consano blog

Award Checks & Hope Fund & Love

I am super excited that we have made our first donation out of our Hope Fund to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute DIPG crowdfunding project. The Hope Fund is a place where you can donate when you don't have a specific research project to support, but you know that you want your entire donation to go to a researcher directly. We used Giving Tuesday this year to seed The Hope Fund, and thanks to your generosity, raised over $5,000 to get it started. So this $1,557 donation out of The Hope Fund gets Dr. Filbin to $30,000 raised, making this our largest crowdfunding project to date.

#GivingTuesday

As most of you know, with generous support from a family foundation, we are giving free $50 Consano gift cards to the first 50 people who donate at least $50. You can keep the gift card for yourself, apply it to the project you supported and increase your impact. Or you can share the "gift of giving" with your family and friends. A meaningful stocking stuffer? Or Hanukkah gift?

For me personally, #GivingTuesday is really symbolic of the gift I received during my cancer treatments — the gift of love and support. I cannot tell you how much a simple email or text or phone call meant when I was feeling so scared and alone. The meals that were dropped off at my house, often by people I barely knew, but who wanted to help. Scott and I joked that our girls were going to go back to "regular Mom and Dad meals" and wonder what happened to the amazing cuisine that they had been enjoying for the months of my surgeries and treatments. When I would wander downstairs after being cooped up in my room resting for the afternoon and sit down to a beautiful meal with my family, I felt so loved. When I would read a message from a friend, I didn't feel alone. Someone was thinking about me. Someone wanted to support me. Someone wanted to support my family. That is the true spirit of giving.

I will never forget the kindness that was shown to me during that dark time in my life (and the life of my entire family). And I can never repay all of those beautiful acts of giving. So I will pay it forward. I will try to help where I can and when I can. That is what #GivingTuesday means to me.