Email fundraising to save a life

On April 1st I received an email from a trusted friend. The main point of the email, someone he knew had a 19 year old son who needed a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately the lifetime maximum for insurance for this young man has been reached. To get this life saving bone marrow transplant the family needed $500,000 by April 5Th. Just 5 days to raise that kind of money. The parents, a resource teacher and a grade school principal, are already tapped out with previous medical expenses.

Their friends began reaching out for them, asking people to donate just $25 or $50 or even $100 and then to send the email to 20 people in their contact list. This story took off and by the 2 pm I had received emails from 10 other people who were forwarding the request. That was over 200 people who knew about this story in just 4 hours and my wife received almost as many and most of hers were not duplicates either.

We did our part, made a donation and forwarded to others but this is where I wish as a credit union we could have done more. How? The donation was to be mailed to a bank or dropped off in person...how long will it take for them to know if they have the money? Wouldn't it have been a great service to these people if FORUM Credit Union could have offered an online fundraising option so that as this email when out people would have instantly donated. A fundraising option that would be trusted to not be a scam and that these parents could have know how quickly the community was responding to people they didn't even know? How much more would people have donated if they would have made the donation at the exact moment they read the story and were called to action. Waiting until getting home or to the checkbook means some intended to make a donation but life got in the way.

I haven't heard yet if the goal has been met yet or not for this young man. I pray that it has been, there is still one day left for donations. It leaves with a sense of how powerful even email can be to develop a community. I was at my son's lacrosse game that night and almost everyone at the game both for our team and the opponent had received the email and were talking about. The email started a word of mouth campaign on the subject.