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Some GOOD fundraising news to share- $500,000 donation to End ME/CFS!!!

Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
I just received this email update (and eliminated my name) but wanted to share the good news that OMF just received their first $500,000 donation for their Severely Ill Big Data Patient Study!!!

It made my day after seeing that other post re: congress cutting our funding to zero. Thank you so much to whoever made that amazing donation and God bless you.

Here is email:

Dear --------- ,
Yes, we received the $500K check today!
You are the first to know (our supporters!) and may share this exciting news!
Thanks again for your support- we could not do this without you!
500K.jpg


Kindest regards,
Linda
Linda Tannenbaum
Executive Director

Address postal inquiries to:
Open Medicine Foundation
29302 Laro Drive
Agoura Hills, CA 91301

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Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
Yep, every donation counts massively! The smaller donations are essential because they demonstrate wider support from the community, and they help to create a buzz, momentum, and a head of steam, that gets more and more people involved and raises awareness to a wider audience. The large numbers of smaller donations also helps to motivate and reward the researchers and the crowdfund team. (It's like saying "thank-you" to them; "we're grateful and we're behind you".) It also helps to create an important dialogue between the researchers and the community, and it gets friends and family involved in raising money, which all ultimately helps spread the message about ME/CFS to the wider population and raises awareness.

So keep donating everyone, if you can! If you can't donate then help spread the message. It all helps massively.

Edit: As an example, the crowdfund for Prof Lipkin's team created a huge amount of awareness for their research program, which then led to Dr Lipkin's chilli-challenge, which led to the $500k donation to Dr Lipkin. Without the buzz created by the crowdfund, the $500k donor may never have become aware of Dr Lipkin's research program.
 
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Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
This is brilliant! First CII gets $500k, now the OMF. I like the way some people are thinking in big chunks of money!

And I agree with @Bob and everyone that lots of small donations not only add up in and of themselves but bring attention to these projects and demonstrate that they have the support of patients. Crucial!

$1m per year if I remember correctly? For a five year project? Or have I completely miss-remembered that?

END ME/CFS said:
Conducting all of these molecular investigations with state-of-the-art methodologies on well-described patients will be a daunting task. It will require significant resources and considerable coordination and cooperation within the scientific and medical communities. For the first phase of this study, our goal is to raise $1 million. Gaining the extensive data set will require $25,000 per patient for logistics and supplies. We will do these tests on as many patients as we can with the funds we raise.

END ME/CFS said:
$5 million needed annually:
Our organization has set an initial minimum goal of $5 million per year for the “End ME/CFS” project. Funding for this project will be from grants and donations.

It looks as though the 'Severely Ill, Big Data' project needs $1m for the first phase and that for their whole programme they're looking for $5m/year. I don't see the total cost of the SIBD study anywhere but maybe they're just going to do as many patients as they can with the money they raise in a certain timeframe.

So let's give them some more money!
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
@Gingergrrl - what do you think to adding "$500,000 donation to END ME/CFS" to your title? It would be good to really draw attention to this.

I was so blown away that I forgot to thank the mystery donor! If you're reading this, thank you for your spectacular generosity. This is just amazing of you, and we're all so very, very grateful. You've got this crowdfund off to a brilliant start, right from the beginning, and it's going to encourage a lot more donations.

Thank you! :balloons::trophy::star:
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
I was so pleased when I heard this news. This is such a great project as is evident (no one gives you 500k unless you're doing things right) and the people working on it are super ppl.

I am SO SO GRATEFULL to whoever is supporting this work, I believe it will pay off. So thank you very much to this generous donator and to every generous donator, no matter the size of the donation. It all counts.
 

geraldt52

Senior Member
Messages
602
Linda Tannenbaum is a force of nature, and her importance in the fundraising for OMF can't be overstated. If anyone wanted to send along their thanks I'm sure it would be appreciated. Maybe some sort of group thing would save her inbox from being overloaded?