David Kettle has seen both sides of cancer. Cancer Council Victoria’s Gifts in Will lead spends his working days speaking with potential donors, helping them coordinate a final, selfless bequest: leaving a donation to the charity in their will.
Over the past five years, people who have generously included Cancer Council Victoria in their wills have helped to fund about 50% of the organisation’s research and support, helping to touch countless lives, including Kettle’s.
“I [work] within a cancer space, talking to people who’ve had a cancer experience a lot, and then suddenly, three years ago, I find out I’ve got prostate cancer,” Kettle says. “It makes you realise that everybody knows somebody who’s had cancer, and more than half of the people in Victoria are going to get cancer at some time. It really brings it home to you.”
Kettle’s own experience of prostate cancer has been smoothed out by access to modern detection techniques, expert specialists and robotic surgery to remove his prostate. His post-treatment prognosis is bright; he will need just one consultation a year.
Kettle understands that he is more fortunate than many (“I sometimes feel a little survivor’s guilt,” he says), but his experience speaks to the ongoing importance of his job. About 145,000 Australians are predicted to receive cancer diagnoses this year alone, and charitable bequests ensure Cancer Council Victoria can support cancer research, awareness and prevention for those affected by cancer now and in the future.
Gifts in wills work like this: in consultation with a solicitor, people update their will to share a portion of their estate with Cancer Council Victoria following their death. The recommended amount is a very small slice of the total: 1-2%. “It’s worth stressing that we expect that [donors] will look after their own family and their own affairs as the first priority,” Kettle says.
While initiatives such as Daffodil Day and Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea remain important fundraisers, Cancer Council Victoria considers gifts in wills to be critical because, with donations often decades away from fulfilment, they provide ongoing certainty.
“Progress in research takes years and sometimes decades,” Kettle says. “It is gifts in wills that allow us to plan for the future and ensure that breakthroughs in cancer research can continue to be made.”
Cancer Council Victoria uses some of these funds to support research, including research into CAR T cell therapy (immunotherapy that uses genetically altered immune cells to locate and destroy cancer cells) and the Australian Breakthrough Cancer Study, a long-term study of 50,000 Australians looking at the roles that genes, lifestyle and environment play in the development of cancer and other diseases.
Previous research programs funded by bequests have already made their mark, with five-year survival rates for Victorians diagnosed with cancer increasing from 46% in 1982 to 68% in 2016, largely thanks to screening, reductions in tobacco use and improvements in treatment.
Cancer Council Victoria also funds community programs to prevent cancer. Its biggest wins have been the SunSmart and Slip, Slop, Slap campaigns (sun-safe messages that prevented an estimated 43,000 cancers in the general population between 1988 and 2010 alone), long-term campaigning against tobacco use (“We’re moving into the vaping world now,” Kettle says) and helping people detect bowel cancer with at-home screening kits.
Like research, community programs for early detection, education and screening are reliant on funding sourced through charitable bequests. “More than half of the support services we were able to offer to Victorians impacted by cancer in 2022 were made possible through compassionate people who included gifts in their wills,” Kettle says.
“This ensured that Victorians affected by cancer were able to access critical information and services like cancer information guides, support from a cancer nurse, peer support and so xmuch more.”
These days, living cancer-free, Kettle has his own personal reason to thank people who choose to leave behind a donation.
“I’m a living embodiment of the fact that people who have donated money to Cancer Council Victoria or have donated to cancer research generally have made a huge difference to my life, because 20 years ago my diagnosis would have been totally different,” he says.
“The massive change in survival rates shows that we’re turning [cancer] into a chronic disease that people live with or overcome. That progress continues and with ongoing funding and research we know that can only improve the outcomes for all those impacted by a cancer diagnosis.”
