Mary Lukacs MRI Fund Moves Forward
With Assistance From SCORE
In April of 2006, Mary Lukacs of Pulteney, NY passed away after two bouts with breast cancer. A few months later, her younger sister, Ann Davison reached out to SCORE Rochester to ask for assistance. Mary’s family and friends had formed a non-profit organization and had held a successful fund-raiser. Now, they needed help with planning their next steps.
“We asked SCORE to help us in the areas of Board development, fund disbursement procedures and what we might do within our 501-c-3 charter to move forward,” Davison says.
Mary Lukacs MRI Fund offers to pay for physician-ordered breast MRIs for women who couldn’t otherwise afford them. Mary’s family believes that an earlier MRI could have helped Mary, age 50, but an MRI wasn’t recommended until cancer cells were found the second time. The organization’s web-site, www.mrifund.org contains the following picture of Mary and the fund’s mission:
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In honor of the vibrant spirit of Mary this fund has been created to provide individuals in our area the means to pay for an MRI for breast cancer screening.
SCORE counselor Bob Zinnecker provided Davison, Mary’s husband Joseph Campbell and others with Board development information and advice on the other topics that were of concern to the non-profit organization. He then met with representatives of the fund, including Campbell and Treasurer Elizabeth Davis to discuss what they might do as they moved forward.
“SCORE’s advice and the materials they provided to us were timely, specific to our needs and beneficial to our continued growth,” Campbell says. “Not only do we want to provide breast MRI’s for area residents at high risk of breast cancer, but we want to try to raise awareness of the need for MRI because a lot of doctors won’t order them.”
Jennifer LaMarche, the current secretary of the organization says, “The Board often has questions and ideas about which direction to take the fund. We will continue to use SCORE as a valuable resource.”
The Mary Lukacs MRI fund can be contacted at:
P.O. Box 16
Mumford, NY 14511
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