2024 Year In Review
in General
What a year!
2024 marked another year of overwhelming gratitude for the communities and people that surround us. It marked a year of change for our organization, with our big name change in June to Breakthrough T1D. Our new name is meant to highlight the resilience of those in our community and demonstrate that we are accelerating scientific discovery, therapeutic development, and access to treatments for the entire T1D community, one breakthrough at a time.
We had the pleasure of hosting two Dream Galas, one in Kansas City, and one in St. Louis, as well as three Walks in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Wichita. Our volunteers, families, friends, loved ones and community members came together for our shared cause and helped raise millions of dollars for life-changing research opportunities.
Project ACT
This November 14, World Diabetes Day, we were thrilled to launch Project Accelerate Cell Therapies or Project ACT — our game plan to make cell therapies a reality for millions around the world who live with T1D.
Why us? Why now?
Because revolutionizing T1D is something we have done before.
Over the last 25 years, we have invested more than $250M and funded more than 300 cell therapy research projects, with more than 30 grants funded and activated in the last fiscal year (2024). Cell therapies in human clinical trials, including those developed by Vertex, were made possible by Breakthrough T1D funding and critical work by our colleagues at the T1D Fund.
We have the people, history, experience, and supporters needed to deliver on Project ACT. Learn more here.
Peer-to-Peer and Signature Events, Wrapped
This year, we raised more than $3,718,928 with our Ride, Endurance, and Signature Events!
Ride & Endurance – $100,000 and counting!
Kansas City Walk – $403,345
Wichita Walk – $21,787
STL Walk – $346,796
KC Gala – $1.9 million
STL Gala – $947,000
Walk
Check out our blog post to learn more about our incredible walk season! This year, we celebrated the second annual T1D parades at our walks — this parade gathers T1D champions by how many years they’ve been a T1D warrior. It remained a very emotional moment and an amazing show of display from our community.
Stay tuned for our 2025 Walk dates!
Gala
This Gala season was one for the books! We raised over $2,847,000 through our Kansas City and St. Louis Dream Galas and enjoyed amazing speeches, a virtual Wall of Hope, and an amazing live and silent auction with prizes to dream about.
Dates have been released for our 2025 Dream Galas!
Dream Gala St. Louis
March 22, 2025
Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis
Dream Gala Kansas City
May 3, 2025
Kansas City Marriott Downtown
Ride
Our Kansas & Missouri riders absolutely blew us away this year, participating in the Couer d’Alene, LaCrosse, and Amelia Island Riders. They trained incredibly hard and raised over $100,000 for T1D research. At our Amelia Island Ride, our very own Kent Schnakenberg received the Rose Jersey for his unwavering support of T1D champions in his life. Thank you to everyone who rode! Let’s celebrate another amazing season in 2025!
Thank You
As we look forward to the future, we are excited to continue our work together as a community to support and improve the lives of those living with type 1 diabetes. Every day, Breakthrough T1D is fighting to improve the lives of people living with T1D – for more progress, more advancements, and better access. Your support and generosity move cures forward so that one day, we can live in a world where type 1 diabetes no longer exists.
