Today, we’d like to introduce you to Andrew McCleskey, in behalf of Thumbs Up Mission founders – Miles and Sharon Coker.
Andrew, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
In July 2014, we endured the loss of our youngest child to cancer and have experienced all the unspeakable aches that accompany such a loss. Keaton was 18 years old, and while he was dying of brain cancer, he showed us how to truly live. We took those lessons, and we established a faith-based nonprofit organization entitled Thumbs Up Mission to give joy and hope to other families in the fight.
Keaton was a starting offensive lineman on his high school football team. His role was not glamorous; his job was just to block. He created holes for running backs and protected his quarterback so others could score. As we reflect on his 18 years of life, we realize he lived that way on and off the football field. He championed other people.
He continued playing football through cancer treatment. Please understand… when we say he continued to PLAY football, that’s exactly what we mean. He didn’t merely wear a jersey and stand on the sidelines. He blocked, he created holes, and he protected his quarterback through chemo and radiation treatments.
In fact, he never missed a practice or a game because he “just didn’t feel good.” WERE there days when he truly didn’t feel good? Of course, cancer treatment takes a toll. Keaton’s attitude was contagious. His coaches marveled. His teammates and classmates rallied. TV stations and newspapers wrote stories about his remarkable toughness. College football players supported him through social media. As for Keaton, he knew the real source of his strength was God, so he just kept making holes in the darkness of cancer every single day and bringing light with him wherever he went.
At Thumbs Up Mission, we are applying the lessons we learned through Keaton’s life. We “block” other families journeying through cancer by providing weekend retreats in fun places so they can reconnect as a family. We intentionally champion other families. It is not glamorous work. It requires us to work in the trenches with real families who are hurting and discouraged. But it is fulfilling work. Those discouraged families leave our retreats with a different spirit than when they arrived. We provide laughter when it is in short supply, infuse hope when circumstances look bleak, and provide families time together when cancer has stolen too much.
As for the quirky name of our organization, here’s the story behind it. Toward the end of his life, when cancer had stolen Keaton’s ability to communicate verbally, he would respond to questions with a smile in his eye and the “thumbs up” sign. We loved his positive spirit, and we want our foundation to carry that positive focus into a world teeming with hurting families. Thus, Thumbs Up Mission was born.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
For many new nonprofit organizations, fundraising is typically the biggest initial challenge. For Thumbs Up Mission, that was not the case. God met our financial needs in those early days through the generosity of friends and family in the Gainesville and Greater Atlanta area. The unique challenge for us was gaining access to the very families our organization was created to serve. Because of HIPAA laws, we were unable to hang out in Infusion Centers or Oncology Offices and simply hand out brochures or talk to people.
So, we slowly created a network of “Cancer Navigators” who are employed by Hospitals and Oncology Offices to help orient new cancer patients with various social services and support groups. Those Cancer Navigators could tell qualifying families about our free weekend retreats and obtain permission to “refer” the family to us through a quick email. At that point, we could finally contact the family and explain the concept of our retreats. Just building that network of Cancer Navigators took countless hours of lunchtime visits to their offices, making presentations after presentations.
And even after receiving individual referrals from Cancer Navigators, the sales pitch over the phone to each potential Guest Family wasn’t easy. We didn’t have name recognition of Make-A-Wish or other longstanding charities, so people were hesitant to say “YES” – even to the offer of a FREE weekend retreat. Our earliest retreats had less than 20 families in attendance, but today, we hosted between 80 and 90 Guest Families at each retreat, with a waiting list!
We’re so thankful we didn’t give up when those unexpected challenges first arose. Perseverance is an important quality when attempting to build a brand-new organization. However, we were convinced that what our organization offered Guest Families was worth the exhausting process of overcoming obstacles.
Families battling cancer often feel isolated, but on our retreats, they make new friends who are also in the battle. Emotional healing often comes in the bonds of those new friendships. Our retreat evaluations are filled with comments about what the companionship of others over the weekend did for them and their kids. There is a fortifying strength that comes when you realize you are actually walking shoulder to shoulder with others and not left battling really hard things alone.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
A major operating philosophy at Thumbs Up Mission is that a cancer diagnosis affects the whole family, not just the cancer patient. Families in the battle often find themselves forced to “divide and conquer.” When the patient is a child, one parent tends to take the lead on all things medical, with countless appointments and hospital stays, while the other parent tries to keep all the plates spinning at home for the rest of the family, with homework, sports practices, and laundry.
Alternatively, when the patient is a parent, kids often get shuffled to friends’ houses while mom & dad go to the ER… again. These issues are magnified even more when the family is shepherded by a single parent. And in addition to physical separation, the emotions of fear and anxiety also take a toll on each member of the family.
Thumbs Up Mission exists to help families reconnect and reclaim some of the normalcy that cancer has stolen. We accomplish that by carefully curating a retreat schedule that provides a perfect balance between planned group activities and unscheduled free time for an individual family to spend together. We’re currently hosting our retreats at Great Wolf Lodge in LaGrange, Georgia. Most of our group activities revolve around mealtimes in the large Conference Center wing of the resort. The room is filled with over 600 people.
We bring in comedy teams to provide laughter, we plan outrageous group games that get families cheering for one another, and we provide short inspirational messages that remind families they are not alone. Additionally, Thumbs Up Mission is deeply committed to celebrating our Guest Families at every turn and awarding silly trophies of all kinds throughout the weekend. Why? Families fight cancer together. It’s a team sport. But there are no trophies in this “sport.” There’s no trophy for enduring yet another round of chemo. No trophy for the teen who didn’t complain when his parents had to skip his game again because of a fever. No trophy for the 7-year-old who pulls a chair up to the sink to wash dishes to help out (without being asked) because it was chemo day and mom is throwing up. Thumbs Up Mission understands those sacrifices, and we intentionally look for ways to applaud our courageous guests all weekend.
One of our most meaningful traditions at each retreat involves professional photography. Very few families take the time or can afford the expense of having a professional photographer capture their portrait. We do that for them. We take professional portraits of each Guest Family and give them a framed picture to take home on the last day of the retreat. When cancer does its worst, we are often told the framed portrait a family received at the Thumbs Up Mission retreat is the last photograph they have of the whole family together.
The programming we offer at each retreat matters. The fun of the waterpark and ropes course and arcade matters. The little pockets of celebration and special touches at each retreat matter. But make no mistake, the most valuable thing we provide at each Thumbs Up Mission retreat is the love and attention our volunteers shower on each Guest Family. One Volunteer Family is assigned two specific Guest Families to host during the weekend.
They invest time learning their names and listening to more of their stories. They look for small ways to serve them. Their kids play together in the waterpark and become friends. And little by little, walls come down. We know that we can’t cure cancer on a weekend retreat, and we can’t erase all the hard parts of the story, but we can offer genuine connection and hope. Those things, in turn, provide the catalyst needed for Guest Families to return home with renewed energy for the fight.
How do we know our retreat model is working?
A very unexpected indicator has emerged which proves that Guest Families value the experience of attending a Thumbs Up Mission retreat. When we were initially designing our retreat model, we never anticipated the demand that would arise on the volunteer side of the equation. The “unexpected indicator” is simply this: former Guest Families are requesting (in droves) to come back and serve as Volunteer Families! Each Volunteer Family pays a fee of $350 out of their own pocket to come and serve, modeled after the concept of a short-term mission trip.
Despite the expense of volunteering, our former Guest Families are still clamoring to come and serve. Why? We believe that serving others causes a fundamental mind shift, even in the midst of a cancer battle. You go from feeling like you can barely make it to the next doctor’s appointment to recognizing that you can play a part in helping another family find hope and strength on the long journey of battling cancer. It’s empowering, and it changes the mindset of the entire family.
Speaking of the entire family, that’s the beauty of our volunteer opportunities. Every single member of the family is a valued member of our volunteer corp. Think of it this way: our youngest volunteers are superstars in the waterpark as they ride waterslides with the kids of their assigned Guest Families. In many service opportunities, the youngest members of the family unit are tolerated but not greatly utilized.
Nothing could be farther from reality at a Thumbs Up Mission retreat! Our ministry opportunities involve each and every member of a Volunteer Family being an MVP. And families are responding to that call in ever-increasing numbers. How many other nonprofit organizations do you know that have a waiting list for volunteers? It’s remarkable.
What were you like growing up?
Thumbs Up Mission is a “beauty from ashes” story. The story began with a tragic loss within a single family but has been redeemed by pouring hope back into hundreds of families along the way. We waded into the nonprofit world in a small way in 2014 by sending one family to a cancer battle on a Disney Cruise. That particular family didn’t qualify for services from other well-known charities because the cancer patient was a mom, not a child. We chose to step into the cancer world where a void existed, and we started serving right there.
Since that humble beginning, our model changed to a retreat-style approach, serving multiple families at once. We started with very small retreats in 2015, serving around 20 families each, and grew steadily from there. Our current model serves between 80 and 90 families at each retreat. As of this writing, we have 21 retreats under our belt. We’ve served 1,208 families comprised of 5,410 individuals.
We’ve also expanded our reach in the cancer community. While we initially began by serving the families of adult cancer patients, we soon realized that we could do more. Because our focus is on the family unit as a whole (and not just the cancer patient,) our retreat model works well across different demographics within the cancer community. We initially expanded to include families of young, single adults who had “aged out” of other charities.
Today, we have expanded to serve families of childhood cancer patients. The one thing our qualifying families are required to have is at least one school-aged child (anywhere between kindergarten to 12th grade) still living at home. Outside that one requirement, it doesn’t matter to us which family member actually has the cancer. Our retreats have a 50/50 mix between families with a child battling cancer and families with a mom or dad battling cancer. It’s been beautiful to watch them befriend each other and encourage each other.
While our funds are still largely comprised of private donations from individuals, Thumbs Up Mission has also expanded to include fundraising efforts among local businesses and major hospitals. Because we are a faith-based organization, many grants are off-limits to us. Part of our “Growing Up” has included the hosting of one annual fundraiser: a fashion show titled “Dressed to Kill…Cancer.” The event is funded via table sponsorships and features cancer patients as models.
We believe that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of where our organization will go in the future.
Pricing:
- $350 is the cost for a host family to serve on a weekend; it helps cover the cost of our guest families coming.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thumbsupmission.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thumbsupmission/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thumbsupmission/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thumbsupmission9785
Image Credits
Bailey Weisser, Hello Jude Photography
