PMC 2025: The Spirit of Massachusetts, the Best of America, & Collaboration on Steroids!
PMC 2025: The Spirit of Massachusetts, the Best of America, & Collaboration on Steroids!
By Craig Hall Underwood, August 22, 2025
On Sunday morning, August 3rd, at 3:45 a.m., I stood in the pre-dawn glow watching hundreds of volunteers serve breakfast to thousands of riders before the final leg of the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC). I had an epiphany. This scene — and the entire weekend’s event, where I completed my 11th PMC riding 170 miles from Wellesley to Bourne on Saturday and then on to Provincetown — revealed something powerful: The PMC embodies the Spirit of Massachusetts and the very Best of America, at a time when we desperately need both.
Collaboration on Steroids
Now in its 45th year, the PMC is the most successful athletic fundraiser in the nation, raising money for cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This year, it is expected to raise over $76 million; last year, it surpassed a cumulative total of $1 billion since PMC’s inaugural ride 46 years ago.
Even more impressive than the 6,500 athletes and 3,500 volunteers is the network of more than 270,000 individual donors who will contribute this year — and millions of individual donations since its founding in 1980. That’s collaboration on a massive scale, with one singular mission: defeating cancer.
As a rider, I’m constantly lifted by the fans lining the route — parents holding signs of gratitude, kids in costumes, and beloved recurring characters like “Fred Flintstone” near the Cape Cod Canal, “The Lobster Lady” in Brewster, and the new crowd-pleasers, the Dancing Sharks, Starfish and Octopus on the final leg. Two signs have stayed with me:
“GREAT JOB, RANDOM STRANGER!”
and
“DOING ANYTHING FUN THIS WEEKEND? NOTHING MUCH … JUST SAVING LIVES!”
These words apply as much to the hundreds of thousands of donors — many of whom never meet the patients they help — as they do to the riders. Their contributions power research that has already saved countless lives.
The Spirit of Massachusetts
To those of us who live in and love Massachusetts, it’s no surprise that the nation’s top athletic fundraiser is rooted here. Our Commonwealth leads the nation in education, healthcare, and innovation. We’re home to:
- The first public library (Boston, 1653)
- The first public school (Boston Latin School, 1635)
- The first American college (Harvard, 1636)
- The first public park (Boston Common, 1634)
- Medical breakthroughs like the first successful human organ transplant (kidney, 1954) and pioneering cancer treatments at Dana-Farber
- Leadership in biotech, clean energy, and life sciences
Massachusetts consistently ranks #1 in education and is among the top states for public health, research funding, and per-capita charitable giving. The PMC reflects all of these strengths: innovation, community spirit, and a refusal to accept the status quo.
The Best of America — When We Need It Most
Incredibly, the current administration’s FY2026 budget proposes slashing NIH by about $18 billion (40%) and cutting the National Cancer Institute by $2.69 billion (37%)—reductions so steep that NCI has already limited 2025 grant awards in anticipation. And in late 2024, Congress stripped several pediatric cancer provisions from the year-end spending package, eliminating anticipated supports (no dollar figure was specified in the final law).
Every PMC staff member, rider, volunteer, and corporate sponsor — who cover 100% of event overhead so that every dollar raised goes directly to Dana-Farber — refuses to take these cuts lying down. They represent the best of America: citizens who take action instead of waiting for someone else to fix the problem.
Now more than ever, we need this spirit — bold, generous, relentless — to create the change we want to see. If you would like to contribute, please go to www.PMC.org/donate.
The Author with 9-year-old Declan Vail, who is bravely fighting pediatric brain cancer, and his 7-year-old brother Teagan. Teagan and Declan raise money for kid’s brain cancer research by riding in the annual Kid’s PMC.
Craig Hall Underwood is Managing Partner of Underwood Partners, LLC, which advises Loyalty, Social, & Political Entrepreneurs, Leaders & Investors. He publishes CollaborationEvangelist.com and is a former Rhodes Scholar.
