Goal Reached!
Selfies with Eduardo at the Bank
Hi friends…
Since its social media launch one week ago, the all-new Mitchell and Friends Foundation is off to a great start.
In one week, our new Facebook page has 311 people following the page, and 205 likes. (If you’d like to stay up-to-date, change that “like” to “follow.”)
Also in one week, the mitchellandfriends.com website had 962 unique visitors, with over 2,000 page views.
And our “modest initial fundraising goal” of raising $10,000 was successfully reached in less than 5 days. A total of 48 people and families donated a total of $10,846. Thank you for your generous contributions.
From here, we plan to continue to build an internet presence so that families who receive a diagnosis of “Mitchell Syndrome” don’t have to work too hard to get the information they need. We want to cut down the time-gap between receiving such a confusing and devastating diagnosis and getting help at knowing how to move forward.
We are also working to connect with doctors and medical professionals who can use the website as a resource to understand this disease. Mitchell Syndrome is a confusing illness that can only be truly diagnosed with genetic testing. But as more doctors are familiar with the symptoms, presentation, and phenotype of the illness, they will be more likely to order genome sequencing to get a proper diagnosis. And insurance companies will be more likely to comply.
With a growing network of families and children, we hope to be able to put our small budget to good use. We’ll keep you posted on when and how we’re able to do that. Families can apply for grants on the website—to help with medical equipment, living expenses, and medication. All grants will be reviewed by the board.
Michele and I can’t help but chuckle at how Mitchell would regard all this commotion.
“What?! You started a foundation for me?”
“Well, not for YOU, Mitchell. For your friends.”
-Matt and the Mitchell and Friends Foundation Folks
PS - The blog picture above is from Michele’s and my visit with Eduardo at First Community Credit Union a few weeks ago, to open the Foundation’s bank account. Our first check of $500 was donated that day. It was the remaining amount left in Mitchell’s personal savings account. His was the first donation.
