In summary, the survey asks this charitable pool of donors, “How do YOU want your money used by the charities and organizations who receive it?”

For those passionate about finding a Practical Cure for T1D and who hope to expedite the process by donating to research and participating in events, it’s important to know where the community wants their money to go. By doing this, we can hold the organizations accountable to perform in a way that is aligned with our collective priorities.

The survey asked thirteen questions, seeking public opinion on everything from where people choose to donate, to their viewpoints on a Practical Cure.

Key Takeaways

1) Donors want their money to go towards research to find a Cure
There are a variety of reasons why someone donates to diabetes research. We asked people to choose from a selection of options to find which one is the most influential. The results showed that research to find a cure was the primary reason, winning by a landslide.

To further this, we asked donors, “Do you believe that funding cure research should be the top priority for diabetes charities?” 98% of respondents said: “Yes” —the highest level in the past five years.

Typically, this number tends to be low. While it is still low compared to the other choices of ‘Less’ and ‘No Change,’ it’s a marked increase in 2023 that definitively reflects the recent progress toward a cure. We suspect this is driven by recent Vertex achievements and the FDA approval for Teplizumab.

When someone donates to diabetes research, they likely assume it will go to a cure for type 1 diabetes point blank. This is not necessarily the case. Many foundations allocate donations toward type 2 diabetes, complications research, prevention, intervention, etc.

(We had survey takers reference the infographic above when answering the following questions.)

The final questions of our survey came as a shock to some participants, bringing to light discrepancies in the allocation of funds from two prominent diabetes associations. It was made clear by survey results that if the JDRF and the ADA promised to contribute a larger portion of their funding towards T1D research, they would attract a much larger number of donors to their organizations.