Breast Cancer Research Stamp

Breast Cancer Research Stamp

The breast cancer research stamp (BCRS) is a semi-postal non-denominated postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service, priced in 2011 as eleven cents higher than the standard first-class letter rate. The surplus above the price of the first-class stamp is collected by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and allocated to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DoD) for breast cancer research. If a person used this stamp exclusively, and mailed one letter per day for a year, the resulting donation would amount to US $40.

Originally created in 1997, Congress has reauthorized the Breast Cancer Research Stamp several times. The original sponsors for the bill were United States Senators Feinstein (D-CA), Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY), and Lauch Faircloth (R-NC), and United States Representatives Vic Fazio (D-CA) and Susan Molinari (R-NY). Breast cancer survivor and advocate, Betsy Mullen, breast cancer surgeon, Ernie Bodai and breast cancer advocate David Goodman who lost his first wife to breast cancer, spearheaded the grassroots advocacy efforts in partnership with Senator Feinstein and her colleagues that led to the creation and issuance of this historic stamp designed to save lives.

The hugely successful Breast Cancer Research Stamp is an example of conscientious consumption in cause marketing, in which a person substitutes buying and consuming along with a tiny donation, for making a more significant donation.

Read more about Breast Cancer Research Stamp:  History and Description, Programs Supported, Timeline, Program Accomplishments and Outcomes, Sales

Famous quotes containing the words breast, cancer, research and/or stamp:

    On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

    We “need” cancer because, by the very fact of its incurability, it makes all other diseases, however virulent, not cancer.
    Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. “Under the Sign of Cancer,” Myths and Memories (1986)

    Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.
    Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    Was it an intellectual consequence of this ‘rebirth,’ of this new dignity and rigor, that, at about the same time, his sense of beauty was observed to undergo an almost excessive resurgence, that his style took on the noble purity, simplicity and symmetry that were to set upon all his subsequent works that so evident and evidently intentional stamp of the classical master.
    Thomas Mann (1875–1955)