Day Four of...98 Days

Today is letter writing day, the day we start drafting "the letter" for the fund-raising portion of the campaign for delivery by e-mail and snail mail. I want the message to be less about the campaign and more about joining the fight and making a difference in the lives of those like Tressa who have been affected by this disease.

It might surprise some of the letter recipients to learn that more than 912,938 Americans are living with leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. That is a startling number. And if that number is not shocking enough I am sure they'll be knocked back when they read that every four minutes someone is diagnosed with blood cancer and every 10 minutes, sadly, someone dies.

We'll also inform them that the funds we raise go toward research, patient services and advocacy activities of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Last year over $69 million went toward research alone.

So those are my initial thoughts and hopefully as we compose this letter and speak from the heart people will read this it will touch them to want to support the efforts to find the cure.

And if we want to raise our stated goal of $50,000.00 it will take over 500 letters and an average of $100.00 average gift because this effort needs to raise $12,500.00 by itself. When the letter is finalized, I will post it here.