Grainger Foundation Donates to Children and Teens Fighting Cancer

The Pediatric Oncology Treasure Chest Foundation was overjoyed to receive an enormous donation of $5,000 recently from the Grainger Foundation courtesy of Branch Network Managers Richard Warfield and Carole Dietterle from Grainger located in Alsip. The donation will directly benefit children and teens fighting cancer. When asked what motivated them to give, Richard Warfield replied, “The Treasure Chest Foundation is such a great cause. What this Foundation does for the kids is unprecedented. We at the Grainger Foundation feel good about being able to help in the community. It touches our hearts!”

The Grainger Community Grant Program is sponsored by the Grainger Foundation, an independent, private foundation that was established in 1949 by William Wallace Grainger, the company’s founder. The Grainger Community Grant Program helps address local community needs throughout the United States by engaging the company’s Market Managers and Distribution Center Directors to identify charitable organizations within their local communities and make recommendations to the foundation to fund grants.

Treasure Chest Foundation Founder and CEO Colleen Kisel is grateful to receive the donation. Colleen said, “We feel so blessed and honored to have the support of the Grainger Foundation. The donation will help support thousands of children and teens who endure years and years of unending cancer treatments by rewarding the children with a toy, gift or gift card after every procedure.

The POTCF is a unique organization whose services impact more than 13,000 young cancer patients enduring 20,000 clinic visits each month in 19 states across the nation. Nowhere else in the nation does such a program exist. Colleen Kisel founded the organization in 1996 after her then seven-year-old son Martin had been diagnosed with leukemia in 1993. Ms. Kisel discovered that giving her son a toy after each procedure provided a calming distraction from his pain, noting that when children are diagnosed with cancer their world soon becomes filled with doctors, nurses, chemotherapy drugs, surgeries and seemingly endless painful procedures. Martin celebrated his 25th anniversary of remission from the disease earlier this year.

If you would like further information about the Treasure Chest Foundation, please contact Colleen Kisel at 708-687-TOYS (8697) or visit the Foundation’s web site at www.treasurechest.org.