Another Contest Vivant - to WIN Reseach Money!!

[SpecialK82]

Thanks, Helen - and you're right, the great tons of money on offer appear to be largely invisible to other charities so we could be well in! Once the Chase contest is finished on Wednesday we can give this a much bigger push.

Yep, all we have to do is stay under the radar until June 11 and then it will be too late for others to join. Have you guys noticed the Pradar Willi Foundations that are doing amazing. They have organizations in almost region, so if it turns out we can vote for one per region per day, we are going to be in a Super Race with them.

 

[SpecialK82]

This is so exciting! THe pacific region WPI is going strong against a weak competition. Canada the competion is even less, I think we could take either region.

As for strategy, I think we should cool down on WPI a bit just so we don't scare the competition. We don't want them to go get a lot of people lined up for the first day of voting, let them scramble after the voting starts. CAA is only out about 30 endorsements from hitting 20th in their region. I think we should hit the CAA hard until we are clear on the rules. I hope I get an email tomorrow, otherwise I will try to call.

 

[helen41]

good idea. Rocky Mountain is now available for endorsement too, and need 76 votes, if some people would prefer to give their votes there
http://www.vivint.com/givesbackproject/charity/889

 

[caledonia]

I posted a note on their Facebook about the Firefox problem. They replied and asked me to clear my cache and cookies and asked if that helped (it didn't). They said that was helpful and they were working on it. Well apparently, that did do something, because today I was able to log in and vote with no problem. Yay.

 

[caledonia]

Okay, I think I have a handle on the rules now. For now, we just need to get our charities in the top 20 in each region.
Can somebody make a list of who we are endorsing for each region, preferably with a link to each charity to make it easy?

Then I think people should check all of our charities each day and pick any one that's fallen below 20 to vote for.

 

[Boule de feu]

Okay, I think I have a handle on the rules now. For now, we just need to get our charities in the top 20 in each region.
Can somebody make a list of who we are endorsing for each region, preferably with a link to each charity to make it easy?

Then I think people should check all of our charities each day and pick any one that's fallen below 20 to vote for.

Yes, a list would be very helpful.
Great idea on how to vote. Thank you.

 

[Sasha]

good idea. Rocky Mountain is now available for endorsement too, and need 76 votes, if some people would prefer to give their votes there
http://www.vivint.com/givesbackproject/charity/889

I've just voted for them. They have a way to go!

 

[SpecialK82]

After being on hold forever with Vivint, I was told that we can only "vote" for one charity a day when we get to the voting stage. I pointed out the discrepency on their website and she said that she was going to put in a request to change it.

I am not 100% sure that she understood what I was talking about but that is what she said after she checked around.

Have not heard back from the contact name that I emailed.

So I think until we see the official change on the website (confirming that this lady understood it herself) we should still keep all the orgs in the top 20 every day unless it looks like WPI is slipping alot and them we can endorse them back up again.

Even if we we end up only being able to vote for one, I still think we need to back off endorsing WPI, even if it gets to a point where we endorse no one that day. Let's surprise them at the beginning of the voting phase with how many we are strong.

 

[shannah]

I thought IACFS was nominated but I don't see them. Which area - Mountain?

 

[helen41]

IACFS was nominated, it's just not up yet
re regions
Pacific- WPI in 3rd place with 509, leader has 1191
Mountain-Rocky Mtn CFS/ME and FM in 31st with 20 votes. the 20th spot has 87, and the leader has 5299
Central-IACFS- not up yet, 20th spot has 84 votes and the leader has 3440
Eastern-CFIDS in 25th with 101, 20th spot has 116. the leader has 3350
Canada- National ME/FM action Network in 6th with 52 votes. the leader has 1029

The two weakest leaders appear to be Canada and the Pacific. If there is a winner from each region getting $100,000, we might want to target one of those areas, but there is still 2 weeks left before the vote. All we need right now is to be in the top 20 in each region so we have choices when the time comes

 

[shannah]

Nice recap Helen - very organized!

 

[caledonia]

I voted for the CFIDS Association today because it was the lowest at #26. Rocky Mountain could also use votes (#25).

I also nominated the IACFS/ME because it hasn't shown up yet. I don't know if anyone has actually nominated it, or if someone just said we ought to. So I went ahead and did it anyway just to make sure.

 

[caledonia]

I just had a brilliant idea. What if we got the charities other than WPI to commit to donating at least 50% of their winnings (if they won) to the WPI? That way we could possibly double the WPI's share or better.

In which case, I think we should drop the CAA and nominate Vermont CFIDS Assoc. or someone else in the eastern region. I highly doubt if the CAA would go for this (although if they did, it would go a long way towards improving their relations with patients).

 

[Francelle]

May I ask? Is the WPI technically a charity?

 

[caledonia]

Yes. In the US, charities are also called non-profits (short for non-profit corporation), filed under the tax code 501(c)(3). This allows you to accept donations and the donation can be used as a tax deduction for the donor, making it more likely that someone will donate.

See this wikipedia article for a good explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)#501.28c.29.283.29 Scientific organizations are included.

The domain name extension ".org" is meant for use by non-profits, so if you go to someone's website and it's <sitename>.org, you can be pretty sure that's a non-profit.

The UK people typically call them charities, and I guess I've picked up on that - lol.

 

[SpecialK82]

I am going to be moving this weekend so I won't have time to get on the forums much in the next week or so. Wanted to pass the torch onto someone else about getting in touch with Vivant about their rules about voting - the question is: can we vote only one charity per day, or one charity per region per day?

To recap: I emailed the contact on the website tcoleman@vivant.com and have gotten no response, I then called yesterday and the woman asked around and said that we can only vote one charity per day. She said she would put in a change request for the website, but the conflicting rules still show up. Maybe if a couple people called they would straighten this out so that we could strategize. I hate for people to get excited about a certain org in the running if it turns out we are all going to have to vote for just one.

Good Luck

 

[helen41]

@specialK, I'd be happy to follow up. At least we have a couple of weeks to get it clarified. Hope you have lots of moving help. Brutal on ME/CFS!
@Caledonia-My thoughts...We can nominate as many charities as we want in as many regions as we want. It doesn't have to be one or the other. On the other hand, I think winning in the Eastern region would be a tough fight anyway. Eastern and Central have some heavy hitters. At this point we are in top 20 in Pacific and Canada, 65 more votes needed for Mountain(the rocky mountain...) and 22 for Eastern (CFIDS). If we get central in the top 20 once it's posted, then I think it's a matter of holding our positions across the board until vote time when we can decide what region to hit.

 

[caledonia]

Here are the official rules: http://www.vivint.com/givesbackproject/rules

Each Participant will be limited to one (1) Charity nomination/endorsement/vote per day. This means that each participant can select one (1) Charity per day until the Nomination Period (Phase I) or Voting Period (Phase 2) ends.

I assume this is the final say, vs. what a summary might say.

My brilliant idea might not be so brilliant: there is a grant application for each charity to fill out. They might not look so kindly on the organization giving all their money away vs. doing a project.

* During the voting phase, each of the top 100 charities will be able to submit a brief description of why it should be considered for the award. As part of this description, the charity should address:
o The cause it is passionate about
o Its goals for the coming year
o Proposed timeline for implementation
o How it will measure its success

So in this case, it sounds like we all need to concentrate on WPI.

There is also a matching gift program during the voting period. They will match small donations up to $2500 per charity (no more than $50 per person). So we could get $5000 for WPI that way even if we lost the big prize.

 

[helen41]

@Caledonia- It looks like we might have trouble getting the grand prize, but they are giving away $100,000 per region. As long as we pick a region with weaker players (probably Pacific or Canada), I think we have a good shot.

 

[caledonia]

It looks like the Prader Willi's are acting as regional groups each voting for their own region. That's good for us.

WPI is in the weaker Pacific region; also good for us.

I would be quite happy with $100k for research.