PDA Matters Inc has just started a partnership with Smile, Amazon.com’s charitable wing.
By using http://smile.amazon.com to buy things online, 0.5% of your eligible purchases will be donated to PDA Matters if you register us as your preferred charity. The best part is that the range of products and the prices are exactly the same as on Amazon.com (in other words you can buy pretty much anything, for pretty much the best price and get it delivered ASAP!)
You can do this by following the link in the banner below:
It is with great pleasure that I can share with you that PDA Matters Inc is now formally recognized as a Public Charity and an Exempt Organization under the US Federal Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 501 (c) (3). Our EIN is 47-4766644.
This means a great deal to our team as we are now officially able to continue our mission without having to be subjected to US Federal Income taxes. Additionally, any donations made to our organization will be considered deductible under IRC Section 170.
Our supporters have already been generous, but we hope this milestone in our organization’s history will allow us to generate more donations with those who donate knowing we are officially a Public Charity and an Exempt Organization.
We have already been able to help dozens of families through our free book campaigns, but the demand has outstripped our resources, leaving hundreds of requests unanswered. Please can you consider donating to our organizations so that we can help fulfill the open requests for literature, and continue our mission to Raise Awareness & Spread Hope about PDA. www.PDAMatters.org/Donate
Having very little money means you need to be creative and in our organization that has a double meaning… As you know we have launched a Donation Box program for local stores, and it has been a success! People have not only been very generous, but they have also kindly commented on the creativity of our design. Today we have launched a www.FundMe.com campaign to try to raise enough money to buy the materials for another 10 boxes.
Each box costs about $25 in materials and we then put in a couple of hours of labor per box to assemble them. So we are looking to raise $250 in the next week via this link https://www.fundme.com/en/projects/23726-Charity-Donation-Boxes
You can give as little as $1. Please consider this worthy project and spread it far and wide within your network!
While it may not seem like much, our donation boxes took a lot of work to produce. In fact we are up to what our engineering friends would call V1.3 🙂 That is we have the same basic configuration (box shape & blue light on top) but we have evolved the details 4 times (1.0 to 1.3) to our latest “production standard”:
What does all this mean, well we have achieved our goal of a high quality, eye catching donation experience which will hopefully continue to inspire individuals to give the change they have in their pockets towards our cause. So far our V1.0 – V1.2 boxes have been receiving donations, we are hopeful that this next generation donation box will exceed what we have already been able to accomplish!
Of course, for those not within range of a PDA Matters donation box, there is still the option to donate online (www.PDAMatters.org/Donate/)
I just wanted to let you know about our cute and innovative donation boxes hitting US stores. Currently there are just a few of the “Version 1.0 Production Standard” boxes (shown below) in a limited test market. There are plans to quickly scale up the number of these boxes (including on hand materials for fabricating them) once the results, including storekeeper feedback, are received from the test market stores. Very exciting stuff!!!
The goal of the blue light is to grab the attention of store patrons and also represent Autism and related matters.
The blue light is a commercially available bulb manufactured and distributed by Philips and $1 of their purchase price goes directly to Autism Speaks (https://www.autismspeaks.org/news/news-item/home-depot-and-philips-light-it-blue-2015)
Rash tells the story on the top of the donation box.
This is a picture of our founding donation from David M. £36 (roughly $57 USD) in beautiful £2 coins. Completely unsolicited, David M. appeared at the front door this morning just as we were setting out for a private trip to the south-west of the UK, and he very generously sprung this amazing donation on us. Apparently David has been collecting £2 coins for good causes for years, and he felt that our cause was worthy.
I have to say that this completely took me off guard (in a really good way) as to be honest with you, I haven’t put much thought into raising money. I know that sounds strange for a US businessman (by profession) to say that money hasn’t been on his mind, but in reality we have been so focused on getting the organization formally established and in parallel forging ahead with making the necessary connections to subject matter experts and institutions knowledgeable in PDA that raising money hasn’t felt like a priority! That being said, we do need to work out a fund-raising strategy. We already have donation boxes in some local US stores and a production plan to ramp up the number of boxes available. Additionally we have set up the mechanism to raise funds via the www.PDAMatters.org/Donate/ section of the website, but other than a test transaction it hasn’t been used yet (hint, hint… I guess I am starting to get the idea ;))
With a touched, and very grateful heart I will get back to the matter of our trip to see family (as well as keeping my brain spinning on how to raise some cash to put to work on the ideas we have!)
