Getting Outside Funding.

[Ccconfucius]

This place is to discuss ideas on getting outside funding.  You can come in drop your ideas and also propose ways you can help. You can also suggest a group that you think will be willing to donate to our cause.
I am going to be working on constructing a letter that can be send to businesses and groups on our behalf, am not a good writer so i will be posting what i wrote for some criticism.
Thanks. 

[mellivora]

Thanks Ccc, good idea.
I've been thinking i might write to a condom manufacturer or two! Seriously! If they help us find a cure, people like us are likely to use more of their products. Its a win-win situation! What have we got to lose?

[mellivora]

Ok...it was just via the contact box on their webpage under sponsorship rather than writing to a specific person....which isn't ideal...but I have just written to a major condom manufacturer asking for help with funds!

[demografx]

I have just written to a major condom manufacturer asking for help with [POIS Medical Research] funds!

Thank you, mellivora!!

[Ccconfucius]

Thanks Ccc, good idea.
I've been thinking i might write to a condom manufacturer or two! Seriously! If they help us find a cure, people like us are likely to use more of their products. Its a win-win situation! What have we got to lose?

NICE, i wouldnt have thought of condom company but that is actually a great place to ask.   
Is there a way i can see a copy of your letter. 

[mellivora]

Just to update...The condom company has a separate company they use for public relations and I was told to contact them. I did so and my email has apparently been passed on to the relevant person within that company. Its been 2 weeks since I last heard from them so I shall follow up next week.

[Daveman]

You never know?!

These kind of things always need heavy follow up, thanks. The Email gets passed on to someone, who lets it sit on his desk for a while, while he attends to 100 other squeeky wheels.

He would probably have to investigate before committing to anything ( which would probably mean passing it on to another desk ), so meantime he attends someting else which is "easier". Sigh.

I think you said you sent along pertinent papers and info about POIS right? Ideally you could actually get in touch with the guy who's desk the EMail is on.

You know, what we need is a pre-packaged letter that describes POIS and gives all the references, and we attach it to everything we send out to who-ever.

If you have something written up, maybe you could PM me with it, and we can edit and tweak it and call it an official document for this kind of thing. We could post it someplace (probably in the information and reading area) so that anyone wishing to connect to someone, would have access to it.

[Daveman]

BTW, Thanks a lot for your great work in support of our cause. Every bit of help is greatly appreciated. Believe me I know what it means to take the time out...

[mellivora]

You never know?!

These kind of things always need heavy follow up, thanks. The Email gets passed on to someone, who lets it sit on his desk for a while, while he attends to 100 other squeeky wheels.

He would probably have to investigate before committing to anything ( which would probably mean passing it on to another desk ), so meantime he attends someting else which is "easier". Sigh.

I think you said you sent along pertinent papers and info about POIS right? Ideally you could actually get in touch with the guy who's desk the EMail is on.

You know, what we need is a pre-packaged letter that describes POIS and gives all the references, and we attach it to everything we send out to who-ever.

If you have something written up, maybe you could PM me with it, and we can edit and tweak it and call it an official document for this kind of thing. We could post it someplace (probably in the information and reading area) so that anyone wishing to connect to someone, would have access to it.

I'm in the process of following up..
You are right, a generic letter would probably be useful. I'll have another look at the letter I wrote. I wasn't totally happy with the letter (I was in POIS afterall!) and I can see some improvements to make. In any case I try to tailor letters a little to whoever I'm sending them to. This one was aimed at a condom company and wouldn't necessarily be as suitable for a different company. But it can be adapted. I'll dig it out and review it and maybe we can work something out, thanks.

[mellivora]

Ok, not wholly unexpected - the company I contacted say they can't help us with funding owing to their existing charity commitments. There are lots of other companies out there though!

[Stef]

Hi Mellivora and Everyone!

Mel, your first attempt at getting outside funding was excellent.  I think that contacting a condom company was a brilliant idea!!

It might be helpful to post the name of the company(s) you contacted, so that others don't re-contact them.  There is nothing wrong with them for turning down your request, and it would not be detrimental or harmful to mention the company name -- especially since they state that they have other charity commitments.  That in itself is a complement to the particular company -- the charity commitments.

There are many major condom companies in the US and overseas.  Others on the forum might wish to try their luck at asking for donations (which would be the reason to post the name of the company that couldn't donate.)

As an aside, a close friend of mine -- a guy without POIS -- was blown away by what POIS is.  Of course, he'd never heard of it and was really flabbergasted -- and moved.  He suggested that some of you may want to send a fund-raising letter to some of the popular men's magazines that are sexually-focused, such as Penthouse and Playboy.  he was quite serious about this, and I think it's a good idea too!

Here's a link to sample donation request letters -- http://www.buzzle.com/articles/donation-request-letter.html. (There are many others online.) It might be helpful to you and other forum members who want to reach out.  One hint -- it helps to find out who the president, CEO, etc is of the particular company, so that you can be very specific in addressing the correct person.

Good luck--and keep trying!!!  You (all of you) never know where that big donation will come from!

[Ccconfucius]

Hi Mellivora and Everyone!

Mel, your first attempt at getting outside funding was excellent.  I think that contacting a condom company was a brilliant idea!!

It might be helpful to post the name of the company(s) you contacted, so that others don't re-contact them.  There is nothing wrong with them for turning down your request, and it would not be detrimental or harmful to mention the company name -- especially since they state that they have other charity commitments.  That in itself is a complement to the particular company -- the charity commitments.

There are many major condom companies in the US and overseas.  Others on the forum might wish to try their luck at asking for donations (which would be the reason to post the name of the company that couldn't donate.)

As an aside, a close friend of mine -- a guy without POIS -- was blown away by what POIS is.  Of course, he'd never heard of it and was really flabbergasted -- and moved.  He suggested that some of you may want to send a fund-raising letter to some of the popular men's magazines that are sexually-focused, such as Penthouse and Playboy.  he was quite serious about this, and I think it's a good idea too!

Here's a link to sample donation request letters -- http://www.buzzle.com/articles/donation-request-letter.html. (There are many others online.) It might be helpful to you and other forum members who want to reach out.  One hint -- it helps to find out who the president, CEO, etc is of the particular company, so that you can be very specific in addressing the correct person.

Good luck--and keep trying!!!  You (all of you) never know where that big donation will come from!

can we collect donations using nord's name  instead of pois. I dont mean donations from companies, or from people online i mean individuals.     

[Stef]

Hi CC,

"Re:  "Can we collect donations using NORD's name instead of pois? I don't mean donations from companies, or from people online i mean individuals."

Unfortunately, no -- your donations for the POIS research grant would need to mention POIS.
This is because if you asked for donations for NORD, without mention of the POIS research grant, then the donations will not be marked for your grant fund.  They'll go to NORD's general expenses fund.

It sounds like the name -- Post-Orgasmic-Illness-Syndrome -- is extremely uncomfortable for many (if not all) of you to mention publicly.  This is understandable -- I really, sincerely mean that.

But if you could step outside of it all for one minute -- consider it someone else's rare condition who is truly, desperately suffering and needs scientific research -- what would you think about the person suffering from POIS?  (When I say "you" I''m not only addressing CC -- am addressing all of you.)

When I recently told one of our healthy (and lusty!) male friends about POIS -- he was first astonished (never heard about it) and then immediately extremely sympathetic.   There was absolutely not one iota of, "Yuck" in his reaction. In fact, one of the first things he said was something like, "Celibacy can't be the answer.  They've got to find a cure!"

So you need to mention POIS for your donations.  I'm sorry that I can't make it easier for you all in that respect.

That was a very good question, CC!

[Ccconfucius]

thanks, hopefully most other reacts like your friend.

[Ccconfucius]

what do you guys think of the amazon program where if someone buys something from amazon after following a link from the website, amazon gives a small percent to the website.
we have a good amount of people, if have a good amount of memebers that probably shop online.

[Ccconfucius]

I have a wild idea   A couple of us buy lottery ticket  as a group if one person win  we donate a percent to pois and share the rest withing ouselves.  Wild but group of employees win lottery all the time

[Daveman]

It's not a totally bad idea! If the group won $2M, it could put $100K into research and divide the rest between the participants.

Probably faster than the way we're going now!!

If there's enough interest I we could start a separate thread. We'd also have access to Worldwide lotteries. We can trust the lottery that one of our members may be a part of.

We could use Pay Pal to pay and "RECEIVE"!!

[Vincent M]

Ehh I'm gonna disagree here. The lottery has the worst pay-off odds of any other form of gambling. We'd be better off going to a casino.

[mellivora]

I've posted a message like this twice on the other forum recently. However, the updates they appear to be doing to NSF don't seem to be going smoothly as my posts were lost and the NS site seems to be down at the moment...

I was thinking about what the forum thread with the most views on the web is. I did a few brief google searches to see if there were any references to this. These searches weren't remotely thorough but I found a couple of discussions on the topic. None of the forum threads suggested had anything like the number of views that our thread on NSF has had (well over 1500000). This set me wondering whether it might be worth writing to Guiness World Records to see if they can determine if our thread has had the most views of any forum thread or indeed if its the longest forum thread in existence. Its something that might be tough to assess but what if we do actually hold such a world record?

If we did, this could be a way of gaining publicity. With a bit of encouragement, online news sites and newspapers might run a short piece on this. Of course any article should mention our efforts to raise funds for research into our condition.

However, I did find this on the Guiness World Records website: "We no longer accept any email or postal based records, such as chain letters or similar variations."
Its possible a forum thread would be viewed as such a "similar variation" so might not be considered for a record. Might give it a shot though!

Can anyone find a forum thread that's had as many views as our NS thread? or is as long?

[Ccconfucius]

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/referralfees.html

what about an amazon associates program, i shop there all the time am sure there are more here who do.
If that works out we can try other websites.