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The Tri-Valley is saying goodbye to one of its most impactful grassroots nonprofits.
Sandra J. Wing Healing Therapies Foundation, which for 15 years provided individual grants to local cancer patients for complementary therapies to help alleviate side effects of their chemotherapy or radiation treatments, is officially dissolving in the new year.
With the namesake founder, CEO and president ready to think about retirement in 2020, the nonprofit’s board opted to wind down operations rather than search for a successor in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wing told me in an honest and heartfelt interview this month.
“So, for over three years now, our focus has shifted from raising funds to closing our operations,” Wing said. “This meant we needed to be more aggressive and issue more grants so that we could use our existing funds to serve as many people as possible with a target closure date of two or three years.”
That moment is now at hand, as the foundation informed supporters on Oct. 2 in an email invitation to its farewell dinner on Jan. 18, during which Wing will reveal which area nonprofit will receive her foundation’s remaining assets.
I certainly hope it’s more than implied that Sandra J. Wing Healing Therapies Foundation’s mission will live on too through this other organization, whose identity will remain secret until the goodbye event — believe me, I tried to get the scoop.
And what an important, under-represented charity mission it is. These grants help patients (already going through physically, emotionally and financially draining cancer treatments) pay for side effect-relieving therapies that generally are not covered by medical insurance: acupuncture, acupressure, therapeutic massage, guided/visual imagery and deep-breathing meditation.
The power of those complementary therapies was something Wing experienced first-hand amid her own battle with ovarian and uterine cancer diagnosed in November 2006 — and ultimately served as the inspiration for creating her own nonprofit to support that cause for others.
“I went through chemotherapy and quickly learned how chemotherapy can cause a multitude of side effects … I experienced nausea, body aches, weakness, anxiety and restlessness,” she told me.
“The side effects inspired me and my wife, Gracie, to explore options available to provide me with some relief,” Wing said, noting that she had to seek appointments in San Francisco because such supplemental services were generally not available in and around Pleasanton at that time.
“These therapies made a huge difference in my overall well-being and reduced my anxiety and restlessness. These therapies reduced my nausea, upset stomach and vomiting. These therapies helped me stay positive, increased my energy, improved my appetite and helped with my mobility,” she added.
Wing realized she was not alone, and she acted. Following her treatments in 2008, with a lot of business experience but none in the nonprofit industry, she began the groundwork that soon led to the foundation’s creation.
“I strove to establish a relationship with therapists in the Tri-Valley area so that the burden of driving back and forth to the City would be eliminated,” Wing said. “The financial impact of fighting cancer is often not spoken about, but it is a very real issue. I wanted to eliminate the added financial burden of paying for these types of therapies.”
“Gracie and I gathered a group of friends and with this passionate ‘army’ in place, we recruited other volunteers, and we were able to grow and flourish. It began as a labor of love and blossomed from there,” she added. “We were fortunate that we had a solid base of phenomenal volunteers who embraced the cause. The community really rallied around our cause, and we could not have been as successful as we were without that support.”
What ensued was a decade and a half of tangible impact for local residents in the middle of a fight for their life.
The foundation has granted more than $1.1 million to cancer patients in Alameda and Contra Costa counties — 2,293 grants in all, corresponding to nearly 16,000 sessions of healing therapies.
As meaningful as those stats are, Wing told me her “main personal takeaway are the heartfelt messages from beneficiaries explaining the direct impact we have made in their lives, and in their families lives.”
One testimonial that still hits home for me, which I heard live at the foundation’s old Ragin’ Cajun gala fundraiser as well as on video at its charity golf tournament, was a man remembering how he didn’t realize his neuropathy was so bad during cancer treatment until the day he was renovating a room in his house, with the carpet pulled up, and he looked down to find himself standing in a pool of blood. He couldn’t feel the tacks piercing the pads of his feet.
After a series of acupuncture appointments, helped by grant funds from the foundation, he soon regained the sensations in his hands and feet. The emotion in his voice and on his face recalling that moment of joy was palpable.
The impact of the foundation’s support is real. And the Weekly recognized it early.
In addition to recurring news coverage over the years, Wing was one of the first recipients in our former Tri-Valley Heroes program, winning the Courage Award in 2012. Her foundation was a beneficiary of the Pleasanton Weekly Holiday Fund for years, and our company was a media sponsor for many of their fundraisers. I still have two trophies at home from our mixed team’s top finishes in the SWing for Cancer Therapies golf event.
So my heart sank a little when I saw the email invitation this month saying they were disbanding, although part of me wasn’t totally surprised. After the pandemic hit, I noticed a major reduction in press releases and other communiques from the nonprofit.
As it turns out, that was mainly because of the internal shift after the board’s decision upon Wing’s desire to retire — with the nonprofit halting its donation drives in October 2020 and instead focusing on distributing remaining funds and taking necessary steps to close operations.
I learned that foundation treasurer Kim Smith told volunteers upon the decision: “For most people that have been involved with the foundation, they will understand that you can’t just find any ‘suitable’ successor. Closing shop was the smartest move, because nobody else would have been as passionate, or as visionary, and be able to drive the cause forward.”
During the next three years, the nonprofit “removed our lifetime cap of re-issuing grants from 2x to 15x … We earnestly stayed committed to our cause with the desire to use the money that we had raised over the years for its intended purpose of helping cancer patients receive therapies to alleviate the side effects of cancer treatment,” Wing said, adding:
“Our final grants were issued on May 30, 2023. Those funds will be used up on Nov. 30, 2023. All our beneficiaries, service providers, and the medical community that referred their patients were all notified in May and June of our plans to close.”
As the official closure date nears, Wing and her wife have moved to a 55-and-older community out of the area and are excited for the future retirement will bring.
“I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to our community,” Wing said. “Thank you to each and everyone who contributed financially. Thank you to all those that shared their time and talent with us. The amazing contributions we received resulted in cancer patients receiving over 16,000 therapies!”
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly.
