May 11, 2017
Dear American Cancer Society,
Even though I am really disgusted with you, I am going to start this letter by thanking you. For almost ten years, you gave me the life-changing experience of working at the Worcester Hope Lodge.
The first night I worked at Hope Lodge in June of 2007, I knew I had found the perfect job for me. I talked for hours with one of the guests, and made a connection with another soul – a connection that I had never experienced at any other job. Not only did Hope Lodge give me countless rewarding and inspiring times with the guests, it gave me a reason for having had brain cancer when I was 18, and enabled me to pass down the lessons I had learned during my journey through treatment and recovery.
In addition to allowing me to share in the lives of so many amazing guests, my job at Hope Lodge had the added bonus of working with some spectacular employees and volunteers. From day one my boss, Debra Aharonian, ran Hope Lodge with her passion and humor, and this energy spilled into every aspect of the Lodge. Deb and the excellent weekend staff made working at Hope Lodge seem more like friends sharing a calling of helping cancer patients, as opposed to merely showing up for a job with co-workers. We were all lucky to be part of this team, which was complemented by an array of dedicated and selfless volunteers. There were the van drivers, who took guests into Worcester and Boston each day. Niche Hospitality brought dinner over every Monday night. Unum and Abbvie came to the Lodge and made dinner twice a month. Holy Cross students visited weekly to spend time with guests. The Worcester Sharks gave Hope Lodge free tickets to any game guests wanted to attend. These, and more ACS staff and volunteers all added up to a strong team of people who would do whatever they could to help these cancer patients in need.
Unfortunately, less than two years into my work at Hope Lodge, I started to see some of your ugly side, American Cancer Society. I started to see how much you cared about money.
First, for financial reasons, you decided to cut the office assistant position at Hope Lodge. Without warning, you showed up with a box and told Jackie she was no longer needed. If this heartless action wasn’t bad enough, it added to Deb’s responsibilities and prevented her from going to hospitals and visiting with doctors to raise awareness about Hope Lodge to patients in need and assure that every room was being used. Without an assistant at the Lodge, Deb could not leave during the day to do this important part of her job, because it was required to have staff there at all times. You may have saved some money, but you weakened the Lodge and the services it provided, making it more difficult to use all of the rooms.
Not long after, I was told your then CEO John Seffrin was requiring every ACS employee to have a Relay for Life goal as part of his or her professional development. This goal was to recruit at least 6 Relay for Life team captains who each had to raise an average of $800. First of all, I wasn’t hired to raise money. I was hired to help cancer patients. Secondly, you have employees whose only job is to work Relay for Life events and raise money for the organization, in addition to staff members whose major responsibility is securing large donations outside of RFL. If raising more money was the result you wanted to see with this requirement, why not use the employees you hired to do this task, or hire more employees dedicated to fundraising? Would you ask a Relay for Life person to add a Hope Lodge-related goal to their professional development?
Even with these financial frustrations, Hope Lodge inspired me to come up with my own solution. I wanted to raise enough money to be able to get our office assistant position back, and I wanted to create something dedicated to raising money specifically for Hope Lodge (unlike Relay for Life, which raises money for the general ACS fund).
Even though it took me a long time, after selling most of my Star Wars collection, and wearing 365 t-shirts to later exchange them for donations, in 2011 I started an organization called Skating for Hope. The idea was simple and inspired by Relay for Life founder Gordy Klatt: Skate and play hockey for 24 hours straight to raise awareness and money for Hope Lodge.
I looked to you for support, American Cancer Society, but for the most part all I heard was no: You cannot use our logo, we cannot give or help you with a website. Even though this was discouraging, I was determined to make Skating for Hope a success...and thanks to a lot of support it was! The first event raised $13, 740.34 for Hope Lodge, and I was ecstatic.
Even without the Society’s support, Skating for Hope continued to organize yearly events using only volunteer workers, from the board members to event planners and coverage for the 24-hour events. SFH donated money to help with heating and Wish List items, bought new TVs for every room, and purchased a new massage chair for the Lodge – all improvements suggested by the guests.
After a few years of these successful Skating for Hope events, you really upset me, American Cancer Society.
You never really got behind Skating for Hope, but then in 2014, you started to question it and even fight me over it. I won’t go into the details of the required conference calls, threats, and letters demanding money here because it got so bad that in 2015 I wrote this 19-page letter to CEO Gary Reedy detailing the ordeal that led to an unsatisfactory employee review which my boss was forced to give me by her supervisor.
Your CEO Gary Reedy did not respond to my letter or even acknowledge receiving it, even though I sent it certified and followed up a few times with his secretary. I thought he would want to know about what was going on in the company that he was running, but apparently he had better things to do.
Even with Mr. Reedy’s non-response, I still continued fulfilling my duties at Hope Lodge and volunteering my time with Skating for Hope. I was upset with you, American Cancer Society, but I still believed in the services you provided through the Hope Lodge locations across the country.
In the fall of 2015, Debra got a new supervisor. When he read the letter that I had sent to Mr. Reedy, he brought it to the attention of the national Hope Lodge supervising staff. They called me, apologized for the behavior of other ACS staff, and told me they would “look into” the Society getting behind Skating for Hope and bringing it to other locations with nearby hockey rinks. After a few of these calls, I never heard back from these Hope Lodge supervisors. Again, ACS decided to not support Skating for Hope.
Then last year, you did the unthinkable. You decided to close the Hope Lodge programs in Worcester and Buffalo. Simply put, you did something that went against the part of your mission, “saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer”.
Even though you decided to do this in the summer of 2016, you didn’t tell me and the rest of the Hope Lodge community until November. You gave me this news through a phone call – a phone call that simultaneously laid me off and evicted me from the Hope Lodge apartment I had been living in since 2007.
When I asked when and where the idea for closing Hope Lodge had started, you wouldn’t answer me. I know how the world works, ACS. Thoughts become things. The decision to close Hope Lodge didn’t come out of thin air. I asked if it was a report, an email, or a meeting, but all you told me was that you thought it was the best decision. I wondered why you wouldn’t share where the idea of closing Hope Lodge had originated.
You told me that cancer patients in the Worcester area would be better served by the Hotel Partners Program, which is laughable to me. The biggest part of what makes Hope Lodge so valuable to the guests is being around other patients who are battling cancer. Hope Lodge provides a built-in, priceless support system in a home-like setting that a free or discounted hotel room lacks. To tell me that a free hotel room is better than Hope Lodge is to deny your mission of “diminishing suffering from cancer”.
You also gave me a “Communications Plan”, an outline of what I was supposed to tell people when they asked me about Hope Lodge closing. It stated
“Just 60 percent or five of the nine rooms at Hope Lodge are occupied each night” “Whether the room is occupied or empty, there is still an operational cost incurred by the Society, making it difficult to justify the investment of donor dollars into supporting an unused resource.”
“We have a responsibility to help as many people as we can with the resources we have.”
“The growth of our Hotel Partners Program allows the American Cancer Society to offer similar support to patients traveling to Worcester hospitals.”
“Our commitment to lessening the pain and suffering caused by cancer here in the Worcester area has not wavered.”
Some of the above statements seem contradictory to me. If the ACS has a responsibility to help as many people as possible, why wouldn’t you make it a priority to get those rooms used? To suggest the Hotel Partners Program is similar to Hope Lodge is insulting and disrespectful to the staff and volunteers who work so hard in Hope Lodge programs to assure they provide a healing, supportive, and safe environment for the guests. If you were committed to lessening the pain and suffering caused by cancer, you should do whatever it takes to keep every single Hope Lodge program open.
It was pretty obvious to me you didn’t want to keep these Hope Lodge locations open, American Cancer Society. You know if you had told the Worcester Hope Lodge community about the closings last summer, we would have rallied and done what was needed to keep the house open.
Not only did you not tell us about the decision last summer, you let us have a Hope Lodge fundraiser in October less than a month before telling us you were closing the Lodge. This event, “Comedy, Beer, and Bingo”, included securing a function room at The College of the Holy Cross, professional comedians volunteering their time, sponsors, volunteers, and donors. You still let us have the event, and cashed the check, ACS.
I found it ironic that just weeks after announcing the Hope Lodge closings, your CEO sent out “Gary’s Update: Aloha from our new Hope Lodge community in Honolulu”. Yes, you have the resources to build a brand new facility in Hawaii and send your CEO out there, but no chance of saving the programs in Worcester and Buffalo. Are your major donors okay with this? In this message, Mr. Reedy stated, “I am just so proud of everything that’s going on here.” Really, Gary? You’re proud of the decision to close two Hope Lodge programs? You’re proud the ACS makes decisions that show they care more about paying your $2 million salary* instead of keeping these buildings going? I’m surprised you also seem to care more about your salary than about assuring that cancer patients in the Worcester and Buffalo areas have Hope Lodges to stay in. What did you do to try and keep them open, if anything? I started an organization dedicated to help cancer patients like those at Hope Lodge. That’s why, even with all of this, Skating for Hope still sponsored a suite at a Bruins game for Boston Hope Lodge guests and former Worcester Hope Lodge guests this past March.
Mr. Reedy also mentioned in this message from Hawaii that the ACS is “the most relevant and powerfully impactful cancer-fighting organization in the world.”, a similar message to this later-deleted tweet you made in December of 2014 that I took a screenshot of:
For some reason, I don’t think you understand what fighting cancer is all about, ACS. This isn’t a competition. How do you measure who is “doing more” to fight cancer? Is it a dollar amount? Don’t you understand that cancer will only end when every cancer-fighting organization works together rather than competing or making tweets claiming to be “the best”? Wouldn’t the best cancer-fighting organization do whatever it could to keep every Hope Lodge program open?
I don’t care much for you right now ACS, but I will never stop caring and doing whatever I can for cancer patients. The big difference between us is that I make my decisions based on what will help them the most, not on the financial bottom line.
Oh, one more thing. I used most of my severance money to take a 2-month trip through all 48-mainland states. On the way, I visited the Hope Lodge programs in Salt Lake City and Cincinnati. Both facilities were beautiful and had amazing managers who greeted me and showed me around. However, to add more insult to injury, out of the 22 rooms at the Cincinnati location, ZERO were being used. Not only were there no guests there, no future guests were scheduled to check in until 4 days later. You’re okay with that, but not 4/5 rooms being used in Worcester? This is very confusing to me, ACS.
I know you rely heavily on volunteers, American Cancer Society, and many of those volunteers raise money for you through the Relay for Life events. I hope this letter makes you, those volunteers, and donors question where your money is going and why you weren’t able to keep these Hope Lodge locations open…something that supports your mission. Rather, you made the decision to close the programs months before announcing it, without giving those cancer-fighting communities the opportunity to do everything possible to keep those Hope Lodges open, providing their life-saving environment to patients in Worcester and Buffalo.
Are you ready to tell everyone the real reason you closed these programs? If you are so “powerfully impactful”, why weren’t you able to keep these programs open?
Sincerely,
Dave McGrath
*based on information found about former CEO John Seffrin’s salary