What The Money Does

[bryant]

All donation drive, all the time! I appreciate your tolerance, particularly if you've already donated. I will post something frothy and fascinating in the next couple of days; also, a lot of my non-personal blogging is winding up over at Popone.

But right now I'm scrounging for donations; this is why. Here's where you can donate.

About 45% of the AFSP's donations come from the community walks like this one. They do screening programs in college, they have an educational film for high school students which needs better distribution, and they do a suicide survivor outreach program. That last in particular resonates with me, for obvious reasons.

For every $50 I pull in, they can get educational materials to 25 people who may not have realized how common suicide is. For every $100 I raise, they can provide a primary care physician with more information about the warning signs. It turns out, I've found, that a lot of doctors don't know -- even mental health professionals aren't necessarily conversant with suicide issues. So that's a really good one.

If I pull in $500, that's another support group facilitator trained. That makes me feel really good.

$1,000 represents 1/20th of a year of research into the factors that contribute to suicide. I think we targeted $5,000 for our team this year, so that'd mean we'd funded 3 months of research if we can hit that. That'd be incredibly awesome. I don't know if we'll make it this year but we'll keep trying; shoulda organized an auction, huh? Next time.