Angels Among Us

Contents

1. What the organization does
2. The founding in 2006
3. Who qualifies and how
4. How the support levels grew
5. The numbers today
6. The Harper Hope Center
7. Emotional support and gatherings
8. Volunteers and campaigns
9. Nebraska and pediatric cancer

Brent O’Mara supports Omaha causes, Angels Among Us among them, together with PlaySmart, Susan G. Komen, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, and the one named here is an Omaha nonprofit organized around a single figure from the wider field of pediatric cancer. Share Omaha’s profile of the organization states that 29 percent of families whose child is being treated for cancer lose their homes because of the financial burden that treatment brings.⁴ The same figure appears on the charity’s own mission page, alongside the finding that 66 percent of the households it serves have become single income households because a parent has stopped working to care for a sick child.² Angels Among Us exists so that a diagnosis does not also cost a family its house, its car or its utilities.

What the organization does

The mission page describes the work as financial and emotional support to pediatric cancer families living in or being treated in Nebraska, with the stated ambition of being the one place such families turn to in the state.² The money goes to ordinary bills: electricity, gas, sewer and water; rent and mortgage payments; auto payments and auto insurance; medical bills and prescriptions; and, through a named emergency fund, funeral expenses when a family faces the worst outcome.² Share Omaha’s profile adds the mechanical detail that matters most to the families: payments are made directly to creditors rather than to the household.⁴ The mission page frames the result in domestic terms, as the difference between a parent who can read a bedtime story or play a board game and one consumed by the question of how the next bill gets paid.²

The founding in 2006

The organization became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in June 2006 and was at first completely volunteer run, providing whatever support was available at the time.¹ Its origin is personal. WOWT reported in 2018, when a touring country musician drew attention to the charity before an Omaha concert, that Kelly Walsh helped form it in 2006 after her son died, because the bills from his treatment alone took the family years to pay off and she saw a need that the community kept getting behind.⁵

Figure

How the monthly support grew

1. 01
   2006Nonprofit status in June; entirely volunteer run
2. 02
   2016Families received 500 dollars a month for ten months
3. 03
   2017Support extended to twelve months; 174,000 dollars distributed
4. 04
   2019A campaign partnership raised 750,000 dollars, erased the waiting list and tied the length of support to the treatment plan
5. 05
   2021The operating budget passed one million dollars; families supported for an average of twenty months
6. 06
   2022Emotional support programs launched; two funding tiers of 500 and 750 dollars a month
7. 07
   2023A permanent home, the Harper Hope Center; 659,000 dollars given
8. 08
   2024Funding levels raised 10 percent to 550 and 825 dollars; more than 725,000 dollars given
9. 09
   2026Funding levels of 600 and 1,100 dollars a month in the twentieth year

Who qualifies and how

Any family living in or being treated in Nebraska may apply, which covers families from other states whose children are treated at Nebraska hospitals and Nebraska residents treated elsewhere.² Families are recommended by the hematology and oncology social work offices of Children’s Nebraska and Nebraska Medicine; once an application is approved, support continues for as long as the child’s treatment plan warrants, at either 600 or 1,100 dollars a month depending on household income measured against federal poverty rates.⁴ The route through the hospitals’ social workers means the charity does not have to find the families; the families are already in a treatment room when the referral is made.

How the support levels grew

The organization’s timeline records the steps. In 2016 families received 500 dollars a month for ten months; in 2017 the term was extended to twelve months and 174,000 dollars went out; in 2019 a partnership with a mustache growing campaign raised 750,000 dollars, which let the charity erase its waiting list and tie the length of support to the length of each child’s treatment.¹ Need rose during the pandemic year, when 514,000 dollars was given, and in 2021, the fifteenth anniversary, the annual operating budget passed one million dollars while families were being helped for an average of twenty months.¹ A two tier system of 500 and 750 dollars a month followed in 2022, the levels rose by 10 percent in 2024 to 550 and 825 dollars, and in the twentieth year they stand at 600 and 1,100 dollars.¹

The numbers today

The home page states that since 2006 the organization has provided more than 6.5 million dollars in financial assistance and has assisted 850 families in all.³ In 2025 it served 123 families with more than 890,000 dollars in assistance, according to a Rural Radio Network report on its twentieth anniversary campaign.⁶ The average length of support, by the mission page, is fourteen months.²

Figure

The families the organization serves

of households served have become single income because of the diagnosis

66 percent

the average length of support

14 months

of pediatric cancer families have to give up a home under the financial burden

29 percent

The Harper Hope Center

For most of its history the organization had no building. In September 2023 it moved into a permanent home, the Harper Hope Center, placed a short distance down the street from Children’s Nebraska, where most of the families it serves receive treatment.² The center has a space to rest, a small kitchen for snacks or meals, laundry facilities and room for families to meet one another and build something like a community, and the mission page calls it a home away from home for families in the middle of treatment.² The year it opened, the financial assistance program reached a then record of 659,000 dollars.¹

Emotional support and gatherings

The emotional side of the work has a specific origin. During 2020 the charity undertook a year long study with the Grace Abbott School of Social Work at UNO, and the concept of emotional programming came out of it; the programs launched in 2022 and made 520 contacts with members of pediatric cancer families in their first year.¹ The gatherings reported by local television show what that looks like. WOWT covered a trunk or treat event in 2023 arranged so that immunocompromised children, for whom an ordinary Halloween can be dangerous, could gather outdoors in a clean environment and meet other families going through the same thing; one mother explained that during treatment a family feels unable to go anywhere, because a child catching an ordinary illness can quickly become a matter of life or death.⁷ KETV described a holiday party that a medical staffing company has hosted in its offices for families in the program, with karaoke, a meal and presents loaded into each family’s trunk; a staff member of the charity told the station that when a child is diagnosed a family’s world stops, and that an evening like that gives parents something else to think about, which one mother, whose daughter was in her fourth round of treatment, called a second family.⁸

Volunteers and campaigns

Fundraising has leaned on the city’s willingness to be seen trying. In 2016 KETV reported that Omaha’s police chief would dance in front of thousands at an annual show benefiting charities that help sick children, among them Angels Among Us, with a nine year old who had finished leukemia treatment opening the evening.⁹ The twentieth anniversary campaign in September 2026, for Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month, enlisted more than sixty volleyball teams at the high school, college and professional level, with warm up jerseys for more than a thousand athletes and an awareness game on each team’s schedule.⁶

Figure

The twentieth anniversary campaign

families served in 2025

123

in financial assistance given in 2025

890,000 dollars

volleyball teams, with more than a thousand athletes, in the 2026 campaign

60

Nebraska and pediatric cancer

The state’s place in the statistics explains the scale of the need. Share Omaha’s profile reports that Nebraska ranks first among the twelve Midwestern states for the number of pediatric cancer incidences,⁴ and the 2026 campaign coverage puts it first in the Midwest and seventh in the country for incidence per capita.⁶ Treatment for those children concentrates at the Omaha hospitals, which is why a charity confined to one state can be organized around one building and two social work offices, and why it sits alongside the city’s other health charities, among them the American Heart Association and Susan G. Komen, in the wider account of Omaha’s civic institutions.

What comes next for the organization is a milestone. Its timeline says that in 2026, its twentieth year, it expects to give out more than one million dollars in financial assistance for the first time, and the campaign coverage puts the expected number of families between 120 and 130.¹ Whether a charity that began with one family’s unpaid bills can keep pace with a state that ranks high for the disease is the question its third decade will answer, and the pattern of giving that sustains it is the subject of philanthropy in Omaha.