Dear Team Beans supporters,

A year ago we were blown away by your support after our nine-month-old daughter Francesca died on Christmas Eve. We have since raised more than $1,780,000 through your contributions. We don’t even know most of you, but your kindness and generosity have reaffirmed our belief that there’s so much good in the world. 

We’re thrilled to share with you that Dana-Farber is planning to use those funds to help establish a new Infant Brain Tumor Program. The center will be the place where the renowned hospital brings top doctors and researchers together in an effort to find better cancer treatments for babies with brain cancer.  

(You can read about some of the amazing clinical trials and research the Team Beans Fund is funding here!)

All of your donations will now be housed within the newly established Team Beans Infant Brain Tumor fund, which will support the Infant Brain Tumor Program. Though Francesca will never get to experience the life she should have, with your support we have created a lasting legacy for our daughter.

As anyone who followed Francesca’s story knows, treatment options for young children with brain tumors are still very limited. The only treatments for these aggressive cancers are often harsh chemotherapy regimens that require families to spend months living in the hospital. They often fail to work and sometimes, as we unfortunately learned firsthand, have fatal side effects. 

And yet the heroic medical professionals who work hard every day to improve outcomes of our babies too often face severe funding challenges. 

That’s why your contributions in Francesca’s memory are a huge game changer. 

Francesca’s neuro-oncologist, Dr. Susan Chi, tells us the new center will enable Dana-Farber to fund new projects and accelerate research in this crucial area. There’s so much work left to do to understand how brain cancer works in infants and explore less brutal treatments. And progress in this fight will only be made bit by bit through the kinds of clinical trials and research projects that the center will house. 

We miss Francesca tremendously every day. We will always be her parents and our efforts to fight childhood cancer are a way of staying true to our responsibility to take care of her.  

To mark the milestone of the new center and fund, we are personally donating $15,000 dollars to the Team Beans fund. 

We would be so honored if you would, once again, join us in supporting Dana-Farber financially. Even the smallest gift helps -- we have raised about $50,000 in gifts under $30 alone. Three people donated $1. The average donation was $74. We are grateful for every single cent.

We set a fundraising goal of $1.5 million by 2021, and we not only hit it. We smashed it!

Andy and Rachel