Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
It started locally with a cookbook and a grand plan, and it has mushroomed into a statewide force.
The Catherine Peachey Fund last month joined forces with Eli Lilly and Co. to increase the amount of money the Fund has available for the Catherine Peachey Breast Cancer Prevention Program at IU Medical Center in Indianapolis.
Originally approached by Connie Rufenbarger, a trustee of the Fund and director of project development, for a $200,000 donation, Lilly representatives told Rufenbarger that if the Peachey Fund raises $100,000 per year, Lilly will match them dollar for dollar.
"That's mind-boggling," Rufenbarger said recently. She said Lilly has "an arena of women's products. ... It's in their background, it's women's health and it's grass roots."
Dr. Anna Maria Storniolo, who will be the director of the Breast Cancer Prevention Program, also previously worked at Lilly, Rufenbarger said, and established a sterling reputation there.
The Peachey Fund gives small grants on beginning research projects to scientists at the IU Medical Center. The seed grants then allow the doctors and researchers to raise their level of research high enough to get larger grants from federal agencies and national organizations.
The Fund also sponsors the Amelia Project, in which scientists, doctors and researchers from companies and universities around Indiana come together once a year to share information, ideas and discoveries.
But the money raised in the future will go to the Catherine Peachey Prevention Endowment at the IU Cancer Center, Rufenbarger said, and those are the funds Lilly will match.
Most of the financing for the Catherine Peachey Fund has come from sales of the cookbook - "Just Peachey: Cooking Up A Cure" - and from such fund-raising events as the "Note-able Night" concerts and last year's "Day at the Lake."
And most of the work on the cookbook was done right here in Kosciusko County.
"The credibility of the Catherine Peachey Fund comes from the cookbook," Rufenbarger said, "the cookbook and how we spent those dollars - very carefully. It took those years of trust, and this community sold those books and didn't stop.
"The community has sustained its effort, it didn't just do one thing and then go away," she said.
Soon the Fund will have raised $1.5 million, she said, "and that's primarily from this community. People have stayed loyal to the Catherine Peachey Fund because they know where the money goes."
The partnership with Lilly gives a whole new meaning to fund-raising, and Rufenbarger is determined to make the most of it - even it if means putting out another cookbook.
"We're running out of them," she said of the 57,000 books that have sold so far.
She credits the Warsaw group for truly making a difference in the fight against breast cancer.
"This is just a unique community - the fact that it sustained the effort, continues to grow and can account for every penny," she said. "We're a unique representation of a grass-roots group that has made a difference."
And now that grass-roots effort has a strong and influential partner, which also may make a difference.
"Having Lilly for a partner," Rufenbarger said, "I think that will open other doors."
