2024 Lifetime Achievement Award: Billy Starr

By Kalie VanDewater

Lifetime Achievement Award

Billy Starr

Founder and Executive Director
Pan-Mass Challenge

Throughout our lives, we experience things that inform our decisions. Certain events can even shape the trajectory of the rest of our lives. For Billy Starr, the winner of this year’s NonProfit PRO Lifetime Achievement Award, the decision to make his life’s mission to fight cancer was spurred by the loss of his mother to melanoma when he was 23.

Today, Starr is founder and executive director of the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC), a Needham, Massachusetts-based bike-a-thon that donates 100% of rider-raised dollars to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Founded in 1980, the organization surpassed $1 billion raised for cancer research and treatment in July.

“For reference, in 2014, the PMC raised $41 million with 5,500 cyclists, bringing its lifetime contributions to $455 million,” Starr’s nominator told NonProfit PRO. “In 2023, 6,000 cyclists raised $72 million, bringing the organization’s lifetime contributions to $972 million.”

For this year’s event, 6,800 cyclists raised a record $75 million.

When it began 45 years ago, Starr and his friends were the event’s main participants. While Starr continues to ride and fundraise for the event every year, the Pan-Mass Challenge has now grown into a premier event, according to his nominator.

“Billy has fostered a fierce community of determined riders, volunteers and corporate sponsors who return year after year and lift the fundraising bar higher,” his nominator said.

Starr has led the Pan-Mass Challenge to become Dana-Farber’s largest single contributor, per his nominator, with most of the donated funds being unrestricted to enable doctors and researchers to put the money toward work that may otherwise not be funded. This has enabled Dana-Farber researchers to investigate a drug for pediatric brain cancer — tovorafenib, also known as Ojemda — which the Food and Drug Administration approved in April.

Not only has he made an indelible mark on cancer fundraising, but he has pushed the Pan-Mass Challenge to be a leader in the peer-to-peer fundraising space. Through Starr’s dedication, his nominator said that the organization:

Became the first event to require a credit card guarantee for its fundraising minimum in 1995. This cut rider delinquency from 17% to 3%.
Was one of the first nonprofits to adopt online fundraising in 2000.
Secured a presenting partnership with The Red Sox Foundation in 2003. This made the Pan-Mass Challenge the first athletic fundraiser to have a professional sports organization sponsor it.
Implemented 100% pass-through of donations to its beneficiary in 2007. The Pan-Mass Challenge has now maintained this for 18 years.

In 2023, the PMC was named the No. 3 peer-to-peer fundraiser in the United States on Peer-to-Peer Professional Forum’s Top 30 list. According to his nominator, Starr’s leadership was critical in helping the nonprofit compete against much larger organizations with more participants and more fundraising events throughout the year.

“When Billy founded the PMC, there were fewer than 5 million cancer survivors in the U.S.,” his nominator told NonProfit PRO. “Today, that number is 18 million-plus and growing. Year after year, Billy and the PMC community rally together to do their part in increasing these survival rates by raising as much money as possible. Nearly everyone knows someone who has either been impacted by cancer, lost their battle or experienced it firsthand. Thanks to Billy, participants have a way to make a tangible impact in this fight, with their efforts having a global impact.”