JDRF International
JDRF is the leading global organization harnessing the power of research, advocacy, and community engagement to advance life-changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent, and treat type 1 diabetes (T1D) and its complications.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that strikes both children and adults suddenly. It has nothing to do with diet or lifestyle. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. And, at present, there is no cure.
When you have T1D, your pancreas stops producing insulin—a hormone the body needs to get energy from food. This means a process your body should do naturally and automatically becomes something that now requires your daily attention and manual intervention. If you have T1D, you must constantly monitor your blood-sugar levels, inject or infuse insulin through a pump, and carefully balance these insulin doses with your eating and activity throughout the day and night.
However, insulin is not a cure for diabetes. Even with the most vigilant disease management, a significant portion of your day will be spent with either high or low blood-sugar levels. These fluctuations place people with T1D at risk for potentially life-threatening hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) and hyperglycemic (high blood sugar) episodes as well as devastating long-term complications such as kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, blindness and amputation.
JDRF works every day to change the reality of this disease for the nearly 9 million people living with it around the world. By funding research, advocating for government support of research and new therapies, ensuring that new therapies come to market, and connecting and engaging the T1D community, we hope to one day prevent anyone from ever knowing the reality of life with T1D.
Founded by parents determined to find a cure for their children with T1D, JDRF expanded through grassroots fundraising and advocacy efforts to become a powerhouse in the scientific community with dozens of U.S. locations and five international affiliates. We’ve funded nearly $2 billion in research to date and have made significant progress in understanding and fighting the disease. We must keep up the pace of funding so progress doesn’t slow or stop entirely.
JDRF’s research goal is to discover, develop, and deliver advances that progressively remove the impact of T1D from people’s lives until we have cures. JDRF is driving research across the entire scientific spectrum, from discovery in the laboratory to delivery of new technologies and treatments to people with T1D.
The full impact of JDRF’s research investment extends well beyond our direct funding. Now more than ever, we see the value in leveraging partnerships with academia, industry and clinicians to ensure that the most promising research opportunities are funded and accelerated and eventually brought to market.
Our investments are supporting the development of next-generation therapies like artificial pancreas technology, beta cell encapsulation, smart insulin that can turn on and off in response to blood sugar levels and, ultimately, methods for curing and preventing T1D.
JDRF is the only global organization with a strategic plan to bring those living with T1D a continuous flow of life-changing therapies and, ultimately, a cure for the disease.
JDRF’s highest priority remains funding research to deliver a cure for T1D and its complications. At the same time, JDRF is also focused on developing better treatments that will transform the way people with T1D treat the disease today, in order to help them live healthier lives now and in the future. Finally, JDRF also seeks to prevent T1D, to keep future generations from developing the disease.
This is all part of JDRF’s promise of “less until none”: to progressively remove the impact of T1D from the lives of those living with the disease until it is no longer a threat to them or their families.
JDRF was founded by parents of children with T1D in 1970. Since then, we have awarded more than $2 billion to T1D research. The JDRF mission is the same today as it was more than 45 years ago: to find a cure for T1D and its complications through the support of research. Ultimately, what that means is finding a way to completely restore normal physiology, and JDRF will not rest until that end is achieved.
JDRF’s unrelenting passion and commitment to work to remove the impact of T1D from people’s lives is driven by our staff and volunteers at over 100 locations. Whether it’s providing funding for a late-stage clinical trial, advocating faster regulatory approval of new devices, or partnering with a company on research that might not otherwise receive funding, every decision JDRF makes is driven by our commitment to achieving a world without T1D.
JDRF commits to using donations responsibly when allocating time, resources and dollars in our organization. As the leading global funder of T1D research, we know we achieve the greatest impact on the lives of people with T1D only when we steward funds efficiently. That’s why we’re able to invest approximately 80 cents of every dollar in our mission.
You have a choice of which charitable organizations you donate to, and we are grateful you support JDRF. We take our responsibility to tell you how we use your gift seriously.
JDRF continues to retain a high score on accountability and transparency from Charity Navigator, an independent organization that evaluates U.S. charitable organizations.
The most recent audited financial statements for JDRF can be found in our annual report at jdrf.org/about/financials/.