Lendmark Financial Services, a leading provider of household credit and consumer loan solutions, today announced the company has raised more than $615,000 for its fifth annual Climb to CURE fundraising and awareness campaign. The money raised will go directly to CURE Childhood Cancer, a nonprofit dedicated to funding targeted pediatric cancer research while supporting patients and their families.

The 2020 Climb to CURE campaign, totaling $617,195, brings Lendmark Financial’s five-year fundraising total for CURE to $2,460,195.

Lendmark Financial executives, employees, partners, sponsors, and friends started raising money this July and ended their collective efforts in September, which is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. While many donations came from individual employees through Lendmark’s Climb to CURE fundraising website, employees also held coffee sales, softball tournaments, t-shirt sales, bingo nights and hosted food trucks to raise money.

“Childhood cancer touches so many families in our country and in the communities we serve,” said Bobby Aiken, CEO of Lendmark Financial Services. “Once again, our employees demonstrated their passion and commitment, far surpassing our initial goal of $400,000. The COVID-19 pandemic presented extra challenges this year, so I’m especially grateful for the engagement and fundraising creativity shown by everyone involved.”

In previous years, the ‘climb’ portion of Lendmark Climb to CURE was a 200+ in-person event where employees ran or walked around a stadium track or climbed the stadium’s stairs, representative of the challenges that children and teens battling cancer face. In 2020, with COVID-19 requiring social distancing measures, Lendmark adapted, and instead, ended the campaign with a seven-day virtual step competition, in which Lendmark employees across the country laced up their tennis shoes to walk 13,186,408 steps, totaling more than 6,500 miles.

“The health crisis and economic uncertainty have created a very hostile fundraising environment, resulting in tremendous pressure on the nonprofit sector -- including CURE -- however, childhood cancer hasn’t stopped, so neither will we. We depend on our supporters to enable us to continue to help these children. Lendmark is far and away our largest supporter, having raised nearly $2.5 million in just 5 years. Only with their help have we been able to invest more than $4.3 million in pediatric cancer research each year and support families fighting the disease,” said Kristin Connor, Executive Director of CURE. “With every dollar raised and donated, CURE’s impact grows, bringing us one step closer to ending childhood cancer once and for all.”

For the last three years, Lendmark has raised at least one-third of CURE’s commitment to advancing precision medicine, the most innovative form of treatment for children with cancer in decades.

According to the National Cancer Institute, nearly 17,000 children and adolescents in the United States are diagnosed with cancer each year. CURE’s precision medicine initiative focuses on bringing individualized therapies and, ultimately, a safe and effective cure for all children diagnosed.

CURE also provides support for families of children diagnosed with cancer.

For context, $50,000 provides emergency financial assistance for 20-30 families, ensuring housing and food stability; $25,000 pays for 250 counseling sessions for patients, their parents and their siblings; $10,000 enables 20 bereaved families to attend CURE’s Weekend of Hope and Healing; and $500 feeds nearly 100 hospitalized children and family members.

To donate to CURE, visit https://curechildhoodcancer.org.