We need your help

As October nears, we are beginning to gear up for The Brain Recovery Project’s annual year-end awareness and fundraising campaign… and we need your help!

The Brain Recovery Project accomplished a lot for our community last year:

  • Free special education advocacy services to over a dozen families

  • New research-based publication on auditory processing after hemispherectomy

  • Another group of children experienced Robocamp this summer

  • We held one of the largest and most information rich family conferences to date

  • We received a grant from Global Genes to continue working on 3D printed solutions for children with hemiplegia

  • Our team was invited to present on this exciting innovation at the Global Genes conference earlier this month

  • In the coming months, we will launch the world’s first ever pediatric epilepsy surgery patient registry which will ultimately help us better understand functional outcomes after surgery

Yet, there is still much work to do for our kids and for our community.

This year, we will be hosting our grassroots “friend-raising” and fundraising campaign in November to align with Epilepsy Awareness month. The Brain Recovery Project raises most of it’s funds from individual donations, and we need your help growing our base of champions and supporters in November. Outlined below are more details about what we need. We hope to build a team of 20+ passionate parents (we’re looking at you!) who can share both their personal story and how The Brain Recovery Project has helped their family.

Please let us know if you are willing to help out by October 6th!

ABOUT THE ONLINE STREET TEAM

WHAT’S THE GOAL?

We want to show the world how amazing our kids and our community are, raise awareness for the important work of The Brain Recovery Project, and build support for our cause! We all have powerful stories to tell about our children and our family’s experiences getting to and through surgery, and navigating the complexities of helping our children thrive afterwards. We want to showcase those stories and how The Brain Recovery Project has helped our families.

Our first goal is to increase our Facebook and Twitter following so that more people see and experience the value of our work — essentially to build our brand. We want to increase page likes by ~300 and hit 2,000 followers. We would also like to grow our e-newsletter audience by the same number.

Our second goal is to close out the year with a strong end-of-the-year fundraising campaign. Last year, our goals was $10K and our awesome Online Street Team raised $13K. This year, I’d like to raise the bar and set a goal of $15K. This is a reasonable and achievable goal — if we have 15 fundraisers raise $500 (that’s 50 friends donating just $10) and another 5 raise $1,500 (that’s 15 friends who donate $100) we can easily hit this goal. In fact, I’m hoping we exceed our goal, just as we did last year!

WHAT’S YOUR “JOB” AS A STREET TEAM MEMBER?

To reach these goals, we are asking you to advocate for the organization and to share your stories on Facebook (and Twitter or Instagram) with your friends and family. People can’t help us if they don’t know about us and our amazing children! And, we know that people want to help — we just need to tell them how to do it. Here’s what we’re asking you to do:

  • Like, comment, and occasionally share posts. From now until year’s end, we are ramping up posting on social media. Starting in November, we will make at least 2 Facebook posts/week and the same on Twitter. One post will be content based (for example a research article or something we’re up to) and the other we’d like to feature one of our children. Please like and comment on at least one of the post weekly. At least once a month, please try to share posts as you find it appropriate. Make it personal – why is this information helpful/compelling/useful for your family?

  • Help Us Feature One Child a Week on The Brain Recovery Project Facebook page:  Once every week in starting in November through the end of the year, we want to feature a child who has undergone surgery to stop seizures. A cute (high quality!) picture and a few sentences of what they are doing (e.g., a back to school picture) or an accomplishment/celebration. Our community knows how amazing our children are, but let’s show the world. We need at least 10 volunteers. Please email me ASAP if you’re willing to share (or re-share) a featuring your child. I will create a lineup/schedule and help you, if needed!

  • Change your Facebook Profile Picture for Epilepsy Awareness Month: November is Epilepsy Awareness Month. As we did last year, we’ll be making Facebook profile frames. I will send instructions mid-October and/or can create one for you.

  • Participate in our Year-End Fundraising Campaign: For the entire month of November, through Giving Tuesday, we will host our grassroots fundraising campaign. We need your help making this year a success. We ask that you commit to sharing a message with your family and friends about how the Brain Recovery Project has helped you and asking them to consider supporting the organization. You can do this by either sharing our organizational page, or by creating your own fundraising page and team. Our goal is to raise $15,000. We hope that most people will set a goal of $500, with some ambitious goal-setters going for $1,500. We want to make this simple and FUN, so we will provide step by step directions and templates to use — those will be shared by October 13th. Oh – and for every $500 you/your team raises, you’ll be entered into a drawing for a fabulous prize (likely some really awesome Brain Recovery Project swag!)