To mark their milestone birthday, the organisation donated a whopping $400,000 to local cancer research, lifting their fundraising total to more than $2 million.

The funds, raised through their Rutherford op shop, went to four different Newcastle cancer researchers.

Ovarian cancer researcher Dr Nikola Bowden, children's brain cancer researcher Dr Matt Dunn, pancreatic cancer researcher Dr Hubert Hondermarck and lung cancer researcher Dr Xu Dong Zhang each received $100,000.

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Maitland Cancer Appeal president, Ingrid Heyman, said the event was great and everybody had a wonderful time.

"We had the big birthday cake, handed over the big cheque and the professors were absolutely delighted with the day," Ms Heyman said.

"The committee were all stoked with how it went and Alice was the most important part.

"I did ask her in my speech whether she was happy with what we've done and to send us a sign if she wasn't happy, and there was no sign, she would have been absolutely proud of the whole day.

"To hand over that money, that was the main thing to her."

Member for Maitland, Jenny Aitchison MP, presented Ms Heyman with a certificate of appreciation for her work at Maitland Cancer Appeal, and Cr Loretta Baker presented life membership certificates to Paula Zuhnemer and Fay Murray.

Ms Heyman said she is very proud of the local organisation's volunteers and they couldn't raise the money without them.

"I'm very proud of our volunteers, we couldn't do it without them, no way," she said.

"What we're very proud of is the fact we have raised so much money for such a small amount of people."

The organisation started in 1982, raising money through raffle tickets and market days with a lot of cooking before they evolved into having an op shop.

As well as raising money, the group provides a linen service for terminally ill patients, run from the back of their shop.

"The main event of our op shop is our laundry service for the terminally ill out the back, that was Alice's baby," Ms Heyman said.

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