The Hummingbird Fund is proud and honored to continue our work of hope in action as we honor and remember our co-founder Jim Plews-Ogan. Jim taught us all so much about hope. This fall, we will launch a new initiative to elevate Jim’s Turbo-Charged Living Scale (TLS), which we have renamed the Hummingbird Hope Scale or the ALS-TLS.

Jim developed the ALS-TLS/Hummingbird Hope Scale in response to the ALS-Functional Rating Scale, which tracks a patient’s decline in function as ALS advances. The TLS is a companion scale that documents progressive growth in areas such as humor, innovation, adaptability, and kindness. Jim believed that, with practice and intention, there are ways a patient could bring balance to the devastation of a disease like ALS. 

“Actively seeking beauty, engaging in gratitude practices daily, setting aside time for contemplation, receiving the kindness and love of community, finding ways to make the world better, and letting the absolute absurdity of trying to cope with this disease generate both tears and laughter,” Jim wrote in an article that was published in Notre Dame University’s Journal of Virtues and Vocations. “All of these practices allow us to… have a sustaining hope.”

As we move forward with keeping Jim’s turbo-charged legacy alive through our work at the Hummingbird Fund, we’re thrilled to share that our next project is to elevate and further amplify the scale. We’re introducing the Hummingbird Hope Scale in a clinical setting, in the form of a quality improvement project which will be conducted by clinicians at accredited university sites. We believe this is the first step in what will be a bigger and more impactful project—the work of spreading hope to more clinical settings, touching more patients, and even crossing disease areas and age groups.  

We are driven by a deep belief and hope that change is possible. As Jim wrote, “change is hard, but those transformed by suffering have a purpose that is stronger and deeper than the inertia that resists change.” Our purpose is to continue introducing hope to anyone who needs it, and we’re starting now. 

Please join us in supporting this work with a gift today. Click here to give online. With your support, we can fully fund our Hummingbird Hope Scale project and bring a turbo-charge life to more patients and families. Thank you for your support, for helping us continue to believe that there is hope in action.