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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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It seems very strange to me that all of a sudden they get a huge lump of votes like that. We can only hope we catch them again like we did yesterday.

Kina.

We usually slip back a bit when we get into Canadian daytime (now) but now that we've got RftR's presumably Canadian voters behind us as well, it will be an interesting 24 hours...
 
It seems very strange to me that all of a sudden they get a huge lump of votes like that. We can only hope we catch them again like we did yesterday.

Kina.

I think it looks really dodgy. Throughout when we get drives gaining us more votes, they mysteriously get more votes out of knowhere and the way they occur is often a bit surprising.
 
I think the vote only once rule is being broken quite a bit by one of the charities.

LIMIT: A Registered Voter can Vote only one (1) time per day (defined as 12:00:01 am ET to 11:59:59 pm ET) per charity during the Voting Period. If it is discovered (by the Sponsor in its sole and absolute discretion using any evidence available to Sponsor) that attempts were made by a Registered Voter (or any individual purporting to be a Registered Voter) to: (i) Vote more than one (1) time per day (as defined above) per charity during the Voting Period; (ii) use (or attempt to use) multiple names, identities, email addresses and/or any automated, macro, script, robotic or other systems(s) or program(s) to submit Votes; (iii) engage in any form of systematic voting from the same computer/IP address; and/or (iv) engage in any form of proxy voting scheme; then it may result in the disqualification, in the sole and absolute discretion of the Sponsor, of the Votes, Nomination, Charity and/or Registered Voter to which such Votes relate. Any Votes determined by Sponsor, in its sole and absolute discretion, to be in violation of the letter and/or spirit of these Rules (including, without limitation, Votes determined to be coming from any source other than a Registered Voter and/or Votes that cannot be validated in accordance with these Rules to the satisfaction of Sponsor) are subject to disqualification in the sole and absolute discretion of the Sponsor.
 
  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 36793
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 35688
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 17769
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 17375
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY 9838
GG
About 400 votes behind now, doesn't seem like we are getting the votes from "Reach for the Rainbow Ontario", I voted for them yesterday and today!
 
About 400 votes behind now, doesn't seem like we are getting the votes from "Reach for the Rainbow Ontario", I voted for them yesterday and today!

Well, they put something on their Facebook page (which it will take time for everyone to see, presumably) and Kina is waiting to see if they email their members too. They're a charity, presumably short on resources, and might not have the capacity for a big mail-out at short notice.

Personally, I'm voting for them (a) so that their members can see a boost and will be more likely to respond and (b) because the disabled people who Reach for the Rainbow represent deserve to get first place - which is out of reach for us - and at this point I'd be using my additional daily vote for them whether we were in a pact or not.

Anyway, just voted!
 
It's official -- Reach for the Rainbow has included us in their latest email:

rftr.png
 
Fantastic! Thanks for that, Kina.

It's a reminder to me that I was on autopilot and forgot to vote for RftR so I'll go and do that right now! :eek:

Here's the leaderboard - it will be interesting to see what happens now!

  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO37858
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society37181
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY18557
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK18074
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY10011
 
Kina - thanks for letting us know!
It's worth us making sure that they know that a lot of people with ME/CFS are children. Many of their supporters probably dont realise,and being supporters of a children's charity we'd likely get more votes if we highlight this. Hopefully we can both do well. Also better if they understand that we are voting for them too - the email, perhaps doesnt make that clear.
 
snowathlete -- Reach for the Rainbow supports adults too. I think it's good that Maggie sent the email and I don't want to go back to her at this time regarding the details. At least we have a chance of getting more votes. I think people will understand the votes are reciprocal because RFTR needs more votes to stay in first place. We will be in contact throughout next week and I will make sure I add a few gentle suggestions.

Kina.
 
  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 36793
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 35688
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 17769
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 17375
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY 9838
GG

About 400 votes behind now, doesn't seem like we are getting the votes from "Reach for the Rainbow Ontario", I voted for them yesterday and today!

  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 40443
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 38908
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 19080
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 18599
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY 10280
GG
Still about 400 votes behind, closer to 500, trying to be optimistic! Still time left, perhaps the "Alberta Animal..." has teamed up with "Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society"?
 
Just voted, both for us and Reach for the Rainbow.

We've had 300 more votes over the last 24 hours than we had before so maybe we're starting to get some RftR support - let's keep on!


  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO41209
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society39160
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY19148
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK18722
  • SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY10320