Free Hugs – GiveForward Testimonial – Meghan’s Story
posted on 10/22/2009 by Ethan AustinTweet
If there is one thing we are good at at GiveForward (aside from pub trivia) it’s giving out hugs (both real and virtual) to our users.
It’s something we love to do and something for which we take great pride. Amazingly, many of our users end up hugging us back. It’s pretty awesome and has allowed us to get to know some really wonderful, warm, incredible people. People like Meghan Kaplan.
It’s something we love to do and something for which we take great pride. Amazingly, many of our users end up hugging us back. It’s pretty awesome and has allowed us to get to know some really wonderful, warm, incredible people. People like Meghan Kaplan.Meghan (who happens to be one of our all time favorite huggees) used GiveForward last spring to raise money for her friend battling gastric cancer. Just recently, Meghan sent the following email to a news reporter and cc’d us on it. It was such a heartwarming email, we asked her if we could print it in our blog…and of course being the awesome person that she is, she said “yes”. Check it out:
My journey with GiveForward.org started last February when I decided to compete in a triathlon to raise money for my college roommate and best friend of 15 years. In April of 2008, she was diagnosed with Gastric Cancer, an extremely rare diagnosis for a 32 year old women. Her son would be turning 3 in March and her husband was always by her side. When friends and family kept asking, “How can we help?” many of us fell short in coming up with an easy and quick way to raise funds to help her family. Then, I ran across GiveForward.org in advertisements for the Chicago Marathon. It almost seemed too good to be true. But I quickly realized this was not the case. The group at Give Forward has it all figured out! The steps were quick and very easy. It just took a few minutes and an extremely small fee to set up my fund raising web page off of their site. Immediately, I was able to have friends and family begin donating. I simply explained the triathlon on GiveForward.org, wrote from the heart, and the donations started pouring into the website. My friends and I were able to watch our fundraiser daily. It was truly exciting.
On March 9, 2009, GiveForward.org decided to feature my fundraiser on their homepage. Coincidentally, my dear friend passed away on March 9, 2009. When I shared the news with Ethan Austin and Desiree Vargas (GiveForward.org co-founders), they were able to comfort me and others in ways that are indescribable. Their emails and words of kindness really helped. When the fundraiser ended, the check was directly sent to my friend’s husband and son. They were so grateful. Again, Ethan and Desiree were there to give us words of encouragement. Overall, with their support, the fundraiser not only helped us benefit someone we cared for, it gave us great purpose during some dark days of grief and loneliness.
With all of that being said, I would recommend and have recommended GiveForward.org to anyone who has a need to raise funds for someone they love. I can only hope to bring more people on the journey that is GiveForward.org, for it has been and continues to be a beautiful one.
Meghan KaplanBloomfield Hills, Michigan
