About
The Manors Foundation began with a diagnosis.
In 2023, founder Donivon Duffy returned home from a wedding weekend in New Orleans and learned he had entered End Stage Renal Disease. What followed was a time of unknown fear and life changes that nothing can prepare you for. He trained at Fresenius Medical Care to perform solo home hemodialysis, a demanding discipline that puts a patient in charge of his own treatment, several sessions a week, every week, for life.
Donivon had something not every patient has. He had a vast support network, and he had a background in printing, graphic design, and consulting to fall back on. Family, friends, and community showed up for him in the ways people need to be shown up for when their life changes overnight, and his work gave him the flexibility to build treatment into his days instead of wrestling a fixed employment schedule around it.
Sitting in clinics and connecting with other patients, he saw how rare all of that was. Many are working a single job, on someone else's clock, with no room to move and no one to lean on. He saw people managing this alone. He saw the gap, and he decided to close it.
A Different Way to See It
Most people look at dialysis and see an interruption. Donivon looked at those same 16 to 20 hours a week and saw something else: uninterrupted, protected time. Time to think, to build, to work. That reframe is the heart of everything we do.
We believe a diagnosis is not the end of a person's productivity, purpose, or plans. It is a change in the schedule, not a change in the worth of the life being lived.
What We Do Today
The Manors Foundation currently serves patients across multiple dialysis clinics in Mississippi, meeting people where they already are and providing the support, encouragement, and practical help that makes the treatment chair feel less isolating.
Where We Are Going
Our goal is simple and ambitious. We want to reach every dialysis patient in the state of Mississippi, and then beyond it. No patient should have to build a support system from scratch in the hardest season of their life.
We cannot do that alone. With your support, we can close the gap for the next patient, and the one after that.