Those that know Megan Caper say they would describe her as kind, generous, and always willing to help others in need. But now, she needs the help of her community.

Four years ago at age 33, Megan was diagnosed with Stage IIIb colon cancer.   Unfortunately, having a job, health insurance, and savings was no match when it came to the medical bills that have accumulated throughout the past years.

After battling the cancer for years, Megan is now healing and completing a master’s program in Occupational Therapy so she can help others going through medical problems. However Megan has struggled to pay for school, treatment co-pays and monthly insurance premiums that have increased seven-fold since her diagnosis.

Knowing all this, Megan’s family and friends, stepped up to get Megan the help she needs to finally pay off those medical bills.  They started a GiveForward fundraising page on her behalf and are already gaining momentum.

Everyone here are GiveForward is proud to give love and encouragement, and of course send out lots hugs to Megan and her friends.

Thanks to the kindness of a few NASA employees, a man battling an aggressive form of cancer will get to fulfill a life long dream.

Tony Kudalis was diagnosed with Giloblastoma Multiforme stage IV brain cancer over four years ago.  Those diagnosed with the cancer, better known as the ‘gravedigger’, rarely survive for more than nine months.  Tony has been battling for years.

Tony’s wife Elaine says one of the things that has kept him fighting for so long was the dream of seeing a space shuttle launch.  Since he was a kid, Tony was always inspired by outer space.  When he received his cancer diagnosis, Tony was determined to see a space shuttle launch.

After a few failed attempts, including one launch that they were able to attend but was called off at the last minute due to weather, Elaine and Tony were worried he might not have the chance to fulfill his dream.  But with an upcoming launch scheduled on April 29th, Elaine was determined to get Tony to the launch.

As his health has deteriorated, it became clear Tony would not be able to stand for the launch and instead would need to purchase a ticket in order to be seated for the event.  Elaine searched online for available tickets but they were already sold out.  In a last ditch attempt, Elaine decided to post a request on Craigslist, knowing that their only option might be to pay an inflated price for the seats, which would be difficult to do since the family is already facing quickly mounting medical bills.

Instead, what happened was a miracle.  Elaine was contacted by a NASA engineer.  It turns out his wife had seen Elaine’s posting and immediately wanted to help.  The engineer not only offered Elaine and Tony two seats to the launch but reached out to a PR employee at NASA whose grandmother battled the exact same disease as Tony.

Between these two NASA employees, Tony and Elaine will not only have the chance to see the launch but will also get a guided tour of the NASA station as well.

It is this kind of outpouring of support from total strangers that we find truly inspiring.  A big big GiveForward ‘thank you’ to everyone at NASA who is coming together to make Tony’s dreams come true, and we hope that this generosity inspires others to do the same.  If you want to show your support for Tony and Elaine, please check out their GiveForward page and help Tony’s dream come true.

Fundraiser organizers will see new functionality starting this week.  We are excited to share that we are now assigning a personal fundraising coach to each fundraiser started on GiveForward.

What does this mean for users?  It means you get the exact level of personal attention that you want.  Is this your first time fundraising?  Our coaches are

happy to help you figure out the next steps and share their tried and true fundraising tips, just email them at info@giveforward.com or give them a call at 312-957-6113.

Are you an old pro at fundraising and just want someone to call on if you get stuck?  They’re there for that too.

Plus having a personal fundraising coach also means you get a nice glossy photo of your coach with your introductory email.  Always a nice perk.

We hope that you guys enjoy working one-on-one with our coaches as much as they enjoy working with you.

One of the cool things about being a medical fundraising tool is that at GiveForward we get to see all of the creative and inspiring ways that friends and family fundraise on behalf of their loved ones.

We wanted to share one such story about Jason Noble, who was diagnosed with cancer.   Friends came together to help raise money for Jason and his wife, Kristin, to cover the cost of everyday expenses that exist outside of insurance coverage.

The unique thing about their fundraiser was the way the organizers encouraged donors to get involved.  In exchange for a standardized donation amount, donors received a collection of 12 art prints that were donated by artists from all around the United States.

The organizers assumed it would take at least six weeks to reach their goal of $15,000.  Instead, during the first day donors from the U.S., Australia, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Canada had donated.  Within 12 hours of its launch, their fundraiser met and surpassed its goal, raising over $16,000!

Now, over a year later, Jason is on the road to recovery thanks to the support of his amazing group of friends.  We were inspired by not only the work Jason’s loved ones put into this fundraiser but the creativity they showed in their efforts.  A big GiveForward high-five to everyone involved in this exceptional fundraiser.

GiveForward co-founder Ethan Austin sat down with Robbie Abed of The Startup Foundry to talk a little about GiveForward’s mission and how far we’ve come in a short amount of time.

From 1 visitor a day to raising $4m for charity, Give Forward’s feel good story
by Robbie Abed on Feb 17, 2011 • 3:45 pm View Comments

I had the great opportunity to speak with Ethan Austin, co-founder of GiveForward (http://www.giveforward.org). Give Forward is a Chicago based startup that helps people raise money for their medical expenses. Ethan speaks about how they once had only 1 visitor on new years day, to being able to get funding a year later. The excerpt of the interview is below:

In one or two sentences, explain what GiveForward does.
GiveForward is a crowdfunding platform for medical expenses. In a nutshell, we make it incredibly easy for friends and family raise money for things like chemotherepy treatments or organ transplants when their loved one gets sick.

How long has Give Forward been around?
We launched in 2008.

Was Give Forward bootstrapped or funded?
We bootstrapped for the first two-and-a-half years but recently got funding.

Explain what the first 0-6 months were like for Give Forward. How did you get it off the ground?
Wow! To say the first six months were rough would be a massive understatment. We launched the site in August of 2008 and on January 1st, 2009 we had one visitor on GiveForward that day — literally ONE visitor! For the most part, our attempts at gaining traction involved coercing our friends and family to start fundraising pages. I enlisted about 25 of my college buddies and their girlfriends to run 5 miles through Central Park for the cause of their choice in in an event we dubbed “run for a reason” . I think we helped raise about $13,000 from the event, which probably accounted for like half of the donations on the site the first six months. It was kind of ridiculous back then.

We really didn’t start to see any traction on the site until about nine months in when two Chicago sisters from Depaul used GiveForward to raise $30,000 for a kidney transplant. After that, we received some media coverage and things started to pick up a bit.

[Editors note:] Give Forward has already raised $3,527,462 for medical expenses and other important causes. Talk about a startup making an impact on the world![/Editors note:]

How did you acquire funding. Was a prototype built before funding?
Last summer, we got accepted into a Chicago startup accelerator called Excelerate Labs, which turned out to be a game changer for us. Through Excelerate, we were able to demo at the House of Blues in front of 500 investors from around the county. My partner, Desiree, gave a pretty awesome presentation which really opened the doors for us. From there, Tim Krauskopf, one of the mentors at Excelerate helped us round up some investors. We also used Angel List, which I highly recommend, to secure the final part of our round.

How big is the team?
We have a team of seven right now plus a few really awesome interns.

Being a Chicago startup, do you find it harder to succeed then if you were in silicon valley as an example
Not at all. I know it’s a cliche, but the Chicago startup community is really coming into its own right now. Groupon has obviously helped to bring a ton of attention to Chicago, but things like Excelerate Labs, MidVentures Tech Week, and Social Dev Camp are changing the landscape in Chicago and helping to build a strong community here. Granted, funding is always going to be an issue and there is no Sand Hill Road in Chicago, but with tools like Angel List democratizing the VC industry, the need to be in Silicon Valley isn’t nearly as great as it used to be.

What is your biggest challenge now?
Educating people and getting the word out. That’s always been the hardest part. When a loved one is going through a serious health issue like cancer, their friends and family usually feel pretty helpless and don’t know what they can do to help. Our goal is make sure they are aware of our service. Once people find out about GiveForward, they always love it. We just need to let more people know about it.

Thanks to Ethan for the interview. All the best to GiveForward. For more startup news, follow us on twitter @startupfoundry.

You can also follow the author on twitter @robbieab.

We are very excited to announce GiveForward has raised $500,000 in its first round of funding.

After meeting some fantastic people during our participation in Excelerate, we were able to do some creative fundraising and are now ready to expand on the services we currently provide.  With this backing we will now be able to grow our team and bring on additional fundraising coaches so we can continue to provide the best service possible to our fundraisers.

Feel free to check out the story featured in the Chicago Tribune, TechCrunch and FastCompany:

Chicago startup GiveForward raises $500K

By Wailin Wong
Posted today at 8:45 a.m.

GiveForward, a Chicago-based startup that helps people raise money for out-of-pocket medical expenses, has raised $500,000 in its first round of funding.

Desiree Vargas Wrigley and Ethan Austin started GiveForward in 2008 and had looked for some funding at that time, but “what we kept hearing from investors is: ‘You should be a non-profit,’” Vargas Wrigley said. She and Austin funded the company themselves, with Vargas Wrigley waiting tables at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba in Lincoln Park in the meantime.

The GiveForward platform allows people to create personalized fundraising pages and share their cause through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. GiveForward collects the donations, which can be done through credit or debit cards, and passes them along to the beneficiary after deducting 7 percent for processing fees. The company said its users have raised $3.5 million since the company’s inception and about 10,000 users have joined the site, with almost half of them signing up in the last six months.

In 2010, GiveForward was one of 10 companies chosen for the inaugural class of Excelerate, a Chicago-based program that awards funding to startups and provides mentorship from experienced investors and entrepreneurs. Through the Excelerate program, Vargas Wrigley and Austin connected with Tim Krauskopf, a serial entrepreneur and former Motorola Inc. executive who had co-founded Spyglass Inc., the software firm that developed the basis for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.

Krauskopf gave the GiveForward team advice and cultivated a group of investors behind the scenes. He became the lead investor for the company’s fundraising round, which also includes several angel investors and New World Ventures, the Chicago venture capital firm that invests on behalf of the Pritzker family.

“There are a lot of fantastic new tech ventures coming out of Chicago right now and GiveForward is one of the best,” Krauskopf said in a statement. “It is a truly viral service that leverages social networking for a real, productive purpose.”

The $500,000 will allow GiveForward to expand its staff. Austin and Vargas Wrigley drew their first paychecks in January and recently hired a marketing employee and an in-house developer. Vargas Wrigley said the startup plans to hire another five to seven people this year, with most of them serving as fundraising coaches that work one-on-one with the site’s users.

GiveForward also plans to work more closely with hospitals and private clinics so doctors and nurses can recommend GiveForward to the families of patients that might be struggling financially or could benefit from the support of an online community, Vargas Wrigley said.

Vargas Wrigley said her startup’s success in getting funding speaks to how “the funding climate is changing in Chicago.”

“Companies really can be mission-driven or social ventures and still produce return,” she said.

GiveForward Raises $500K To Be The Kickstarter For Medical Expenses

By Leena Rao
Posted today at 2:40 p.m.

GiveForward, an online fundraising tool for medical expenses, has raised $500,000 in funding from Tim Krauskopf, New World Ventures, David Cohen, Ed Chandler, Social Leverage and Excelerate Labs.

GiveForward, which was incubated in Chicago’s Excelerate Labs, wants to become the Kickstarter for medical expenses. The platform allows anyone to create customizable fundraising pages where friends and family from across the world can donate online.

To make money, GiveForward deducts 7 percent of all donations. Since 2008, 10,000 users have joined GiveForward with the startup helping families raise nearly $3.5 million for their loved ones’ out-of-pocket medical expenses. GiveForward also gives users tips on fundraising, allows them to socialize their pages on Facebook and Twitter and more.

This article on 5 Ways to Help a Friend With Cancer is over two years old, but we just rediscovered it and thought GiveForward users might find the advice it contains to be timeless. This truly is a great read; it’s just too bad she didn’t mention anything about the ever-important sixth way to help – fundraising!

read more…

GiveForward always seeks to keep up with what is going on in the medical fundraising and cancer world, so I was particularly excited when I found out Sandi Wisenberg would be reading from her new book here in Chicago.  Sandi started a blog, Cancer Bitch, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and recently, that blog has become a book, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch.

Through the selections Sandi read, I discovered she had a rather unique perspective on cancer, one I thought would be of interest to our GiveForward users.  Sandi, a professional writer and published author of Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, and Other Obsessions, chose to document her cancer journey in the form of a blog because she knew her experience would be a “big deal” and she wanted an outlet for her thoughts and feelings.

While she didn’t have specific readers of her blog in mind, she says that she hopes readers can “learn that they can take more control of the management of their disease, whatever it is, that they can get second opinions, [or] change doctors.”  A cancer diagnosis is overwhelming and it may seem counter-intuitive to seek a second opinion or ask for another doctor, but if you want to take control of your diagnosis, you must make your voice heard.  For example, Sandi details how she insisted an attending doctor do the surgery to install her port instead of an “apprentice.”

On a more global level, Sandi wants “readers to rethink common wisdom about breast cancer.”  She notes that people should be on alert for what she calls “pinkwashing,” and that “buying a magnetic pink ribbon for your car is not enough. People should think about where their cancer donations are going.”  Sandi talks about these issues, and others not commonly discussed, with honesty and unapologetic suspicion. 

In entries from her book such as “I Love Pink M&M’s,” Sandi is able to be hilariously engaging yet wary of the motives of popular cancer organizations.  In the opening lines of this section, she says: “I love pink M & Ms.  I eat them every day.  That’s all I eat.  If I eat enough of them my cancer will go away.  Won’t it?  Isn’t that what they promise?”

The Adventures of Cancer Bitch is witty, wise, and offers a fresh perspective on the cancer experience.  It is a book that questions our approach to cancer while at the same time detailing an intimate, personal experience.  Here are some closing words from Sandi that I think nicely sum up the tone of her book: “I want people to know that it’s OK to laugh when you’re ill.  And personally, I’m annoyed when people say that cancer was a gift or God’s will.  As author Shelley Lewis has said, if you think it’s a gift, don’t come to my birthday party.”

Did you know that April is Organ Transplant Month!  Neither did we…but now that we do, we’re doing our best to spread the word.  17 patients die each day awaiting a transplant because the organ they need is not available and currently there are over 79,000 U.S. patients awaiting a transplant.  But, a single organ or tissue donor can help save the lives of as many as 50 people!  If you are not already an organ donor, please consider signing up today by clicking here. 

On GiveForward, there are many fundraisers for people who have already received, or are hoping to receive, organ transplants.  Here is just a small sampling:

Musician Gabriel Mountain was diagnosed with a genetic disorder (IGA Nephropathy) that left him with only 15% usage of his kidneys.  Gabriel is currently on dialysis and will eventually need a new kidney.  He is raising money to cover the “astronomical” medical expenses he has incurred as a result of his disease.  For more about Gabriel’s story or to donate, please click here.   

Mary Beth started a fundraiser for her husband Chris who needs a kidney transplant.  He is currently awaiting his second kidney after the first one he received failed after 4 years.  Chris is on dialysis while he awaits his much needed kidney.  The money raised will go towards medications, insurance premiums, and any other unexpected expenses while Chris is out of work for 6 weeks after the transplant.  To read more about Chris or to donate to his fundraiser, please click here. 

Joseph is a baby boy who, after being diagnosed with a disorder known as Malignant Infantile Osteoporosis, needed a bone marrow transplant.  He received the transplant just 4 days after his 1st birthday, but is required to stay in the hospital for over 3 months.  Amy set up a fundraiser to help his family with the medical bills they will have as a result of the transplant and hospital stay.  To read more about Joseph or to donate to his fundraiser, click here. 

A two time survivor of liver cancer, Keith McGregor was recently diagnosed with the disease again and now needs a liver transplant to save his life.  This time his cancer is inoperable and a transplant is the only hope.  His wife Tabatha started a fundraiser for him in hopes of raising money for all the expenses involved in his treatment, such as chemotherapy and medications.  To read more about Keith or to donate to his fundraiser, please click here. 

Karen is raising money for her father who has had multiple bypass surgeries and now needs a new heart and kidney.  Karen seeks to raise funds to lessen the financial burden all the medical expenses have has on her family.  For more about her father, Butch, or to donate, please visit their page here. 

Josie is an 11 year old girl who was diagnosed with a liver disease, Biliary Atresia, at just six weeks old.  Now Josie needs a liver transplant and doctors say the success rate would be higher with a living donor.  Her father hopes to match Josie and donate part of his liver to her, but because the living donor procedure is more complicated than usual, their family’s insurance does not cover all the costs.  To read more about Josie or to donate money to her medical expenses, please click here.

Regardless of your ability to make a financial contribution to these fundraisers, you can help the people mentioned above simply by registering to be an organ donor and encouraging others to, also, by tweeting, emailing, and putting the link in your status messages.

GiveForward happily announces another medical fundraising success story!  This time, Lori Hope, a cancer survivor herself, started a fundraising page for her friend Ann-Ellice and raised over $10,000! 

With well over 25 years of experience as a communications professional, Lori Hope is a leading authority on cancer support and the author of “Help Me Live: 20 Things People With Cancer Want You to Know.”  Her book has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and on NBC’s Today Show among other places.  In addition to her book, Lori writes a blog and speaks publically about cancer and how to support and communicate with cancer patients. 

We are incredibly excited that Lori featured GiveForward recently on her blog.  In her post, she chronicles her journey in helping her friend Ann-Ellice by setting up a GiveForward page.  Ann-Ellice is a dear friend to Lori, one who helped her during her own battle with cancer by cooking for her and completing other helpful tasks.  When Ann-Ellice confided to Lori that she was having some financial problems after losing her job in the recession, Lori asked if it would be okay if she set up a GiveForward fundraising page for Ann-Ellice.  After some hesitation, Ann-Ellice finally agreed.  Lori details the outpouring of support, whether monetary or emotional, given to her friend Ann-Ellice.

“My life has been largely about supporting people with cancer for the past seven years,” says Lori, adding that she is “thrilled” to learn about GiveForward, as another tool of support.

To read the entire post, please click here. 

For more about Lori Hope, please visit her blog.  For information on her book, please click here.