Saturday, June 19, 2010

Everyone Helping to FIght the Fight

On Friday we were fortunate to have @Daynastunts from New Zealand, sponsor our site. All proceeds for this particular sponsorship went to an 8 yr old girl named Ellie who is fighting rhabdomyosarcoma cancer (@LiftUpEllie) At day's end, Dayna helped us get 1,250 new followers which meant $1,250 for Ellie.

Our goal is to get a daily sponsor of our site and to support various cancer fighting charities & groups all over the world. While we hope for large daily sponsors like the ones from @delprado and @Daynastunts, this can be daunting to the individual who wants to make a difference but doesn't have thousands of dollars to contribute.

Today proves that anyone can make a difference in the battle vs cancer. Christie Sledge @csledge89 on Twitter, agrees to donate $1 for the next 250 followers of @abolishcancer with the $250 in proceeds going towards @Livestrong. Here's a little background about our sponsor, as described by Christie.


"I'm a born and raised Texas. I'm 20, turning 21 in October. I'll be a junior at the University of Texas at the Permian Basin this upcoming fall, studying biology and health/sports psychology. I've not always been involved in the fight against cancer. My grandfather died when my dad was 11 from advanced colon cancer that had taken over his whole body, but that didn't affect me much because I didn't know him. I have been very fortunate not to know anyone in my immediate family and friends who has had cancer or who have cancer at this time. I did, however, have a cancer scare when I was 15 and my gynecologist feared that I had ovarian cancer. Luckily, it was just a scare and turned out to be something completely different. I didn't really have a goal in life until I saw Eric Shanteau. What I saw was a man not that much older than myself (only 6 years) facing his own mortality and being faced with difficult decisions. They were decisions I never want to see anyone have make; What is more important: dreams and goals, or a surgery date? I took up the cause of male cancers, even though I am female. People ask me why. The reality is, I don't know why. Shanteau changed my life so drastically that I felt like I owed it to him to try to eradicate the disease that had tried to eradicate him. I'm also very close to my older brother, who is 5 years older than me, and many of my best friends are male. I couldn't imagine them coming face to face with cancer. Male cancers seem to have no voice (mainly because of male pride), so I took it upon myself to be the voice for them. "

Christie's passion to abolishcancer is evident in her description and her sponsorship of our site and proves that the power of one person can make a difference. Thanks Christie for helping to "fight the fight".

"Power of the People, through Twitter, to @abolishcancer"

-Darah

Bonham.darah@gmail.com

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Looking to Lift Up Ellie

Tonight we were fortunate to have Dayna Chiplin (@Daynastunts on Twitter) agree to sponsor our site for the next 1,250 followers until we reached 15,000 followers. Dayna's sponsorship will go towards 8 yr old Ellie (@LiftUpEllie) on Twitter who is fighting rhabdomyosarcoma cancer. (PLease follow & support Ellie & her family here http://liftupellie.com/) For each new follower we get, Dayna would pay $1 towards Ellie which means a grand total of $1,250 all by tweeting and following.

Dayna is founder and instructor of New Zealand Stunt School www.nzstuntschool.com and New Zealand's top female Stunt Performer and Fight Choreographer for the past 13 years. She is mother of 2 kids my boy Trae 9 years old and Girl Kaiya 6 years old and wife to Scott Chiplin.

Fighting cancer is important for Dayna for she feels her kids are so important and she couldn't imagine families loosing kids to cancer. As Dayna points out "I have been fighting in make believe all my life on film and now want to fight for something in real life worth fighting for. Child Cancer has always been something I have always followed and been emotional towards.
I always tell my self: "I fight for what I believe and if I get knocked down it will only make me get up and Fight twice as strong"
I will be pushing it were ever I can, I have magazine articles and TV interviews coming up and will help this way were ever I can."

We are extremely thankful for Dayna's generosity this evening in helping to raise not only $ but also awareness for childhood cancer. We hope just a little bit can help families and kids like Ellie end this horrible disease some day.

"Power of the People, through Twitter, to @abolishcancer!"
-Darah

Sunday, June 6, 2010

We Want To Change The World, & You Are Helping Us Do It

Friday, June 4 was another amazing day with our familiar sponsors, @delprado. Once again, with their help, we raised $3,681 to support Shannon Tweed's @RallyForKids campaign. The amazing thing was, this was all done by getting new followers to @abolishcancer, for which Delprado agreed to pay $1 for each new person who "clicked" the follow button of our Twitter feed.

Who would have thought that we would be able to help fight cancer, simply by tweeting? At one point, prior to the midnight EST deadline, the mentioning of our campaign was so viral that it was difficult to keep up with all the tweets. Many influential people and celebrities helped our cause with tweets including Alyssa Milano, Russell Crowe, Erin Andrews, UK Coach Calipari, Nate Berkus, Anna Trebunskaya, Jessie Camacho, Julie Benz, Ben Lyons, Jason Kennedy, "Dog", Craig Bierko, Tina Stull, Alex McCord, Loni Love, & Victor Oliveira- just to name just a few.

But the power of the day started with our sponsor, and was fueled throughout by our followers who constantly tweeted to get others on board in our quest for more followers & $ to RallyForKids.

So what's next? We feel that we have started something special, an opportunity to get a global community involved in the fight against cancer. Obviously, the most critical part of how we operate is to get sponsors. Each day we seek a sponsor that agrees to pay $1 for every new follower @abolishcancer gets. I'm sure businesses and individuals don't like the uncertainty of the possibilities of how much they MIGHT have to pay given the viral implications of a tweeting explosion. Heck, one tweet by @Aplusk (with 5 million followers) could send a sponsor commitment to 5 figures. But the reality is, that to get over 3,000 new followers, which Delprado has helped us do the last two sponsorships, you have to generate double that many tweets about the cause.

Just think, as a business, you could have a viral message relayed to tens of thousands of viewers for a few thousand dollars worth of a donation. More importantly, the reason for the sponsorship is the cause. So many great cancer groups and organizations, we could if we got sponsors for each of the 365 days in a year.

So far @abolishcancer has raised over $11,000 by simply getting people to follow us on Twitter. Our largest sponsors so far are Delprado, who has donated over $8,000 themselves for three separate sponsorships, and Pat Howley, who helped us raise $1,734 for PSU's @THON campaign.

We are excited about our past success and even more so by the opportunities for the future. We have a dream that our global community will grow to millions with our sponsorships as well, to make a difference in this war, and to @abolishcancer one and for all.

Contact us at bonham.darah@gmail.com to get more information on how you can become a sponsor.

"Power of the People, through Twitter, to @abolishcancer"

Friday, June 4, 2010

Teaming Up With Shannon Tweed to Abolishcancer

@delprado is back to help join forces with @shannonleetweed , @RallyForKids and @abolishcancer .

A week or so ago we connected with @ShannonleeTweed about her recent push to get donations for the @RallyForKids event. This is a great cause to support the fight vs pediatric cancer and has events planned in various cities across the US (check them out here).


Shannon agreed to have us help her raise awareness for the event by trying to secure a sponsor. After several days pounding the Twitter pavement, we had many inquiries but no takers on sponsoring for a day. Then we received an email from our good friend and supporter, @delprado. John Gallagher, the CEO of MAPA Imports, LLC told me that he was game to sponsor and help out another great cause fighting cancer.

John (http://twitter.com/delprado) is no stranger to helping abolishcancer. Just 2 weeks ago, John agreed to sponsor our site to support a 5yr old boy, Braden, and his mom who are BOTH fighting cancer. (follow them at @Bradenshope). At the end of the day, with thousands of tweets, @abolishcancer had 3,226 new followers, which meant $3,226, all donated by @delprado to Braden and his mom. Not only that, But John sponsored our site several months ago helping to support @VTRelay.


All total, John @delprado has already contributed over $4,300 towards supporting @abolishcancer and helping to end this dreadful disease. Today he takes on the challenge of supporting @ShannonleeTweed and @RallyforKids.


So here is how it works “For every new follower today of @abolishcancer, @Delprado agrees to donate $1 to support @ShannonleeTweed's @RallyForKids campaign”


We start the day with 9,389 followers. How great is that- by simply following you can help fight and ABOLISH this disease. We need tweeters and tweets today, let's get this message to go viral!

Thanks to John, to Shannon and to you for fighting the fight.

“Power of the People, through Twitter, to @abolishcancer”