Orr Fellow turns his own juvenile diabetes into non-profit crusade

Will Oberndorfer is an alumnus of Orr Fellowship, an Indiana-focused early career development program that recruits, assesses and matches college graduates with future-focused Indiana businesses. The program has a network of 624 alumni and 120 current Fellows, working across 73 industries and 273 companies.

Oberndorfer is also the executive director for Diabetes Will’s Way, a nonprofit based in Carmel that he and his mother co-founded a decade ago.

“Orr is a postgraduate program for college grads,” Oberndorfer told The Reporter. “It’s a two-year program where our mission is to recruit and develop the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs. And that sounds very canned because we say it at every meeting. Really what it is to me is a community of young, hardworking, high-achieving professionals. We get to grow and learn, and then also be together as we experience this transition out of college and into our first, second, and third jobs. It’s a network that we get to just leverage and be a part of. And it’s just an awesome, powerful community where we get leadership development and things on top of it as well.”

During his Fellowship, Oberndorfer was matched with Milestone Business Solutions Inc., where he remains employed today. His work at Diabetes Will’s Way is what makes his story stand out. It is an organization supporting families and children facing type 1 diabetes by bridging the gap between what insurance covers and the resources needed for children to thrive.

The organization helps the families of young diabetics, age 26 and under.

“To date, we’ve given out 416 grants, totaling just over $381,000,” Oberndorfer said. “We’ve hit 33 different states now.”

Even with that national reach, Oberndorfer focuses on helping Hoosiers.

“We’ve given 112 grants to families here in Indiana,” Oberndorfer said.

The reason the organization focuses on helping the families of younger diabetics is because Oberndorfer was himself diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 13.

“It was definitely a big change,” Oberndorfer said. “Diabetes, it’s chronic. It doesn’t take a break. And if you take a break from it, it hits you twice as hard. But being that young, I think I was adaptable. I was really fortunate to have a great support system – a great family. They all showed up at the hospital. My sisters came home from college. And they helped me learn the disease.”

While Oberndorfer was fortunate that his family did not have a particularly difficult time affording the care and supplies needed to manage his diabetes, Diabetes Will’s Way exists to help those who are not as lucky.

“We’re a small-budget organization,” Oberndorfer said, “Our largest year has been around $55,000 in grants.”

Diabetes Will’s Way offers two types of grants.

“The first, our primary type of grant, is a durable medical equipment grant,” Oberndorfer said. “What that means is basically any insulin pump or continuous glucose monitor, which is just something that you attach to yourself to monitor your blood sugar at all times. They’re expensive pieces of equipment that our families need. A lot of times we specifically help underinsured families who, when they get this prescription, have a high out-of-pocket cost. So it could be three, four thousand dollars that they have to pay out of pocket after insurance covers it for their insulin pump. It could be a few hundred dollars for their continuous glucose monitor. We come in and pay the vendor on their behalf for these grants so that burden of that out-of-pocket cost is lifted from them.”

The second type of grant Diabetes Will’s Way offers is an emergency cash grant.

“That’s more for your month-to-month supplies and diabetes-related hospital bills that you might have,” Oberndorfer said. “Those types of things are where we can step in and provide some one-time support to help a family kind of get over the hump or get to the next paycheck.”

You can learn more about Diabetes Will’s Way online at DiabetesWillsWay.com.

The website has abundant information on the organization itself, how it began, many of the families it helps, and links either to donate directly or attend fundraisers.