This is an experiment — like everything else I do, it seems — in crowdfunding, through Indiegogo.com, to see if I can find funding to focus full-time on making a medical study of the solution on SolveEczema.org a reality, write a book and start a related social business.
I tried a mini-blog-pledge drive awhile back, but I find unless people can see where the funds go, most people vastly overestimate the funds that come through blog donation links and figure someone else is donating. And…
Maybe it’s my somewhat ascetic upbringing, but I have real problems asking for … money. There. I said it! It’s why I haven’t gone the non-profit organization route, because once you go non-profit, most of what you do is keep asking people for money.
Over the years, many people have offered to help, and mostly, I haven’t taken them up on it. I’ve put up a small donation button, I’ve recently experimented a little with monetizing the blog to try to generate some passive income from recommendations I already make, but I haven’t had the time to really make much (literally) of it yet. So far, my minimal monetization efforts have made little more than change.
A medical professional once told me that my reticence to ask for or make money related to this endeavor was depriving people I could be helping of that help. He had a point. Earlier this year I spent some time deciding whether to go the social business or non-profit route, and for the above reasons, decided on social business.
Still, the first and most important goal is the medical study. And doctors are much better than I am of asking for money for their professional services. It’s hard to get money for a medical study without a doctor, and hard to get a doctor without money.
And while I am working on that, I have to find a way to make this my job. I don’t need a lot, but so long as I can only afford to do this as a hobby, that’s all I’ve been able to do.
Since putting up Solveeczema.org and this blog, parents have told me they couldn’t parent normally before they implemented the solution on Solveeczema.org, or that their children never lived a day without pain or slept through a single night because of the intense itching, or that they suffered life-threatening infections, or were ostracized by other children and adults. And they tell me what a difference it makes to really, truly see and understand where the previously random-seeming outbreaks come from and how to prevent or eliminate them, to have control over what had once controlled them. Many parents have described how asthma was ameliorated or eliminated along with the eczema, as the underlying basis would predict, and which also deserves further study.
It hasn’t been all one-sided. This endeavor has been extraordinarily meaningful for me. I never would have predicted wanting to do anything health related professionally. But now I would consider it an immense privilege to be able to do something that helps far more people. Please make a pledge if you can:
Feb 2017 – The crowdfunding is long concluded, but I am still working on the book. If you would like to support this work, please consider a donation. Not many people do – every bit makes a difference. If you are in a position to truly make a difference: the one thing that would make the biggest difference right now is funding to allow me to hire one or two people and research-grade equipment for skin testing. I have a fiscal sponsor now, so while regular gifts are not tax deductible, when I get that set up, it will be possible to make tax deductible donations to this work.
For gifts, please take the link in the right sidebar to the SolveEczema Donations Page.