Community Forum Archive
The Epilepsy Community Forums are closed, and the information is archived. The content in this section may not be current or apply to all situations. In addition, forum questions and responses include information and content that has been generated by epilepsy community members. This content is not moderated. The information on these pages should not be substituted for medical advice from a healthcare provider. Experiences with epilepsy can vary greatly on an individual basis. Please contact your doctor or medical team if you have any questions about your situation. For more information, learn about epilepsy or visit our resources section.
Will You Help?
Tue, 03/24/2009 - 10:40If you are reading this then I know that in some way you are affected by epilepsy. Chances are good that you or someone you care about would like to find a way to be seizure free and to have it be that way without any side effects. Too many people we know and care about either are not seizure free or have unacceptable side effects from their treatments.
The Epilepsy Therapy Project who brings you this site is committed to finding new therapies to help those who are not seizure-free and/or who have unacceptable side effects from their treatments. We are also committed to making sure that epilepsy.com has the most comprehensive information available to you and those you know to learn about and understand living with epilepsy and any matters relating to it. Our mission can only be achieved with the help of you and others that you know.
I also believe that there are a lot of you out there who either have experience doing this or have participated in epilepsy awareness programs that I and others could learn from. Please share your experiences with me. Participate in this forum and tell me the kinds of things that you've done. Tell me what's worked and what definitely didn't work. I want to get some ideas for some fun things that all of you would be willing to help with.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks!
:o) Karen
Comments
Re: Will You Help?
Submitted by kdredske on Thu, 2009-08-20 - 11:42
FIRSTGIVING:
Since you are comfortable with websites, the fastest and easiest way to get started would be for you to create a Firstgiving online fundraising page like most of our ETP Champions have so far. Something that has a goal and a timeline to it. However, maybe we can think up something together that would make it more interesting. You would go to http://www.firstgiving.com/epilepsy and create a page there to support our cause. You could add photos of you and your husband, put his story there or else something about why you are motivated to help . . . whatever makes you passionate when you tell people about epilepsy. Then you would email all of your friends and family about your page and ask them to help you meet your goal. You can even ask them to create a page from your page (which then would have any money they raise count toward your goal) and they could do what you did and email all their friends and family telling them why they want to support what you are doing.
SHOPPING PAGE:
Since you are asking about our shopping page. . . you gave me an idea. Mind you, I’ll have to get approval from management to do it. . . but. . . maybe on our shopping page we can have a link for “ETP Champions” - people like you who want to support the organization. However, all of the links there right now give us a percentage back for any sales that come from our website or that are in support of our organization. So to add a link to your website, you’d have to be willing (and honestly do it) to give something to our organization for each order. Maybe it’s a set dollar amount or a specific percentage of the order. Or maybe it would be something else that you think up that would be relevant.
AWARENESS FUNDRAISING:
Depending on where you live and how motivated you are, there are some other things that you could do also. In the past we’ve had someone go out and visit all the restaurants in their area and talk to the managers about making 1 day an “Epilepsy Awareness/Support” day at their stores. They convinced them to give a percentage of their sales for that day to our organization. This meant that they also had to:
- select a day
- get a commitment from restaurants to participate
- provide the restaurants with flyers and/or posters to put up in their location for advertising (we can help you with some of this)
- get local advertising in the newspaper(s), local radio station(s), and maybe even local cable TV channel (non-profit event announcements are free)
- after the event go collect the money from each location and get their information
- send the money and restaurant donation information to us
Now. . . the person who did this was very private as they had a young child with epilepsy. So they wanted to be anonymous, but I’d love to be able to promote an effort like this by doing a story on it in our monthly newsletter, post it in our fundraising forum (obviously), help build a Facebook event page, post on our Facebook pages, post to Twitter, and whatever other way we can think of making sure that others know about it.
I wonder. . . if there is a way to create some kind of a “challenge” once we figure out what is the right fundraiser for you that we could challenge other people on epilepsy.com to do the same thing where they live. . . . hmmm. . . for example, if you were doing a restaurant awareness day, if we planned it far enough in advance, we could challenge others to do the same and see who could raise the most money that day or month. Just a thought. What do you think?
E-CYCLING
I also recently posted some information on how to do an e-cycling drive with used electronics to support our organization on the eCycling for Money page. Like the Firstgiving page . . . you could setup your own eCycling Drive on the Gazelle website and designate any proceeds to come to the Epilepsy Therapy Project. That would enable you to have a webpage that shows your progress with a fundraising drive with electronics. Or just email or snail mail or call all of your friends and family and ask them to use our eCycling webpage at http://epilepsy.gazelle.com to recycle and support our cause.
How is this for a start? I'm very excited. LET'S BRAINSTORM! I hope others in our community will post their ideas also.
:o) Karen
FIRSTGIVING:
Since you are comfortable with websites, the fastest and easiest way to get started would be for you to create a Firstgiving online fundraising page like most of our ETP Champions have so far. Something that has a goal and a timeline to it. However, maybe we can think up something together that would make it more interesting. You would go to http://www.firstgiving.com/epilepsy and create a page there to support our cause. You could add photos of you and your husband, put his story there or else something about why you are motivated to help . . . whatever makes you passionate when you tell people about epilepsy. Then you would email all of your friends and family about your page and ask them to help you meet your goal. You can even ask them to create a page from your page (which then would have any money they raise count toward your goal) and they could do what you did and email all their friends and family telling them why they want to support what you are doing.
SHOPPING PAGE:
Since you are asking about our shopping page. . . you gave me an idea. Mind you, I’ll have to get approval from management to do it. . . but. . . maybe on our shopping page we can have a link for “ETP Champions” - people like you who want to support the organization. However, all of the links there right now give us a percentage back for any sales that come from our website or that are in support of our organization. So to add a link to your website, you’d have to be willing (and honestly do it) to give something to our organization for each order. Maybe it’s a set dollar amount or a specific percentage of the order. Or maybe it would be something else that you think up that would be relevant.
AWARENESS FUNDRAISING:
Depending on where you live and how motivated you are, there are some other things that you could do also. In the past we’ve had someone go out and visit all the restaurants in their area and talk to the managers about making 1 day an “Epilepsy Awareness/Support” day at their stores. They convinced them to give a percentage of their sales for that day to our organization. This meant that they also had to:
- select a day
- get a commitment from restaurants to participate
- provide the restaurants with flyers and/or posters to put up in their location for advertising (we can help you with some of this)
- get local advertising in the newspaper(s), local radio station(s), and maybe even local cable TV channel (non-profit event announcements are free)
- after the event go collect the money from each location and get their information
- send the money and restaurant donation information to us
Now. . . the person who did this was very private as they had a young child with epilepsy. So they wanted to be anonymous, but I’d love to be able to promote an effort like this by doing a story on it in our monthly newsletter, post it in our fundraising forum (obviously), help build a Facebook event page, post on our Facebook pages, post to Twitter, and whatever other way we can think of making sure that others know about it.
I wonder. . . if there is a way to create some kind of a “challenge” once we figure out what is the right fundraiser for you that we could challenge other people on epilepsy.com to do the same thing where they live. . . . hmmm. . . for example, if you were doing a restaurant awareness day, if we planned it far enough in advance, we could challenge others to do the same and see who could raise the most money that day or month. Just a thought. What do you think?
E-CYCLING
I also recently posted some information on how to do an e-cycling drive with used electronics to support our organization on the eCycling for Money page. Like the Firstgiving page . . . you could setup your own eCycling Drive on the Gazelle website and designate any proceeds to come to the Epilepsy Therapy Project. That would enable you to have a webpage that shows your progress with a fundraising drive with electronics. Or just email or snail mail or call all of your friends and family and ask them to use our eCycling webpage at http://epilepsy.gazelle.com to recycle and support our cause.
How is this for a start? I'm very excited. LET'S BRAINSTORM! I hope others in our community will post their ideas also.
:o) Karen
Re: Will You Help?
Submitted by ozmommyto4 on Thu, 2009-08-20 - 11:29
from you on how I could incorporate my business. I have a wickless candle
business with Scentsy. You can view my website at
www.scentsy.com/tawnyaosborne. I would love to be part of your shopping
page or even conduct a fundraiser with you. My husband has lived with
Epilepsy his entire life and my youngest (4 months) son suffured a brain
hemorrage at birth and has been dealing with seizures as well. We have
always wanted to support epilepsy research and I think this would be a
great way to get involed.
I look forward to hearing from you and seeing how I can help!
Tawnya
I was reading the fundraising forum and would love to get some information
from you on how I could incorporate my business. I have a wickless candle
business with Scentsy. You can view my website at
www.scentsy.com/tawnyaosborne. I would love to be part of your shopping
page or even conduct a fundraiser with you. My husband has lived with
Epilepsy his entire life and my youngest (4 months) son suffured a brain
hemorrage at birth and has been dealing with seizures as well. We have
always wanted to support epilepsy research and I think this would be a
great way to get involed.
I look forward to hearing from you and seeing how I can help!
Tawnya