A million dollars. That’s what The TLR Foundation has raised through events, donations, grants and the kind of steady, quiet support that doesn’t always make the highlight reel but absolutely makes the difference. It’s taken years. It’s taken a lot of people showing up. And it started with one person.
How TLR came to be
TLR started because of Trace Richey, the man whose experience inspired The TLR Foundation. Trace got a blood cancer diagnosis and needed a stem cell transplant. He needed a donor. Finding a match is incredibly difficult, but when one finally appeared, the medical team were hopeful. The transplant didn’t work. Trace spent his final time with the people who loved him and the nurses who never stopped caring for him. If a better match had been out there, things could’ve been very different.
Trace Richey, the man whose experience inspired The TLR Foundation
After we lost Trace, we wanted his life to keep helping people. We wanted Australians to understand what donating stem cells actually means, how many patients are relying on finding a match, and how simple the whole process really is. On top of that, we wanted to do something for the nurses who’d cared for Trace by helping more of them specialise in cancer care.
That’s how TLR started. Not with a business plan. With a promise.
The spark that brought people together
The first goal came at a time when we were still trying to make sense of losing Trace. St Vincent’s Hospital announced plans to renovate the Blood and Marrow ward into a state of the art stem cell transplant facility. To have a room named in Trace’s honour, we needed $300,000. For a small group of volunteers, that felt massive.
Trace spent his career as a fundraiser, so the irony wasn’t lost on any of us.
The first fundraiser was a head shave. After that came the City2Surf, a skydive, and a lot more City2Surfs. Each event pulled more people in. Friends, colleagues, nurses, complete strangers. People kept showing up because they believed in what Trace stood for, and we hit the $300,000 target in just over two years.
It was a huge moment. But it also made something obvious. A treatment room matters, but the nurses working in it matter just as much.
Supporting the nurses
Once we’d funded the room, we turned to nurses. Trace’s nurses had shown real skill and compassion through every stage of his treatment, so supporting more nurses to specialise in cancer care felt like the right way to honour them.
The Master of Cancer and Haematology Nursing at the University of Sydney was the natural fit. It gives nurses advanced clinical knowledge and strengthens the care they provide to patients going through treatment. With strong support, the Trace Richey Nursing Scholarship became perpetual in 2022. That’s the point where TLR shifted from a single fundraising project into a charity with two clear aims: support nurses, and help more people understand stem cell donation.
Reaching new donors
At the same time, patients across Australia were still struggling to find matching stem cell donors. Trace had faced that challenge. Families everywhere were living it too.
We joined Stem Cell Donors Australia as an official charity partner and started having real conversations with people wherever we could. Most had never heard of stem cell donation. Nearly all of them were surprised that joining the registry only takes a few cheek swabs, and once people understood how simple it was, they were ready to sign up.
Signing up to the Aussie stem cell donor registry starts with a simple cheek swab
Hospitals welcomed us. Nurses helped spread the word. Universities invited us in. With support from the Kinghorn Cancer Centre, we also sat down with people who’d actually donated their stem cells and let them tell their stories honestly. That’s done more to calm fears and clear up myths than any amount of information ever could.
More support, more impact
We created our second perpetual nursing scholarship in honour of Allan Frenkel. Allan got a leukaemia diagnosis at 17 and had a stem cell transplant at 18. He passed away far too young, and his parents Marisa and Eduardo, along with their family, spent the last 25 years raising money in his name with incredible love and dedication.
Their commitment meant the world to us. Together, we reached the $190,000 target in just over two years, doubling the number of nurses TLR can support.
We’ve also had amazing backing from grant partners and corporate supporters who believed in what we’re doing. You can read about how the QBE Foundation helped TLR reach more stem cell donors. Nomos Legal have been with us from the very start and shown up at every single event. Even the skydive.
What comes next
Growing the Aussie stem cell donor registry will stay at the centre of everything we do. So will supporting the nurses who care for patients going through treatment.
We built the first million on belief and generosity. The next one will happen the same way. One donor at a time. One nurse at a time. One act of kindness at a time.
To our fundraisers, donors, corporate supporters, grant partners, event volunteers, ambassadors and board members: thank you. Every part of this work exists because of you.
Sign up through the TLR Foundation’s partner page.
Be a legend. Save a life.