunteering and getting plugged into what you guys do?
SPEAKER_01That is such a great question because we wouldn't be able to deliver our program without our army of volunteers.
SPEAKER_04It's only five days, Sean. I know. Only five days.
SPEAKER_01No, I just mean in general, our guild's club program, we are fully supported by an army of volunteers from sometimes when that person walks in that door for the first time, the they're greeted by a volunteer. Our parlor desk has regular volunteers that are our warm and welcoming face and an extension of our staff. Uh, we serve meals several days a week before our evening programs is a way to create community around the table in a different um setting for people to connect. And those are usually driven by volunteers in the kitchen helping our kitchen coordinator, whether those are individuals who have a particular day they come every day to help or every week to help, or if it's a company that's coming in for a corporate engagement, uh we have office volunteers. So we we couldn't do what we do without them. 24 full and part-time staff and six acres, um, beautiful place that needs a lot of groundwork and folks that come out and help us with spring and fall cleanup there as well. And then when you look at that festival, we'll probably use about 300 volunteers over the course of the five days. And we are recruiting those, and all of our volunteer opportunities can be found on either website, uh guildasclubgr.org or laughsgr.org.
SPEAKER_02Well, I have one unrelated question, but this one's for you, Wendy. A question I was thinking about as it pertains to those stepping into leadership roles and nonprofits, but what's one piece of advice that you would give someone new in leadership that's moving into maybe a CEO role or a C-suite role in a nonprofit?
SPEAKER_00Pray. No, I say it with a smile, but I think um I think everybody's journey is a little bit different. I honestly um feel so fortunate to have been provided the opportunity to step in this position because it was not an intentional career path for me. And um I think the biggest thing is to surround yourself with incredible people that complement your um strengths and weaknesses, um, let good people do what they're best at and get out of their way. And um, and then find out, you know, just really what they do need and don't need from you as a a leader overall. Um I think the other thing is very important is taking a look at your board of directors and you know, what do they bring to the table? We're very purposeful on an annual basis of looking at doing a self-assessment with a board, skill set, um, interest, talents, uh demographics, um, all of those elements, and then we look at what are we missing and how do we go back and and begin to strategically recruit people that can be those thought partners in terms of where we need to take the organization, what we need to do. Um, but I hope that answers your question.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I love that too. When I just there's a lot of maturity too in saying like we need people in the room that might disagree or who might like be different, right? I think it's really easy to to surround yourself with people that um are very like, yeah, we'll do that, we'll do that, we'll do that. But like I we need to be better, right? We need to get better and we don't do that without that open communication. So it's some really good insight right there.
SPEAKER_03And it's evident too how uh I I wish we had this one on camera because it's evident how how close the the relationship the two of you have. And I can only imagine that excitement, enthusiasm, um, camaraderie uh and energy um then translates down to your your organization uh and your volunteers and your staff. So um your your energy is electric, and it's so exciting to see you all um bring that kind of energy to our community, um, bringing us joy, helping us in our times of grief and helping our community in in so many ways. So thank you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04Um and yeah, as we kind of wrap things up here, Wendy and Sean, and any last things you want to say to our listeners? We want to kind of we always try to leave a little bit of space at the end too. If we missed anything, we cover a lot. Um anything you want to say as we kind of close the timeout here?
SPEAKER_01I think Wendy hit it, but we are available for people to stop by, check us out. If this peaked an interest, we'd love to meet whether it's somebody who's looking for a volunteer opportunity or someone who's looking for services. And if you know somebody who is in the thick of either a cancer journey or grief journey, to let them know that you've heard this and share that word of mouth that we said is the best way. And there's no um, there's no timeline. I think that's the most important part too. It's your timeline. So when it's best to connect. Uh, sometimes people say, I've been telling so-and-so forever to connect with guilds. It, you know, it could take one day or it could take six months, but we're still there. And um, you know, with those numbers that Wendy shared about people affected by cancer and grief, uh, we're gonna be here to serve them and continue that work that we do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think you said it so eloquently, Sean. I think that is, you know, really key in terms of we're not as scary as it sounds, right? Cancer grief. It sounds pretty depressing, it sounds pretty scary. But the comment I hear most is when people walk through that signature red door, is wow, it's not what I thought it was going to be. And when you say, Okay, what were you expecting? They said, I don't know. It's warm and it's welcoming. And I think that is part of the key for what we try to provide to the community. We're not trying to do things to you or for you, but with you. And it's at whatever level that you're looking. And I want to um it looks like you have something else to add, Sean. Yeah, we we do tag team a lot here. So let me give uh give Sean a chance to talk.
SPEAKER_01No, I just was thinking about your reach and how you guys had prep prefaced this all. And um just knowing too, one of the things Wendy and I didn't talk about, and I just want to say briefly, is we do have since the pandemic a virtual platform. So if there are listeners that are not here in West Michigan, um, we welcome you and you can check out that. And I we've referred people and we've had people who are getting treatment that are from Grand Rapids, but might be um, you know, visiting another place that have come in and or they live in another area and they've been able to tap in.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, that's great. Thank you guys for sharing that. And yeah, we just hear uh known profits want to reiterate uh what Shauna when you just said if you are going through a cancer journey, know someone who's going through a cancer journey or um uh just any kind of illness or or grief, yeah, don't don't wait or uh think about sharing it, think about not doing it alone. Um, because you don't have to. There's a there's a big community out there of people who who want to talk to you, who who love you, and um yeah, that's our big pulley here today. Like, yeah, just just look for that community and it's it's out there.
SPEAKER_00So and we want to just say thank you to you folks for giving nonprofits a voice and an opportunity to share because it's it's um not always something that's easy to do or um being able to be able to communicate who we are and what we do. And this platform is awesome. So thank you so much for the invitation.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. We have fun doing it too. Yeah, it's a good time. Yeah. Well, thank you guys. We'll have more information on our website uh to get plugged into Guildas Club. Um and yeah, we'd love to see you over there and checking out their space.