5 Funds to help CDH families!

CHERUBS is extremely excited to announce 5 new funds to help the CDH community!

CDH Family Support Fund – http://www.firstgiving.com/cdhfamilysupportfund

This fund covers all support services, including our web sites, newsletters, conferences, New Member Packets, get-togethers and other general operating costs. CHERUBS does a lot for CDH families and the CDH community and we incur quite a few costs during so. Just 1 newsletter mailing is now over $3000 for printing and posting with so many members. Our conferences are also expensive. Our monthly expenses are several hundred dollars for ink, postage, web site hosting fees, fax number, etc. It takes a lot to fund an organization with almost 3000 members. Remember, no one at CHERUBS gets paid and we have no office so every penny directly helps CDH families. And all of our services are FREE so we do charge membership fees. Only 2% of our members donate annually so we depend on public donations quite a bit. And the occasional grant as well.

CDH Research Fund – http://www.firstgiving.com/cdhresearch

To pay for the $1000 a year cost of research database hosting and to raise money for research organizations such as the International CDH Study Group – unless a request is made to go a specific hospital. The CDH Study Group is a collective group of over 30 hospitals around the world specializing in CDH research. We chose to support groups like this one because we know that every cent will go directly to research on Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia and research will be brooder and more advanced when collaborating with dozens of hospitals and researchers together.

CDH Family Assistance Fund – http://www.firstgiving.com/cdhfamilyassistancefund

A majority of this fund will go to help families with travel expenses such as airline tickets and gas. It will not go to lodging because CHERUBS highly recommends the free lodging available at Ronald McDonald Houses. Families will submit confidential applications to assistance and a committee will consider each request. Our goal is to make sure that all CDH families can afford to get to their cherub’s medical center and have a place to stay so that they can concentrate on their children instead of travel worries. We hope to assist a family through this fund by this fall. The remaining small percentage of this fund will go to Gabe’s Gifts, a new program that helps new and expectant families by supplying them with items needed. This project will start this summer!

CDH Awareness Fund – http://www.firstgiving.com/cdhawarenessfund

This fund will help raise awareness of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia through balloon releases, giving away free CDH ribbon buttons and brochures and other items. It will also cover advertising costs, billboards, video production and much more.

CDH Scholarship Fund – http://www.firstgiving.com/cdhscholarshipfund

For CDH survivors and siblings. Families can raise money to give scholarships in honor / memory of their cherubs. We hope to award our first scholarship in 2010.

This will all be funded through donations, grants and fundraisers. Member and the general public will be able to donate directly to a particular fund of their choosing. Donations not allocated to a specific fund will be deposited into the CDH Family Support Fund. We are very excited about all 5 of these new funds!