About Us

The Katie Caples Foundation was started in 1998 by the family of Katie Caples, a young high school student from Jacksonville who became an organ and tissue donor after not surviving the trauma of an automobile accident.

The Katie Ride started in 2005 as a cycling event for novices to advanced riders to raise awareness about making an organ donation commitment. The Katie Walk, which was added in 2009, is another opportunity for you to tell the story, raise funds and become active in our community.

The cycling event offers courses of varying distance from 7 to 100 miles with full support along the way. The Katie Walk offers a 5K and 10K walk through beautiful Fort Clinch State Park. Funds raised by participants of both events help underwrite LifeQuest’s Decision:Donation education program that is presented to high school freshman and sophomores.

Our Mission

17-year-old Katie, upon her death, was an organ donor. This experience educated the Foundation members about the paucity of organs available for transplant in the United States. There are currently over 107,000 individuals waiting for transplants in America. Every 10 minutes someone is added to the waiting list and every 90 minutes someone dies for lack of an organ. We believe we can help change that.

The Katie Caples Foundation created a cycling event called the Katie Ride for Life to stimulate public awareness of this problem and raise funding to help underwrite an organ donor education program.

In 2004, the Foundation selected LifeQuest Organ Recovery Services as its partner to implement its organ donor education program. LifeQuest is the area’s organ procurement organization that serves 36 counties in northern Florida.

LifeQuest will utilize the nationally successful Decision:Donation syllabus and program developed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to introduce organ donation at the high school level. LifeQuest and the Foundation continue to experiment with classroom and assembly presentations to refine a program to be presented across North Florida.

It is estimated that TV coverage/interviews, newspaper and magazine print and personal presentations about organ donation and the Katie Ride for Life reached over 250,000 First Coast residents in 2009.

It is anticipated that with the partial underwriting of the Decision:Donation presentations by the Foundation that LifeQuest will reach every high school in the First Coast area and up to 90 schools in total across northern Florida. The 2010 goal is to present to 10,000 freshman and sophomore students.

The Katie Caples Foundation is a recognized 501c3 non-profit corporation and is registered in the state of Florida.