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Vote Now, Vote Daily, Vote from Anywhere - Photo Finish in the Nature's Bounty Charity Contest!

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by Sasha

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Real mud flying while we're neck and neck! Photo by Paolo Camera on flickr.


Quick! You have 27 seconds to win $5,000 for an ME/FM charity!

So please – don’t think! – do this now and then come back and read about why you did it:
  • Click on ‘N’ to get the list of charities beginning with ‘N’.
  • The second one down is the National ME/FM Action Network. Click on the ‘Vote’ button.
  • Enter your email address in the box that pops up, do the Captcha thing to prove you’re not a robot, tick the box accepting the terms and conditions and hit the ‘Vote’ button.
Done! OK, maybe that 27 seconds comes with practice but it’s daily voting, so please keep coming back until the contest ends on 29th March.

So, why did you do that? Because the Action Network, which is Canada’s main ME/FM charity, is in a close fight for third place in the contest. Third place wins $5,000: no prizes for fourth.

Over the past few days we’ve been in third place, been in fourth, been back in third and so on as we’ve fought a close battle with a charity that looks after birds. Yes, birds. Nothing wrong with animal charities but surely we are every bit as appealing so let’s fight for that cash!

The Action Network is well worth supporting. They led the development of the Canadian Consensus Criteria for diagnosis, from which we’ve all benefited, they promote research and they support 750,000 patients in Canada through advocacy, education and information.

Thanks to an all-out effort across the community – particularly the ME/CFS Fundraising Group on Facebook, which includes members of Phoenix Rising – we’re getting about 1,100 votes a day and we need to keep pulling in more voters.

You can sign up to a free, daily reminder to vote here. It’s a Google Group so if you have a gmail address then you can go straight in and sign up. If you don’t have a gmail address you can get the reminder sent to your existing email address (Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc.), but to set that up you will first need to open a Google account by signing up quick and painlessly here. Then go to the Google Group and join it.

So, as we enter the final days of the contest, please vote, tell your friends to vote and keep voting daily!

Phoenix Rising costs money to run and needs your donations to keep it going. Without you we can’t continue to serve you and the community. Please donate!

View the Post on the Blog
 
I've been voting every day too. It is noteworthy what "our crowd" of organizations seeking help is, what company we are keeping: animal welfare and programs for kids with disabilities.
 
  • REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO 37827
  • Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society 37143
  • MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY 18548
  • NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK 18061

Flippiing heck what's going on??
 
The newsletter went out more than 24 hours ago I'm afraid. It looks to me like the animal charities have also started voting for each other as well and that's worsened our position; it's not looking good for the humans at the moment...although we seem to have boosted Reach for the Rainbow a bit which is good.
 
It's weird how we are now back at a nearly exact 500 deficit as opposed to the consistent 100 deficit we've been at for the last week or so. And the gap between 1st and 2nd seems to have widened by about the same margin. I still can't figure out what's going on here...
 
We also need to remember that every vote we cast is also another chance in the draw for $5000. Someone looked at the numbers, and posted elsewhere that it looks like a 1/3 chance if the birds maintain their lead and we didn't win the voted prize.

That's a good point. At the end of the contest, the top three winners' votes will be removed - which at the moment, would be 100,000 votes removed from a total of 270,000, leaving 170,000 - and then three more charities are drawn for a $5k prize, with their chances proportional to their vote. At the moment, we've got 19,000 votes. If things remain in proportion, we'd have a 19/170 chance (=1/9) on each of three draws of getting $5k.

Still far better to guarantee it by coming third - but now we can keep two reasons in mind for racking up the votes!