On Jul. 28, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Semipostal Authorization Act (P.L. 106-253), which gave the U.S. Postal Service the authority to issue semipostals. These stamps are sold at a premium in order to help provide funding for a particular area of research.

The surplus above the price of the first-class stamp is collected by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and allocated to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DoD) for breast cancer research.

The ‘Breast Cancer Research’ (BCR) stamp was created by the U.S. Congress with passage of “The Stamp Out Breast Cancer Act of 1997. First issued on July 29, 1998, the BCR Stamp was the country’s first fundraising stamp.