Understanding the Three Roles: Angel, Survivor, Supporter

The Angel is the organizer. They create the campaign, invite people, post updates, and make sure there's a place for everyone to gather. Angels are usually the closest friend, spouse, sibling, adult child, or coworker of the person facing cancer. The app has one Angel per campaign today, but in real life the work often gets shared behind the scenes.

Being the Angel is a real job. Not a heroic one, but a steady one: small things, over weeks or months. It also gives you something to do with your hands in the weeks when nothing else helps.

• Creates and manages the campaign
• Invites supporters and welcomes new ones
• Posts updates and milestones
• Names a Beneficiary to receive any money that comes in
• Looks after the Survivor's story
• Keeps an eye on comments and handles anything sensitive that comes up

The Survivor is the person the campaign is for. Their only job is to receive: read the notes when they have the energy, know they're loved, get through treatment. They can take part as much or as little as they want.

When the page is first shared with them, it's sealed. They open it when they're ready, and then they decide what happens: keep it, keep it with gifts turned off or amounts hidden, or make it quiet. Quiet pauses the page and refunds every gift after a 24-hour window in case they change their mind.

A Survivor might assume they'll need to manage the page, answer every note, post their own updates, thank every donor. None of that is required. The Angel handles it. The Survivor is invited to join in, never expected to.

They do keep one thing: the right to set limits on what's shared, to ask for things to be changed or removed, and to shape how the page feels. The Angel looks after the story. They don't own it.

Supporters are everyone else: friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, people from church, and sometimes someone who barely knows the Survivor but got the link and was moved to join. Supporters are what make the page feel like a room full of people. They leave notes, comment on updates, pass the link along, and sometimes give.

• Joins a campaign through a shared link
• Leaves notes, comments, and reactions
• Gets notified when there's an update
• Gives if they want to (always optional, never required)
• Can be on more than one campaign at once
• Can quietly leave any time

The thing that matters most about being a Supporter is staying. A note on day one matters. A note six months later, when most of the world has moved on, matters more.

A Survivor can create a campaign for themselves and be their own Angel. An Angel on one campaign can be a Supporter on someone else's. A close family member might be a Supporter on the page while doing a lot of Angel-like work behind the scenes. The roles describe what you do, not who you are.

There's often someone who isn't the official Angel but does a lot of the quiet coordinating. Thank that person. They make the visible Angel's job possible.

Roles aren't fixed. As treatment goes on and the Survivor gains or loses energy, they may step into more or less of their own page. An Angel may need to hand things off for a bad week. Supporters drift in and out as their own lives pull at them. That's normal.

The page will look different in month one than in month six. Quiet weeks aren't failures.