For our Big Give Christmas Challenge this year, the ME Association will be trying to raise £100,000 to help develop the UK's only ME/CFS Biobank – held at the University College London/Royal Free Hospital and run by staff at the world-famous London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
In order to achieve this ambitious target for this year’s online appeal, we shall first need to have pledges in place from people of goodwill that come to a total of £25,000.
Could you offer us such a pledge – which could be for as little as £100 – by October 3?
We shan’t actually be asking for your money until the New Year, after the Christmas Challenge has closed.
But £25,000-worth pledges in place by October 3 will mean that, if the appeal is successful, every donation will be matched pound-for-pound during the public-giving part of the campaign. This will run for a fortnight from 10am on Thursday, December 4.
And, if enough people donate bang on the button at 10am on the first three days, money from a ‘Charity Champions’ fund will be released which could mean that we end up by close of play on December 17 with the full £100,000 – money that's vital to secure the future of the UK ME/CFS Biobank.
So here's the real challenge: with hundreds of charities competing for funds, there will never be enough in the Charity Champions' pot to satisfy every charity's call for funds. It would be great if this year we could show that the ME community is really up to the competition.
For more details about why we’ve chosen to raise money for the UK ME/CFS Biobank this year, please click HERE.
And if you’d like to make your pledge now, the link to the pledging form is HERE.
The UK ME/CFS Biobank website is HERE.
Thank you… from the bottom of our hearts. We shall be providing regular updates and fresh information about this important challenge.
29 August 2014
The appeal is going very well so far. In under three days, 10 people have offered sponsorship totalling £4,850.
Just about to make my pledge. How about a thermometer-style graphic on the homepage that charts the progress of the biobank appeal?
Thank you very much, Andrea
In the next couple of days or so, we shall be beefing up our website homepage to give prominence to this important appeal. And, yes, a thermometer-style graphic
charting its progress is something that we desperately want to do.
Incidentally, we now have a total of £5050 pledged to the appeal which, if memory serves me right, has been promised by 12 people. Only another £19,950 to go.
And, if anybody wants to pledge now, well – here’s that link again to the form: https://secure.thebiggive.org.uk/pledge/meassociation
So far, £5,400 has been pledged by a total of 14 people.
Could YOU help us to get this figure up to £25,000 by October 3:
If anybody wants to pledge now, here’s the link to the form: https://secure.thebiggive.org.uk/pledge/meassociation
And many thanks to Lynne Kersh and members of the Vegepa Club who have offered their support to the appeal. Their annual donation to ME research will this year go towards our Biobank Challenge. http://www.vegepaclub.com/were-currently-donating-to/
I’m happy to report that a total of £7,000 has been pledged so far by 21 generous people.
We like to get that up to £25,000 by October 3.
Only another £18,000 to go!