How Did I Get Into Fundraising?

How Did I Get Into Fundraising?

By Lindsay Jordan

I always wanted to be a writer. I wrote my first book in 2nd grade. It was called "The Whole Note" and I couldn't really spell many words so it was mostly a picture book about a sad little half-note who wanted to be whole (I am also part of a very musical family). The love of writing stuck with me and was nurtured by my family, particularly my mother, a court reporter, who is a stickler for proper grammar, spelling, and expanding one's lexicon to the max.

But "writing" is a big field of opportunity. Mathematicians write. Politicians write. Movie directors write. What did I want to write? Before I had the opportunity to give it much thought, I was 18, graduating high school, in love, and moving across the country to start my own life. Kind of.

Within a year of a youthful marriage, it was clear to both of us that we were playing house and failed to recognize or appreciate the depth and maturity required for a forever-coupling. At 19, I proposed we cut our losses and head our separate ways. He agreed. 

In the state of Tennessee, you have to wait one month from the date you file for a divorce to the day it can be granted by the judge. My guess was this is for people who work it out and decide to give it another go. In our 30-day waiting period, Jason, my requited husband, had a check-up at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which is where we originally met. My little brother, John, had childhood cancer, and my family would travel up and down I-40 from Poteau, Oklahoma to Memphis, Tennessee for his treatments. It was during one of these visits in a hospital room that I met Jason, who had been diagnosed as a teenager and who also traveled back and forth with his family.  And it was in a hospital room where Jason received news that would change both of our lives: he had relapsed.

Now, I had a decision to make. Jason told me I could go. We had already agreed on it. In my mind, I could envision two paths. One would take me right back to college, where I felt like I had detoured from and was expected to be. The other would take me to a hospital, where I didn’t know what would happen. I had a sense that my decision would define what kind of person I was, or would be, and I decided flatly that I did not want to be the type of person who would leave. So I stayed. 

Jason and I lived in Memphis for the next three years where we underwent chemotherapies, radiation therapies, and stem cell therapies, and where we fought off fungal infections, complications, pain killer addiction, malnutrition, and deep isolation. We were no longer partners in a marital sense; I was his caregiver, and he was everyone’s very reluctant patient.

In case you aren’t familiar, most cancer advertisements lie. Cancer is portrayed as this thing that is sad but, with a choir of champions at your back, you will overcome. The images are full of cheering, happy people beating cancer, ringing bells, and living life. The reality of cancer treatment is not that.

There were days when Jason begged to die. There were doctors who wouldn’t let him. There were families who fought about finances in the hallways as their child sat with an IV in their arm. There were moms and dads who ate only because the hospital partnered with a grocery store nearby that provided gift cards. There were many marriages that ended because the burden of the medical crisis was simply too heavy to bear. There were children who died alone. 

One of those was Josh. We met him and his older brother, Brandon, at a Thanksgiving dinner provided for patients still receiving treatments, or too sick to go home, for the holidays. We also met their mother. She was grief-stricken when we met her. She had been adopted as a child, and didn’t know that she had a gene that carried with it a lethal blood disease, but only for boys. Josh and Brandon were fighting, but they were losing. And she was falling apart. 

One evening, Jason and I were asleep in the hospital. He had been on the fourth floor - the floor for terminal patients and experimental treatments - for about a month. He spent most of his days asleep. When awake, he was in unconscionable pain. So sleep was better. Much better. At the blaring sound of an alarm, I shot off the little couch and raced across the room. Jason was still asleep, and the ear-piercing noise wasn’t coming from his room. It was coming from across the hall.

I walked to the glass wall facing the hallway and other rooms to see Josh, his little 8-year old body tangled up in white blankets and not moving, all the flashing lights and alarms alerting the staff that something was very wrong. Doctors and nurses began pouring into his room. I stood frozen at the window and watched as they worked to save him, to bring him back. After what seemed like not nearly long enough, they stopped. They gently covered his body and left his room, and I stood in the quiet darkness, crying.

Josh died alone, fighting for his life. His mother, stricken with her own grief and guilt, was not there with him.

And in that moment, I had an out-of-body experience. I felt the weight of the universe press upon me. The world was not fair. The world was not just. The world just, was. Concepts like justice require people to breathe meaning into them. Children like Josh - those who fight to live, whose families fight for them to live - deserve to live. The scale just needs to tip in their favor. And therein, I found my purpose: to be a counterweight. To bring compassion into an unfeeling space. To tip the scale toward something good for someone else. To live with dignity. To die on your own terms. If nothing else, that must be the basis of all humanity.

And that’s how I became a fundraiser. Well, kind of. Jason walked out of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital cancer-free and, as originally planned, we parted ways. I went to school and pursued, you guessed it, writing - journalism specifically. I spent those years, hungry to make up for lost time, gulping down internships and low-pay/no-pay career opportunities. At a public relations firm, I found fundraising… or, rather, fundraising found me. And everything clicked into place.

Fundraising is where my skills as an exceptional communicator met a paycheck that I could build a life around met my purpose of tipping the scales for good. The Japanese refer to this as ikigai: the intersection of what you love, what the world needs, what you are good at, and what you can be paid for. I found it when I was 26. It is not something I take for granted.

I have had a tremendous and humbling amount of success in my life. I parlayed a successful career into a successful business, and somewhere along the way was fortunate enough to be blessed with an incredible husband and two boys of my own. 

And although fundraising is the ground where I’ve planted my flag, I don’t attribute the achievements in my life to being the best fundraiser in the room. Remember, mathematicians write… so do politicians and movie directors. There are countless paths my talent could have traveled. I believe my life is bursting at the seams with blessings because I know and live my purpose, and because I made the decision a long time ago to be the kind of person who stays. I’m still here.