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Vote Once, from Anywhere! Win £2,000 for Invest in ME

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Do what the shoes say!
(Image by Theresa Thompson on Flickr)

by Sasha

Probably the easiest money we’ll ever raise is up for grabs in an online voting contest in which UK research charity Invest in ME is a frontrunner.

Anyone can vote, from anywhere in the world, and you vote just once, but you need a Google or Facebook account to do so (or to be willing to spring for postage).


The contest

The contest is being held by Direct Debit, who manage automated bill payments in the UK. They’re running a fresh contest each month until June, each with a top prize of £2,000 ($3,100), a second prize of £1,000 ($1,500) and £2,000 ($3,100) divided equally between a small number of runners-up.

We want the first prize for the April contest and, at the time of writing, Invest in ME is already in second place. Even if we get to first, we can’t be complacent: there are a few mega-charities in the pool whose supporters seem to be asleep but will give us a real run for our money (literally) if they wake up.


Invest in ME

Invest in ME (IiME) were only founded in 2005 but have made a big impact on the ME scene, with their driving passion for biomedical research. They want a national strategy for biomedical research into the causes, pathology and epidemiology of WHO-defined ME, leading to diagnostic biomarkers, medical treatments, and a cure.

With that focus, it’s hardly surprising that they’ve made a big hit with ME patients both in the UK and beyond, and one of their main activities is hosting an annual, international ME conference which now attracts not just clinicians and researchers but patient advocacy groups and journalists from all over the world.

This year’s conference, to be held on May 31 in London, has an impressive line-up that includes Dr Mady Hornig, the director of the eagerly-awaited Lipkin pathogen study; Prof. Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik of Bond University’s PHANU; Prof. Olav Mella and Dr Ǿystein Fluge of the Norwegian Rituximab study; and Dr Andreas Kogelnik of the Open Medicine Institute. One of the main functions of a conference is to get the right people in the same room together and it looks as though IiME know exactly how to do that.

Invest in ME’s other big project is to establish a UK and European Centre of Excellence for translational biomedical ME research, clinical assessment, diagnosis and treatment for patients, that will also offer training and information for healthcare staff. The centre, using existing NHS infrastructure as far as possible, and based around the Norwich Research Park, will collaborate with international biomedical researchers. IiME have already raised £88,000 of the £100,000 needed to begin their first research project.

And finally, something I really like about IiME: they’re advertising the fundraising drive for Norway’s Rituximab trial. As they say, it’s not a competition.

That kind of attitude deserves our support and we can give it for free, for just a mouseclick.


How to vote

You only need to vote once – how refreshing! – and you can vote from anywhere in the world by logging into your Facebook or Google account and then going to Invest in ME’s voting page. Scroll down a bit and hit the big red button at the bottom right that says, ‘Vote for this cause’.

Only one vote for IiME is allowed from each IP address, which means that you can only get one vote per internet connection in your house.

Unusually, if you don’t have a Facebook or Google account you can vote by post. Send a postcard with your name and address, saying that you’re voting for Invest in ME, to: The Big Break, 131-151 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 5BB. The closing date for votes is 30 April.

You can keep an eye on how we’re doing by going to this page and clicking on the ‘Rank’ sort-order button.

Please vote, and get your friends and family to vote. Let’s put a £2,000 smile on Invest in ME’s faces!




Phoenix Rising is a registered 501 c.(3) non profit. We support ME/CFS and NEID patients through rigorous reporting, reliable information, effective advocacy and the provision of online services which empower patients and help them to cope with their isolation.

There are many ways you can help Phoenix Rising to continue its work. You can even donate significant sums, at no cost to yourself, as you shop online! To find out more, visit Phoenix Rising’s Donate page by clicking the button below.


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A real achievement I think, that we have managed to find more than 2,000 individual supporters of this compeition so far. And a Facebook/Google+ comp. no less.

Yes, these are storming numbers - a great reflection on the fundraising group who've helped to build up this level of support in the short space of time that these online contests have been going.

However, we're up against groups with strong local support - as an international crowd, we could smash every contest we entered if we can get everyone voting. These days they'd be jumping onto a fast-rolling bandwagon! All very encouraging. :)
 
Sands still leading but we both seem to have slowed at the rate at which we're gaining votes (just my impression, I'm not being scientific about it - not actually counting!). They're 2,546, we're 2,415 so they're 50 up and we're 63 up.

If we can bag some more votes from somewhere, first place is still doable.
 
We're even further ahead, by 121 votes, but we're still not safe - we've got 2,687, Sands have 2,568.

Third place is quite some way behind at 2,130.

Voting finishes on Tuesday (April 30) - still all to play for.

This is great, that our community has producted nearly 3,000 votes, particularly when you consider that you can only vote one per household and it's Facebook/Google-only. Very impressive.
 
Yes, I think we must have cross-posted - great, isn't it! $5,000 for the Canadian ME/FM Network, $4,300 for MEandYou and with any luck we might bag this one too!

Wow this is really good - a belated well done to all involved! To be honest, I didn't even know about these competitions or else I'd have voted!

Perhaps we could make it a convention to cross post all competitions in the "general discussion" forum? There are a lot of forums on PR, and it's easy to miss things if you don't check regularly.
 
Battery Muncher, thanks for your interest. You could use the Watch Forum function to get posts from the Fundraising subforum. I have not used this function myself. [Edit: Having said that, it looks like this contest doesn't have a thread in the Fundraising subforum but only in Phoenix Rising Articles.]

Snowathlete has set up a contest reminder service: http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/free-me-cfs-competition-voting-reminders.22105/ I haven't read through the thread so am not sure if this service was just for one contest.

Everyone's welcome, of course, to join the Facebook ME ME/CFS Fundraising Group. Here's the thread Eric started on the subject:

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ne-contests-fundraising-info-in-post-1.11803/

See the Trophy Wall to get an idea of how much money we've raised already for ME charities:

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ings-in-online-contests-list-in-post-2.12440/
 
Wow this is really good - a belated well done to all involved! To be honest, I didn't even know about these competitions or else I'd have voted!

Perhaps we could make it a convention to cross post all competitions in the "general discussion" forum? There are a lot of forums on PR, and it's easy to miss things if you don't check regularly.

Hi Battery Muncher - sorry you missed it/them!

I suppose it is quite confusing because some threads are articles on our main page (so have banner headline at the top of every forum page while they're the most recent article) while some threads are articles in the fundraising section. If we're going to cross-post, we should cross-post to the fundraising subforum, probably.
 
Wow this is really good - a belated well done to all involved! To be honest, I didn't even know about these competitions or else I'd have voted!

Perhaps we could make it a convention to cross post all competitions in the "general discussion" forum? There are a lot of forums on PR, and it's easy to miss things if you don't check regularly.

By the way, do you use the 'What's new' tab on the forums? We post quite frequently on these competition threads - at least a couple of times a day - to try to keep bumping the thread title up the forum list of 'what's new'.

We also run an article at the start of most of the competitions, on the front page of Phoenix Rising - do you look at the articles regularly?

Just curious about how other people use the forum! Apparently a lot of people have never noticed the 'What's new' button, for example, and a lot of people read the front-page articles but never visit the forums.