US Weekly is not something I read regularly anymore. I read lots of it when I was in treatment, both during chemo and radiation. They are reporting that Friday’s Stand Up to Cancer raised “over $100 million dollars”.
I know that’s a lot of money but I’m actually a little disappointed. On stage we saw $25 million donation by philanthropist Sidney Kimmel make a pledge of $25 million. This country has a population of around 300 million people. You don’t have to be a mathematician (thank God) to see that donations per person were pretty darn low.
Not pitting one disease against another, but Jerry Lewis raised $65 million dollars this year for MDA. Now of course he has been doing this for years and therein lies my point. Here’s my list of ways to increase the numbers.
- Make plans now for another telethon the same time next year.
- Get the networks to really buy in. Disney-ABC Television Group for example has multiple channels in the Disney platform, SOAPNET, Lifetime, A&E and ESPN. Show the telethon on all of the stations covered by the group.
- Expand the program. This was a good first effort but one hour is not enough time.
- Add more performers and performances.
- Bring on more and more and more survivors. Particularly survivors who have something unusual about their illness. A man with breast cancer or a 20 year old with breast cancer gets more attention than your usual woman.
- Increase the publicity and the intensity. Increase your online presence and move it up.
- Make it easier to find t-shirts, stickers and more. I had loads of people coming to my blog to find them so I just put a link to the Cafe Press site. This is a small blog and I had 72 click throughs in just a couple of hours. Even if only a few of those people bought a shirt there is increased revenue.
I am glad that this was done, it is a start. But if the costs of research are anything near the costs of treatment much more is needed.
Filed under: Fundraising | Tagged: cancer, research, stand up 2 cancer |
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