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Vote from Any Country for ME/FM Charity to Win $20,000!

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by Sasha


Image by www.facebook.com/MEAwarenessPics


The first thing to say about this: you don’t need Facebook!

The second thing: you don’t have to be in Canada to vote!

The third thing... well, time to give you the details...

Nature’s Bounty, a long-established manufacturer of vitamins and food supplements, is running an online voting contest for Canadian charities. The National ME/FM Action Network has entered.

The Action Network is probably best-known internationally for spearheading the development of the Canadian Consensus Criteria.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of rigorous diagnostic criteria in this disease: we all owe the Action Network a debt for this contribution to diagnosis and research. The Network also hosted the 2011 IACFS/ME Conference in Ottawa. But as well as these international achievements, for the past twenty years the Action Network has supported patients through advocacy, education, information, and promoting research. It’s the main charity for the 750,000 people in Canada with ME or FM.

So it’s well worth supporting the Action Network in the contest. The top three winners will get $20,000, $10,000 and $5,000 respectively. Of the remaining charities, three will be chosen at random to each win $5,000. US dollars and Canadian dollars are worth the same: $20,000 is about £13,000 or 15,000 Euros. That would be a considerable boost to any national ME/FM charity.

Voting opens on Tuesday, 26 February, and continues with one vote allowed per day until Friday, 29 March.

At the time of writing, voting instructions have not appeared but if you go to the Nature's Bounty contest webpage, all should become clear on the day.

There’s a big push behind the Action Network for this contest: a team of supporters has already been posting widely on the net to drum up support. Let’s help them win.

Got any questions? We’ve got a thread for that! The competition looks straightforward but the first post in this thread will be updated with instructions and help if any problems emerge.

Have you heard about other contests? Many, many small prize contests are announced in local papers, on the radio, and so on. If you notice any, please message helen41 so that she and the fundraising team can look into them. Every dollar helps!
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snowathlete
The site is back, but what on earth has happened?
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 7208
  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 7003
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 4391
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 3789
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY
Is it a mistake? Perhaps their database died and they restored to an old version? Or did they adjust everyone to remove dodgy looking votes? I can't believe we would have had so many dodgy votes though?!
 
snowathlete
Now they look back to 'normal'?
  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 23254
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 23226
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 11088
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 11069
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY
 
S
We've slipped a bit but we're not as far behind as previous days for this time of day, I think - I've just posted a follow-up reminder on Co-Cure and I'd like to remind everyone that people slack off on voting at the weekend so let's not! Let's keep up our voting!

  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO23986
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society23855
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY11350
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK11259
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY7929
 
S
I've just noticed how odd this contest is - there are only 100 votes between 1st and 2nd place, and only 100 between 3rd and 4th, with 5th pretty much nowhere. Very, very close!

Off to bed now - by the time I get up tomorrow, I hope we'll be back in third place. :cat:

  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO24089
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society24004
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY11414
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK11315
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY7944
 
Mark
Sasha said:
I've just noticed how odd this contest is - there are only 100 votes between 1st and 2nd place, and only 100 between 3rd and 4th, with 5th pretty much nowhere. Very, very close!
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Yes, I noticed the same thing a while ago when PR sent out a special mailing on the contest. We caught up by about 200-300 votes, and really pulled away from 5th place, but then within 24-48 hours the lead was restored to the same 500-vote cushion it was on before. This wasn't just the time zone effect: it was a big increase in the vote for both of us in a 48-hour period and at the end of it their lead had gone back up to near enough an exact round 500 votes. Now, after we just got a big boost that took us temporarily into 3rd, a lead of 100 has been restored, and it seems to be sticking uncannily close to that 100 - while the second place has slipped back from neck-and-neck to about 100 votes behind first place in the same time period...

These are all animal charities, so I think it's fairly clear that there's a lot of tactical voting going on here - and the round numbers of the lead suggests it's somewhat co-ordinated. I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with them doing that, but my guess is there's an animal charity (perhaps another forum) where people are managing tactical voting to try to keep both of them in their places. After all, we've done similar on other contests where there were two ME/CFS charities involved. Hopefully the boost in our vote in the last week or so, and the closeness of the race for first, will put enough pressure on the combined tactical vote to force them to let go of 3rd place.
 
helen41
Bounty agreed that groups supporting each other was allowed, although I have stalked the pages of both animal groups and haven't seen a trace of that yet. Hopefully we can do something with Reach for the Rainbow. Fingers crossed we could have a really strong finish!
 
S
We've slipped to 4th place again by a bare 100 or so - it's the weekend, when other people tend to slack off so we've got to keep our vote up! 3rd place still very doable.

  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO25666
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society24488
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY11751
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK11642
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY8044
 
U
I have been in contact with Reach For The Rainbow and they are not partnering with any other group. They declined to send out an email asking people to vote for us too. They did say they would revisit the idea next week and make a decision. I receive their emails and they have sent out two emails related to the contest. If the votes between first and second are close next week, they may decide to put the ME/FM Charity in their email -- we vote for them, they vote for us. I will let you know what Maggie (the contact person) says next week.

Kina :)
 
*GG*
  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 27454
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 25975
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 12687
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 12440
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY 8259
GG
 
S
Just voted - we're just under 200 behind third place.

Let's hope everybody else is slacking off on Sunday and we can pull ahead!

  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO28001
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society26133
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY12757
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK12563
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY8279
 
maryb
  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 28107
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 26163
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 12834
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 12736
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY 8288

Have we lost some votes?
 
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