Katherine Raises $3,300 for Liana

Recently, we had the chance to talk with one of our amazing users who had this to say about GiveForward:

My experience with Giveforward.org

I recently was moved to start a fundraiser to benefit a 4 yr old little girl who is a friend of my daughters as she was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. I was aware of many charitable organizations out there that were developed to support specific medical research needs; however I felt that if I were to personally solicit friends and family to support my efforts for a fund raiser that I would like Liana and her family to benefit directly from the proceeds. My husband and I were already committed to running the Chicago marathon and we thought this was a perfect opportunity to combine our efforts with Giveforward.  In this difficult economy, the medical expenses this family has faced have been exorbitant, and they are so grateful for our support.

Thanks to Giveforward.org we were able to surpass our goal and raise over $3,000 that Liana’s family can use towards her chemotherapy treatments. Thank you so much for providing this tremendous service! It made it so easy to raise money for a great cause.

-          Katherine

As always, we love to hear when a GiveForward community member has a great experience, but Katherine went one step further to share her thoughts on GiveForward with the editors at Real Simple magazine in the following letter:

Hello Real Simple Editor Staff,

My name is Kate and I have been a subscriber and reader of Real Simple Magazine since its inception. I am writing to you on my own initiative and unsolicited from the Organization that I’m writing to you about, as I have been so impressed with the mission and support it provides.

If you have not already heard about them, I suggest that you visit www.giveforward.org, which is an organization that allows individuals to set up a fundraiser online that is not necessarily affiliated to a designated organized charity. I have a neighbor whose 4 year old daughter was recently afflicted with Leukemia. I know finances were tight for them in this tough economical times and as my husband and I were running the Chicago marathon in Oct 2009, we wanted to set up an individual fund raiser on behalf of Liana (my neighbor’s 4 year old). I knew there were many charities out there that support Leukemia and/or Children’s Leukemia, which is a fabulous pursuit, but the purpose of my initiative was to try and specifically generate funds which all proceeds would go directly to this afflicted family to help support medical expenses they have incurred.

The site does allow you to affiliate with organized charities if you choose to do so, and it only makes 3% from the donations raised through its site to help maintain and support the site operate.

I was truly impressed with Give Forward, and I think as a new online service company that works for a great cause, I felt it would be something of interest to Real Simple to cover in a future editorial as there are so many individuals out there who could benefit from setting up their own fund raiser in this manner.

I hope you take the time to investigate this organization’s mission and purpose as I found it to be a tremendous resource for our purposes and we were successful in raising over $3,000 for Liana’s treatments.

Sincerely,

Kate