Funding Research
One Cookie at a Time
We bake cookies to fund research into rare childhood diseases.
In the news!
Cookies4Cures was in the news! Thanks to Ivanhoe News for helping us share our story of rare diseases, cookies, and hope!
Cookies4EGID
We are launching a new rare disease campaign — Cookies4EGID. My family has been going through our own rare disease story that started when my little brother started getting sick in 2023. He was just diagnosed with Eosinophilic Gastritis, a rare GI-immune disorder. So of course we are raising money for research! Stay tuned for more info.
Rock n’ Rare
I was honored to speak at the first annual Rock n’ Rare concert event. It was so fun and uplifting and mind-blowing and everything amazing all rolled up into a one-day event.
What’s going on?
Sharing our story
It was such an honor to be interviewed by Marsh Lewis and the team at Ivanhoe Broadcast. And also to receive the 2023 People’s Power Award! Thank you to all the volunteers who joined me for the shoot and to everyone who watched the story.
Rocking out at Rock n’ Rare
Music and inspiration for the next generation of rare disease rockstars
April 25, 2024
It was an incredible honor to speak at the first ever Rock n’ Rare event, a cool blend of speeches, interviews, and awesome music. Hosted at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, this event featured some of the top minds and voices in rare disease and was about the future.
Hi, I’m Dana
Cookies4Cures is an organization run by kids for kids. My friends and I raise money to fund research into rare pediatric diseases. When a kid has a rare disease, sometimes there isn’t any medicine or treatment. When there isn’t a cure, the only thing to do is to help scientists do research to find one. We fund research because, for kids with rare diseases… RESEARCH IS HOPE!
Photo by Rebecca Stumpf
Meet the Cookies4Cures fundraising family
In September 2024, my little brother was diagnosed with Eosinophilic Gastritis, a rare gastrointestinal-immune disease that is in the family of Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Diseases (EGID). This was my family’s rare disease journey, and it was scary to see my brother sick for so long without knowing what was wrong with him or how to help him. As soon as he got his diagnosis, we launched Cookies4EGID, which supports the research of the Gastrointestinal Eosinophilic Diseases Program at Children’s Hospital of Colorado, where my brother is now receiving treatment. This center is part of the Consortium of Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disease Researches (CEGiR), which is forwarding research into new therapies and treatments.
Campaign Status: Active! Every dollar you donate goes to the EGID program at Children’s Hospital of Colorado.
Cookies4EGID
We launched Cookies4Sophie in August 2020 for my awesome friend, Sophie. Sophie is six years old and lives in Boulder. She is super silly, loves giraffes, and has a really rare and really scary disease. It’s called MCTO. It stands for Multicentric Carpotarsal Osteolysis, which means it’s a problem with her bones. In a healthy person, your bones are alive and the cells need to replace themselves to keep your bones strong. Because of a genetic mutation, Sophie’s bones can’t do this. And there just isn’t a not-scary way to describe this — Sophie’s bones are going to dissolve, and it’s already started. So we are helping to fund research for a cure!
Campaign Status: Active! Every dollar you donate goes straight to the Sophie’s Neighborhood nonprofit where it is used to fund research into MCTO.
Cookies4Sophie
In February 2020, we launched Cookies4SMA to fund research into spinal muscular atrophy, a rare disease that our friend, Ben, has. Cookies4SMA is excited to partner with CureSMA, the leading SMA organization in the U.S. In Feb, 2021, Cookies4SMA successfully raised $50,000, which in conjunction with $50,000 from CureSMA was used to fund a research grant that is helping to advance scientific knowledge of this disease and hopefully lead to new treatments that will benefit Ben and the thousands of people in the world like him. Since that time, Cookies4Cures has continued to partner with CureSMA and their annual Bake a Difference fundraiser, which in the last three years has raised an additional $90,000+.
Campaign Status: Active! Every dollar you donate goes straight to CureSMA to fund critical research into Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
Cookies4SMA
Cookies4Cures has partnered with the US Hereditary Angioedema Association (HAEA) to launch Cookies4HAE. We got off to slow start in 2020 because of Covid so in 2023, we tried again.
In July of 2023, I was honored to speak at the annual HAE conference where we hosted a huge Cookies4HAE cookie pop-up!
Now, we are working with HAEA to teach kids how to run their own pop-ups to keep the Cookies4HAE energy growing.
Campaign Status: Active! Every dollar you donate will go to HAEA, where it will fund critical research into HAE.
Cookies4HAE
In 2017 when I was 7 years old, I launched Cookies4Mila, our very first Cookies4Cures fundraiser, to try to save the life of my friend, Mila. She had a rare disease called Batten, which is always fatal. In our first year, we raised over $56,000 and this money helped fund the first ever treatment for Mila’s form of Batten. Although the treatment was groundbreaking, it also came too late.
Sadly, in February of 2021, Mila lost her battle with Batten but Cookies4Cures continues to work with Mila’s Miracle Foundation to fight to bring personalized gene therapies to children with rare diseases.
In April 2024, I was thrilled to speak at the first annual Rock n’ Rare put on by Mila’s Miracle Foundation, To Save a Rose, and the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard.
Campaign Status: Active! Every dollar you donate goes to Mila’s Miracle Foundation to continue the fight to make personalized treatments available to rare disease kids who need them!
Cookies4Mila
In 2021, my family moved for a year to Salt Lake City and I met Andrew, who has Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (VEDS), which is a rare and usually life limiting vascular connective tissue disease.
We definitely need to fund research into treatments for VEDS so that Andrew and all the kids living with VEDS can have the very best chance of growing up healthy and strong.
Campaign Status: Active! Cookies4VEDS cookie teams are hosting cookie pop-ups. This fundraising page is active and we strongly encourage donations to fund research into this challenging disease.
Cookies4VEDS
In 2022, Kate at the Kawasaki Youth Foundation reached out to us to learn how to start her own Cookies Campaign. We are thrilled to support Kate, who is now President of the Kawasaki Disease Youth Foundation organization, and Cookies4Kawasaki.
Campaign Status: Active! Money donated to Cookies4Kawasaki goes to support the Kawasaki Disease Foundation.
Cookies4Kawasaki
We launched Cookies4PANS in 2018 to help our friend, Ollie, who goes to school with us. Ollie got PANS (pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome) when he was in kindergarten. Before that, he was learning to read and write and having fun at school. PANS changed all that. For Ollie to get better, scientists need to do lots and lots of research. Cookies4PANS funds research at the Stanford PANS Clinic, one of the best PANS research centers in the world. In 2018, we raised $30,000 so that the PANS Clinic could hire a post doc researcher, Dr. Rahman. Since then, we have been helping to fund her research. We hope this research will lead to a cure for PANS for our friend, Ollie, and all of the other kids with PANS.
Campaign Status: Not Active. But the Cookies4PANS GoFundMe page is still up and running so if you do donate, we will make sure that your dollars go to the Stanford PANS Clinic to fund research into PANS
Cookies4PANS
Cookies4Cures partnered with SLC6A1 Connect to fund research by sending out birthday boxes filled with cookies, frosting, and sprinkles.
Campaign Status: Not Active. We are not actively fundraising with SLC6A1 Connect at this time, but we still strongly support their mission and the GoFundMe page is live. Every dollar you donate will fund critical research into SLC6A1.
Cookies4SLC6A1
“My goal is to someday have a Cookies4Cures campaign for every rare pediatric disease.”
We hope you’ll join us.
Funding life-changing research for kids with rare diseases is always sugar-cookie-sweet!
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