Carrie's TOUCH, Inc.

Her alarm went off at 6am to make it to chemo.

But, she knew she couldn’t go. First, she had to figure out rent.

Janis, a Black woman in our community, has breast cancer. She is fighting as hard as any human being can fight to survive. And the thing standing between her and her next treatment isn't the disease. 

It's a past-due notice on her door. 

It’s the pressure to keep everything going while a disease breaks everything apart.

Before the diagnosis, home was just home. The place she came back to. The smell of her kitchen, the sound of her kids, the warm feel of her own space at the end of a hard day.

Now it's her lifeline. Because without it, it’s the literal life-and-death difference between her staying in treatment and having to stop. Between surviving and not. Without an address, any hope for survival gets taken away. 

Home isn't just where she lives. It's part of how she heals.
And she’s doing everything she can to hold onto it.

This is not a story from somewhere else. Janis is your mother. Your neighbor. Your coworker. The woman at the coffee shop, the one whose name you may not even know yet.

You care about this world. You show up at the marches, you know your neighbors, you put your resources where your values are. Now we're asking you to look here... at Carrie's Touch.

For 20 years, Carrie's TOUCH has been the organization that Black women battling breast cancer call home. When the healthcare system has already failed them, and the bills have already piled up, Carrie's TOUCH is there. We are, right now, the only breast cancer organization serving the Sacramento region.

Not the biggest…
Not the most famous…

The only one.

And the hardest part of this work — the part that almost no corporate or government funder will touch — is keeping women like Janis housed, fed, and in treatment when the bills don’t stop but the money does.

Our Rapid Response Program exists for exactly that. When women have to choose between paying their bills and receiving their treatment, there is no time to wait.

We receive dozens of requests weekly with stories just like Janis’s. Women who were facing eviction. Families who have almost lost everything. And we can’t help any of them without your direct support.

The need is great, and it's real. Women need to cover rent. They need to pay deductibles that quadrupled overnight. They need to buy groceries. And, on rare occasions, they even need help funding a birthday party so Mom could go to treatment without guilt. Every single time a need arises, the stakes are the same: 

Without help, a woman loses ground she cannot get back. This is where Carrie’s TOUCH steps in. 

And the organizations that used to be here? They are gone. The American Cancer Society. Susan G. Komen. They left this region. But we stayed. We have always stayed. 

Right now, every Black woman in this area navigating a breast cancer diagnosis who needs emergency support has one place to call. And Carrie’s TOUCH needs your help to answer. 

Your donation today funds that response. Not grants. Not corporate sponsorships. YOU. People who decide that a woman they may never meet deserves a fighting chance.

We are raising $50,000 for Big Day of Giving on May 7th. Every dollar goes directly to women in active need. That’s right, 100%. No admin fees. No overhead taken first. Every. Dollar.

What your donation actually does.

Cancer doesn't pause while a woman figures out her finances. But treatment can. And when it does, the damage compounds in ways no scan can fully measure.

Our Rapid Response Program is the safety net that shouldn't have to exist — but does, because no one else built it. Here's what it looks like in practice:

Housing support is our number one request. The average cost to keep a woman in her home while in treatment is $3,200 per month. Losing stable housing during chemotherapy doesn't just create stress. It ends treatment. It ends survival.

Co-pay & deductible coverage is our number two.​ Out-of-pocket costs for cancer treatment have exploded. Women are receiving bills they cannot pay, and when they can't pay, they don't get seen. It is that simple, and that brutal.

​Beyond that, we fill in what falls through the cracks.  Utilities. Gas money to get to appointments. Food. And yes, sometimes under unique circumstances, a birthday party, because her mother wouldn't go to treatment if her daughter's day went uncelebrated. We made the deal. She went.

None of this makes the glossy grant reports. None of this fits neatly into a category that major funders want to fund. That's why the Big Day of Giving matters so much to us. Regular people, choosing to keep a woman alive.

Home is where healing lives. Help someone get there.

This is the most direct line between your generosity and a woman's survival. Give her comfort in knowing that when today's treatment is over, she has somewhere soft to land — the place she calls home. 

We see you. We need you here. Donate now.