...Dream Of Recovery...

Fundraiser #2 at The Metropolitan American Diner and Bar was a success! Over $600 was raised, which will go very far for The CHEMO Bag. I am going to look into more fundraisers like this for the future, all that needed to be done was for people to show up there and eat. Easy Peasy I say. I am truly thankful to the owners of The Met for doing this for us. They are an hour away and thus far our bags haven’t been given to anyone in their area. Plus we are not yet a non profit organization so they were unable to write this off on their taxes.

Ahhh yes….you may be wondering about our non profit status. We will be meeting with our CPA on May 6, 2013 to get the paperwork started. Our CPA offered to do this work for us pro bono but in return we needed to wait until after tax season was over. We will still need to pay The IRS/State to process the paperwork. The other day The CHEMO Bag received a $250 donation to be used exclusively for obtaining our non profit status. This should cover about ½ the cost so HUGE THANK YOU to our donor, Michelle may have started this organization but it is truly a group effort!

Last Tues April 23, 2013 22 more bags were delivered to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg Campus. This time Michelle did not come (she has to go to school you know) and I did not hand out the bags. I simply gave them to the infusion nurses to hand out to the patients. One patient wrote a “thank you” on our facebook wall and said we helped her “turn her worst nightmare into a dream of recovery”

Which is exactly why we want to continue handing out bags. Why we want to become a non profit. Why we will continually ask you for help.

We are thrilled with all the money we have raised with our recent fundraisers, completely thrilled. But what thrills us more than money is swag. We love to see what items get donated (I never would have thought of sleep masks but now that we have received a few I can’t imagine packing up a bag for a woman with one).

And our donation pile is small. Please consider donating again, or asking your friends/family to donate. We adore lap blankets and neck pillows. Gender neutral please, for men and women. Don’t forget the men. Hand sanitizers, tissues, pens, note cards, lip balm, hand lotion…and sleep masks.

Once our non profit status is official we will be asking local businesses to get involved…perhaps we will find a sponsor.

Meanwhile…does anyone know a web site developer who would be willing to donate his/her time to help us set up a better, more functional website?

Or a local silk screener willing to lower his/her cost of silk screening for us? I don’t mind doing the screening but I sure do mind when I mess up and ruin a bag.