What started as a bold and audacious goal to find cures and save children turned into a 10-year, $60 million fundraising commitment by Tri Delta in support of the lifesaving mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Just eight years later, it has become a reality. We have completed the single largest commitment in St. Jude history!
Tri Delta’s partnership with St. Jude began in 1999 with a $1 million commitment to fund the hospital’s Teen Room. After that goal was met in 2005, we made another one: $10 million in 10 years. But we completed it in just 4 years. Our next goal was $15 million in 5 years. And, yes, we did it in 3.5 years.
Tri Delta Place—A Home Away From Home, No Matter How Far
In 2014, we made the largest fundraising commitment in St. Jude history at the time, committing to raising $60 million in 10 years. In honor of this momentous pledge, St. Jude named its on-campus, short-term housing facility Tri Delta Place, a home away from home for patient families.
Tri Delta Place is often the first place a patient and their family will stay when seeking treatment at St. Jude. It provides comfort and support during a time when families are still processing the devastating news that their child has cancer.
Currently, Tri Delta Place is providing a home for eight patients and their 31 family members from Ukraine. These patients had their medical treatment disrupted when they had to flee their homes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. St. Jude is continuing treatment for these kids, just like they do for all the other patients they treat—at no cost to their families.
Patient families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food, so they can focus on one thing: helping their child live. And Tri Delta—with $84 million raised to date—is helping make that possible.
How We Did It
How did we reach this huge goal? The short answer: A LOT of pancakes. The long answer: through the passion and dedication of our members and the many creative fundraising and philanthropy events that they’ve developed and perfected on their campuses and in their communities.
Whether it’s our chapters’ popular D-Hop pancake breakfasts or competitive Delta Dodgeball tournaments, our members work year-round to raise funds and awareness for St. Jude. We also have help from family and friends through our signature letter-writing campaign, Sincerely Yours. Since 1999 Tri Deltas have sent hundreds of thousands of letters to rally the support of their network. And it works! On average, Sincerely Yours raises $3.3 million annually for patients and families at St. Jude.
Our alumnae also continue to play a big role in fundraising with their own alumnae chapter fundraisers, huge turnouts for the annual St. Jude Walk/Run and support for the St. Jude Memphis Marathon Weekend.
Through these events and others, Tri Delta is not only cultivating lifelong supporters of St. Jude, but we’re also instilling a passion for service in our members who go on to become servant leaders and philanthropists in their own communities. It’s just one of the ways Tri Delta lives into our founding tenet as an organization created to be “kind alike to all.”
Celebrating Our Historic Milestone
Tri Delta officially announced we had completed our $60 million fundraising commitment to St. Jude at our Collegiate Leadership Conference (CLC) weekend on April 9 with a confetti- and fun-filled celebration (see photos below!).
But we’re not done celebrating yet! We’ll continue to celebrate all we’ve accomplished with St. Jude in the coming months, including at Tri Delta’s 60th Biennial Convention in San Diego this summer—you won’t want to miss it!
And even after completing this latest historic milestone in our partnership, our work continues …. Stay tuned to find out what’s next as we continue to change the way the world treats and defeats childhood cancer in partnership with St. Jude.