Helping dialysis patients
live — not just manage.
The Moore Foundation exists to help kidney disease patients and people living with chronic illness reclaim the parts of life that treatment took away — travel, family, and the freedom to move through the world with dignity.
Built by a patient, for patients.
More than 800,000 Americans live with kidney failure — over 500,000 of them on dialysis. Most of them have quietly given up on travel — on seeing family in other states, on attending a wedding or a graduation, on any experience that requires logistics they don’t know how to navigate. The Moore Foundation exists to change that.
We were founded by someone who knows the chair firsthand. That perspective shapes everything we do: we don’t just hand people a brochure and wish them luck. We walk alongside patients, help them plan real trips to real places, and remove the barriers — practical and financial — that stand between a dialysis patient and the life they still want to live.
“Dialysis doesn’t stop your life. It changes it. I’ve used every hour I’m not in that chair to build something that outlasts me.”
— Michael Moore, FounderOur mission is simple and specific: make travel possible for people whose treatment schedules and costs have made it feel impossible. Not someday. Now — while it still matters to them.
We chose this focus deliberately. There is no shortage of organizations funding kidney research, and that work is essential. But almost no one is working on the day-to-day quality of life of the person on dialysis right now — the person who isn’t waiting for a scientific breakthrough but for a way to attend their daughter’s wedding next month. That gap is where we live. Research asks “how do we cure this?” We ask a smaller, more immediate question: “how do we help this person live fully today?” Both questions matter. We’ve chosen the one that isn’t being answered.
Everything we build is judged against a single test: does it get a real patient to a real place they otherwise couldn’t reach? If it does, we do it. If it doesn’t, it’s a distraction. That discipline is how a small charity stays honest and how it earns the trust of the people it serves and the people who fund it.
Three programs. One purpose.
Everything the Foundation does serves a single goal — turning “I wish I could travel” into a plane ticket and a plan. The three programs work as one system: education tells a patient it’s possible, coordination shows them how, and a grant removes the cost that would otherwise stop them. Here is how each piece works.
Resources & Education
Plain-language guides on how to travel safely while managing dialysis or chronic illness — how to find treatment centers at your destination, what your rights are as a patient, and how to prepare. Written by someone who lives it, not a committee that read about it.
Trip Coordination Support
We help patients actually plan trips — not just dream about them. We connect people with clinics near their destination, help navigate insurance questions, and walk alongside someone who no longer has to figure it out alone. This is the hands-on work that turns a maze into a map.
Financial Assistance Grants
For patients who want to travel but can’t afford the logistics. Each grant helps cover flights, ground transport, and coordination with a dialysis center at the destination. Our first-year target is to award 5 grants. Small but real — and growing every year from there.
A charity — accountable by design.
The Moore Foundation is being formed as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization — the same legal framework as your church, the Red Cross, or any charity you’ve trusted before. That designation carries real, enforceable meaning:
- We are not yet IRS-recognized. If and when the IRS grants 501(c)(3) recognition, we become a federally recognized tax-exempt charitable organization — a status we do not currently hold.
- Our finances are public record. Every year we file an IRS Form 990 that anyone can look up, any time, any year. No secrets.
- No one profits personally. No individual — including the founder — can personally profit from donations. Legal protections against self-dealing prevent Foundation money from being directed to insiders.
- It outlives any one person. The Foundation is a legal entity separate from its founder. It is governed by a board and continues regardless of what happens to any single individual.
This is not a business. It is not an investment vehicle. It is a charity, and it is one of the most regulated entity types in the United States.
“The 501(c)(3) designation isn’t just a tax status. It’s a legal contract with the public that says: we will be accountable, we will be transparent, and we will do what we said we would do.”
— The standard for all 501(c)(3) charitiesWhere are we in the process? We are in formation — filing our Articles of Incorporation, building the board, and preparing the full IRS application. We’re doing this in the right order, the right way, with no shortcuts. Donations become tax-deductible once 501(c)(3) approval is granted.
Where the first $25,000 goes.
Our Year 1 fundraising goal is $25,000. Nothing extravagant, every dollar documented. Here is exactly where that money goes and who it serves.
The Year 1 Budget
Covers flight, ground transport, and coordination with a dialysis center at each patient’s destination.
One community health event with free PSA testing and educational materials, in partnership with a local clinic and community organizations.
Awards for students facing hardship or pursuing health-sciences education.
Formation legal fees, D&O insurance, state registration, and site hosting — required to operate legally and protect everyone involved. Resources, education, and trip-coordination support are included here.
No executive salaries in Year 1. Every donation goes to patient travel grants and the minimum operating costs required to run a legitimate, transparent charity. As we grow, the number of patients we can send — and the places we can send them — grows with us.
We keep the goal modest on purpose. It would be easy to announce a six-figure target and a long list of ambitions; it would also be dishonest for a charity in formation. We’d rather promise five real grants and deliver five real grants than promise the world and deliver a press release. When you can measure a charity’s first year in named people who reached named places, you can trust its tenth.
Send a patient somewhere that matters.
A single $1,500 grant is the difference between a dialysis patient watching a milestone on a phone screen and being there in the room. Your gift funds flights, ground transport, and the coordination that makes travel safe — the exact barriers that stop people cold.
We are not accepting donations yet — not until our state charitable registration and IRS application are in place. What you can do today is pledge your intent to give. Once our 501(c)(3) status is approved, every donation is tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law, and every dollar is documented in our public annual filing.
The questions people ask us most.
Built to give — year after year, indefinitely.
A one-time gift funds one grant. Lasting support funds grants every single year. The Moore family intends to support this Foundation for the long term — through a share of the family business’s success, proceeds from the founder’s books and app, and gifts the family chooses to make — so the mission is never one fundraising season away from stopping.
Over time, family members and donors can create named grant programs — a living grant that keeps giving in someone’s honor long after they’re gone. That is what turns a charity into a legacy.