American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society is a nationwide United States nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem through research funding, patient support services, public education, and policy advocacy. It was founded on May 22, 1913, in New York City as the American Society for the Control of Cancer, adopting its current name in 1944, and its research funding has contributed to the work of fifty three Nobel Prize laureates over the organization's history. The society is legally headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with operations distributed nationally, and in its 2023 fiscal year it directed eighty one percent of its funds to program services, split between patient support, research, and advocacy. It organizes well known public fundraising and awareness events including Relay For Life and Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, operates Hope Lodge housing for patients receiving treatment away from home, and serves more than a million callers a year through its National Cancer Information Center.