Team Haupt has had an amazing year and a half. I am so honored to have received support and love from so many friends and family. It is now time for me to pay it forward with hopes of supporting others who are faced with the same challenge I was in — to find thirty thousand friends.

Team Haupt is now forming a new non-profit organization named 30K Friends Foundation. We are dedicated to providing support to leukemia and other blood cancer patients in need of a matching donor for a life-saving bone marrow transplant. Our mission is to increase awareness about the importance of registering to become a potential bone marrow donor, to grow the number of registered bone marrow donors, and to educate the public about the critical role of bone marrow stem cell transplants in saving the lives of patients with no other option for a cure.

The chance of finding a matching bone marrow donor is 1 in 30,000, creating an urgent need to connect each patient with 30,000 potential miracle matches. If a match is not found in the existing bone marrow registries – as was the case for me when I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia in 2009 – the patient and his or her family is left to search the world for a matching donor and navigate the complicated process largely on their own.

30K Friends Foundation is committed to helping patients and their families find that miracle bone marrow match and be their guide through this process – connecting them with 30,000 life-saving friends to find a cure.

Check back soon as we gear up for the launch of 30K Friends Foundation in December 2010.