It’s that time again. Health Rising’s BIG (little) fundraising drive. We call it the BIG (little) fundraising drive because it’s our BIG drive but our needs – though real – are puny compared to the research and advocacy organizations that are doing so much for us. We don’t need a ton of money.
Health Rising’s commitment – finding answers for ME/CFS and FM.
We’re a lot smaller. It’s just me (Cort) and Stavya (part-time technical ace), plus our volunteer editor … that’s it! We use your support to keep reporting on the web, to keeping roofs over Stavya’s and my head, and to support Health Rising’s growth.
We didn’t do our usual, smaller fundraising drive during spring – it didn’t seem appropriate during the pandemic’s first wave. We kept expenses down and it worked out fine, but now it’s time to ask for your support again. Our goal, this year, is to raise $50,000.
With our content offered free to all – it’s your support – those $5, $10, $50, or more, donations – that’s allowed us to keep reporting. If you supported us over the past year, you made it possible for 800,000 users to access almost 2,000,000 page views on Health Rising (HR). That’s a pretty nice return on investment.
Those over 1,300 blogs and resource pages that Health Rising’s created over the past 8 years – they wouldn’t have happened without you. If you’ve contributed to HR in any way, it’s your baby, as well.
What does Health Rising bring to the table? Comprehensive and in-depth reports on the latest research and treatment findings (plus a nice dollop of advocacy). That means not just reporting on a finding, but giving it context – trying to explain it in light of what’s happened before – and what it may mean for the future. It means sometimes looking outside the field for insights. It means roving the medical field, keeping an eye out for unproven, but possible, treatments for the future. Our goal, after all, is finding answers for ME/CFS/FM and allied diseases. That’s what gets me going.
Those answers are coming. New insights and connections are made every month. We don’t know when the big answers we’re all looking for will come – they could come in five years, they could come tomorrow – but they are coming. The fact that the Solve ME/CFS Initiative and ME Action in the U.S. have done more effective advocacy this year than in any year in memory is helping greatly.
Health Rising is growing as well. We’re expanding how we can make a difference. Expect something very different shortly and another program in the first part of next year.
Seven Ways to Support Health Rising
Recurring Donations
Please push a little money our way.
(1) Become a Recurring PayPal Donor – Health Rising’s recurring donors are Health Rising’s financial bedrock They allow me to sleep better at night.:)
To become a recurring donor, simply go to the PayPal widget below or to the right sidebar of any page, click the amount you would like to donate ($5, $10, $15, etc.), and hit the Subscribe button.
Or, if you do a one-time donation, PayPal will give you the option of making it a recurring one.
(2) Already a Recurring PayPal Donor? Want to give more? (Want to give more than the current options allow? Just let me know! :)) Simply contact me using the Contact form (upper right hand of the page) stating that. I will stop your current donation and you can restart it.
(3) Become a Recurring Donor with Online Banking (non-PayPal) – Don’t want to use PayPal? Use Bill Pay or similar programs at your bank to send checks straight to us. If you’re with Wells Fargo, we can set up automatic monthly donations. Please contact me via the contact form (upper right-hand of the page).
One-Time Donations
(4) Make a One-Time PayPal Donation — One-time donations are Health Rising’s most important source of income.
Cort Johnson
404 Boulder Hwy
PO Box 91245
Henderson, NV 89015.
(6) Want to Get Rid of Those Currency Conversion Charges? Use Bitcoin – Support Health Rising using it’s Coinbase Bitcoins account and save on currency conversion charges on your one-time donation. (A Bitcoin donation from about ten years ago is now worth almost ten times what it was). Our Bitcoin address is 18D9JkiGxPcpx8RYNcG5p2Be1joU9J6v5D
Outside the Box
Amazon gift cards! Amazon is Health Rising’s go-to place to get electronic accessories, books, stuff for the vehicle, etc. Simply go here, find your gift card and put my email address (cortrising@gmail.com) in the “To:” box and voila – instant Amazon gift card!
Amazon Affiliate Sales
Amazon’s affiliate payments are surprisingly generous! Simply search in the Amazon box on the lower right-hand side of any page on this website. Anything that you put in your cart and buy from that search will qualify for an Amazon affiliate payment to Health Rising. (Things that are already in your cart will not). You don’t pay any fees or anything like that. It’s a win-win situation. 🙂
Could you explain how to set Health Rising as a bill payment payee for canadians to do a one time payment (or recurring for those who wish to) in Canadian funds?
Using online banking?
What name and #’s does a person enter for payee?
Hmmmm—- have you considered opening a canadian bank a count that you can access for canadian $$’s when in Canada for conferences etc? And then that becomes the payee at bank??
Thanks for the idea of the Canadian bank, Sunie. I had not thought of that. It’s impossible to cash checks from Canada. I will check into the online banking idea. 🙂
Cort, one more idea??
is there a safe way for HR to set up a separate air-miles reward points card?
so if someone with cfs/me who doesn’t use their air-mile points could transfer them somehow safely to benefit you?
and perhaps friends / families of people with cfs/me might consider, (if not gifting Health Rising with a small ( or large) cash donation), perhaps they —
or others who want to help
—- would be willing to donate all (or even a smaller portion) of their airmile points to Health Rising’s airmike card,
in support of cfs/me and the HUGE benefit your site creates for sooo many thousands upon hundred thousands of people.
If anyone without cfs/me is reading this, please understand the ongoing inpact Health Rising….aka Stavya, and the volunteer editor, and Cort, have made.
Soooo many that you never see and do not know the suffering of, read here, and keep hope alive. And when they are too ill to even read here, KNOWING that this tremendous resource and support is here, helps DO something that is priceless.
You yourself know that without hope, people perish: with hope, they SURVIVE.
One day may all—-especially those ‘holding on’ for years and years—survive AND THRIVE.
IF you do not have cfs/me…….
or other likewise serious diseases
……please consider that when ANYONE —whether a senior or young, or mid-aged—-does not know how to keep a warm roof over their head tomorrow, or know how they will get a warm meal for their tummy, hope slips away…… and your action can make a difference for them—and in the end that helps everyone. Take action and help keep others afloat.
Those losing hope ARE worthwhile, and deserve help, DO what action you can: for so often, you do not know how little they have, nor how little they can do.
May all take heart, and add hope against hope, to both dream what might be done, and take a step—no matter how tiny it seems to you, tiny tiny steps still move forward.
And myself, i have experienced where the tiniest of help gives me hope.
Give HOPE……. the interest compounds 🙂
Thanks so much Sunie. Great idea about the airline miles. I will check into that as well.
Thanks so much for your support 🙂
Cort, will you be interviewing Dr. Alain Moreau and doing a blog in near future about his recent discoveries?
Hope they do an updated version of this poster:
https://aqem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Dr-Alain-Moreau-poster-ME_October-24_2016.pdf
I will certainly be doing a blog on his new work and hope to be able to talk with him.
Cool, thanks!
I wondered what had happened to the other fundraising, earlier in the year? I know I’m a relative newcomer to Health Rising and my memory isn’t super reliable but that explains my query – you didn’t have a fundraiser!
Okay, these are my next thoughts… Like Sunie above, for me Health Rising gives me focus and hope – like a group of shipwrecked travellers, chattering away on a life raft, out in the sea, hoping for a friendly vessel to appear on the horizon 🙂
And finally, I always wonder with these fundraising drives – where does the bulk of the money come from? Do $5 or $10 donations really add up?
For me, giving a small amount, seems disrespectful because Health Rising is such an important community to me. However, I have to pace myself financially and energetically. So, I was wondering if a large group of us, donated $5 or $10, could we then see how much that raised?
I think that’s how my brain works – if we want to get to $50,000, can we run an active experiment and see how we can manage to get there?
This is sooo poetic Tracey Anne 🙂
“like a group of shipwrecked travellers, chattering away on a life raft, out in the sea, hoping for a friendly vessel to appear on the horizon” I, too, loved that sentence!
Last year 57 people donated $10 or less for adding somewhere around $400 to our total. I think that number could be vastly increased. Some people may not think that $5 or $10 makes a difference but if a 1000 people did – that’s a lot of money.
Where the smaller donations really make an impact is with our recurring donations. While a few people do give considerable amounts ($50-$150 month), the vast majority of people give $5 or $10/month. Health Rising receives about $3000 a month on recurring donations. That is a huge help for us.
Yes, that’s exactly what I thought might be happening – if we could up the number of $10 donations, that could make a big difference. More of a difference – than someone giving $10 – might think they are making.
I would count myself in that category of thinking – I’d really like to give more and feel like $10 is but a tiny drop in the ocean.
However, if others like me, will donate $10 too, then our drops could join together to form a syndicate! So, instead of owning a racehorse, we could club together in support of our life raft!
Thanks for the comments, Waiting and Cort – I just see things visually and then they pop out of my mind via language 🙂
I wanted to make a small donation w credit card but there was so much more info to give away than credit card number- adress, phone, email..I didn’t feel comfortable w that. I’m sure you’ll get more donations if you make that process more straightforward. Maybe even Swish donations.
Tracey Anne,
Your creative use of language strikes again, causing me to smile while nodding in agreement. ?
“ like a group of shipwrecked travellers, chattering away on a life raft, out in the sea, hoping for a friendly vessel to appear on the horizon ”
Hi Tracey Anne, really like your written visualizations too 🙂
Visual effects are nice too, and wonder if a visual that can be clicked on when a person donates could be made to show as ‘air’ inflates our life raft?
If of interest, there is a sample FREE ‘click and paste’
fundraising barometer here:
https://www.fundraisingbrick.com/fundraising-thermometer-builder/
I think Cort did have a thermometer, or something Sunie, showing how the fundraising was going, as time went on, last year. To me, it’s a great motivator.
Thanks for the reminder! We did do that last year and I will ask Stavya to get one up.
Thanks so much Sunie. Great idea about the airline miles. I will check into that as well. (Last year someone suggested Amazon gift cards – and we added that – and got one :))
Thanks so much for your support 🙂
Thanks to the 47 people who contributed $2,700 bringing us 5% of the way to our goal and smashed through our previous record of the number of people (38) who contributed to HR on the first day. 🙂 Thanks everyone!
Tried to donate with credit card , but PayPal intervened and made it impossible. I do not want to use PayPal – so give me an alternative – or loose my donation. Sorry
Option #5 above provides a mailing address to send a check, if that works for you.
…and/or add a buy us a “coffee” button for the Millenials – as seen on patreon / youtube videos
Cort,
Thanks as usual for the work you’ve been doing through your FM/CFS and all. To reward your hard work, here is an idea for more work 🙂
What are the possible dangers of COVID19 vaccines for FMS/CFS patients? I struggled for 5 days after the flu vaccine this year, and it occurred to me that COVID19 vaccine could be a lot worse. And you have to get shot twice too. mRNA vaccines in particular seem to provoke strong inflammatory reaction. Having to get 2 shots of such inflammatory vaccine over a month might leave something worse than a week-long struggle. This probably is a topic that a lot of FMS/CFS patients would be interested in these days.
Cheers,
tk
I am going to ask every doctor I can about their thoughts about this..:)
I’d like to also point out that Amazon affiliate links give the affiliate a percentage of ANYTHING the user purchases for 24 hours after clicking the link. Not just the item in the link!
Buying a big ticket item on Amazon? Doing Christmas shopping? Come here first and click on one of the items under “Shopping on Amazon for HR”. Bam. Free money for Cort.
Thanks Beth, I love Shopping for Amazon. Health Rising, by the way, gets a much higher percentage of the items cost doing it this way than doing it with the Smile option (which we don’t fit as we are not a non-profit.). I didn’t know about the 24 hour thing. That’s cool! 🙂 I just added it to the options in the blog – thanks for the reminder.
Anyone wanting to do this simply use the search box on the right hand side of the page to find something an put it in your cart. Note, though, that things that are already in your cart will not qualify.
I tried to donate with my Visa card but couldn’t because the system refused to accept my phone number even though I used the overseas prefix. It also wouldn’t accept that I had no state. I’m from New Zealand. Cort you could be missing a lot of donations.
Darn! What the heck!
Sorry to hear that. Frustrating for both of us.
Another option is an Amazon gift card. We just got one from Canada :). If that’s a possibility my email address is cortrising@gmail.com
We are pretty tied to Paypal – they have the lowest fees and we have a lot of recurring donations but we are going to look at other options as a considerable number of people have trouble with it.
Update! Life has interfered over the past week or so and I am behind but as of the 7th 175 people had contributed almost $11,000 taking us over 20% of the way to our goal. Thanks to everyone!
Thanks to the 232 people (wow!) who have contributed almost $14,000 to keep the information flowing. We are almost 30% of the way to our goal. Thanks so much 🙂
Great!
(……any news on if you can set up a Canadian account to use as a bill payment ‘payee’
hmmm, think option also to do do some sort of transfer to Canadian bank account if an email is linked to it— set up for auto deposit so u dont have to click on the individual HR email u linked to bank account (it then deposits automatically)
Whoa – over 250 people have contributed – 45% more than last year at this time in the drive! Bringing us up to almost 16K – thanks to everyone. That included, by the way, another Amazon gift card from Canada 🙂 Thanks two from Canada 🙂
Thanks for the idea again, Sunie I still need to look into that and airline miles transfers.
Hi Cort. If I keep my recurring donation at the current amount, do I need to do anything with Paypal? Thanks!
Nope! It will just keep on. Thanks for contributing and thanks for asking.
Cort, just a note that people can take above-the-line deduction of $300 for charity cash contribution on top of the usual standard deduction this year because of 2020 CARE act. You may want to let people know that. I plan to take advantage if I’m over the Obamacare subsidy limit 🙂
I’m afraid HR doesn’t qualify as we’re not a non-profit.